STARK AND THE STAR KINGS

Books by Edmond Hamilton

The Metal Giants

Tiger Girl

The Murder in the Clinic

The Horror on the Asteroid and Other Tales of Interplanetary Horror

The Star Kings

Tharkol, Lord of the Unknown

Monsters of Juntonheim (aka A Yank in Valhalla)

City at World's End

The Sun Smasher

The Star of Life

Crashing Suns

The Haunted Stars

Battle for the Stars

Outside the Universe

The Valley of Creation

Fugitive from the Stars

Doomstar

Return to the Stars

The Weapon from Beyond

The Closed Worlds

World of the Starwolves

Captain Future and the Space Emperor

Captain Future's Challenge

Calling Captain Future

Galaxy Mission

The Magician of Mars

Quest Beyond the Stars

Outlaws of the Moon

The Comet Kings

Planets in Peril

Danger Planet

Outlaw World

What's It Like Out There? and Other

Stories

The Best of Edmond Hamilton

Starwolf!

Kaldar—World of Antares

The Invisible Master

The Vampire Master and Other Tales

of Horror

Stark And the Star Kings

as editor

The Best of Leigh Brackett

Books by Leigh Brackett

No Good from a Corpse

Stranger at Home (as by "George Sanders")

Shadow Over Mars (aka The Nemesis from Terra)

The Starmen of Llyrdis (aka The Starmen)

The Sword of Rhiannon

The Big Jump

The Long Tomorrow

An Eye for an Eye (aka 13 West Street)

The Tiger Among Us

Alpha Centauri or Die!

The Secret of Sinharat / The People of the Talisman

(aka Eric John Stark: Outlaw of Mars)

Rio Bravo

Follow the Free Wind

Silent Partner

The Coming of the Terrans

The Halfling and Other Stories

The Ginger Star

The Hounds of Skaith

The Reavers of Skaith

The Book of Skaith: The Adventures of Eric John Stark

The Best of Leigh Brackett

No Good from a Corpse: The Pulp

Detective Fiction of Leigh Brackett

Martian Quest: The Early Brackett

Stark and the Star Kings

as editor

The Best of Planet Stories #1

The Best of Edmond Hamilton

In preparation at Haffner Press:

By Edmond Hamilton

The Star Stealers—The Complete Adventures of the Interstellar Patrol

By Leigh Brackett

Lorelei of the Red Mist: Planetary Romances

STARK AND THE STAR KINGS

EDMOND HAMILTON

LEIGH BRACKETT

ILLUSTRATED BY

ALEX EBEL

INTRODUCTION BY

JOHN JAKES

HAFFNER PRESS

ROYAL OAK, MICHIGAN

2005

FIRST EDITION

Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett Hamilton

Love Romances Publishing, Inc., renewed 1980 by John Jakes

The special contents of this edition are

HAFFNER PRESS

5005 Crooks Road Suite 35

Royal Oak, Michigan 48073-1239

info@haffnerpress.com

www.haffnerpress.com

The acknowledgments appearing on page 625 constitute an extension of this copyright page.

ISBN 1-893887-16-2 (Trade Edition)

ISBN 1-893887-17-0 (Limited Edition)

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2003100250

Printed in the United States of America

PUBLISHER'S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The book you hold in your hands is the result of a long and torturous journey, but ultimately a rewarding one. The publisher wishes to thank the following:

Mr. and Mrs. Richard C. Jones for their hospitality and kindness to a couple of kids from Michigan.

Emily W. Love for more of the same.

Doug Ellis, Richard A. Kaminsky, and John Boston, who, whether they knew it or not, provided sage advice in moments of need.

Kimberly A. Tomlinson of Sky Trust, and Eleanor Wood at Spectrum Literary Agency, for their permission to publish this material.

George Flynn and Maria Hofbauer for proofreading the manuscript.

Howard DeVore, for many things, but mostly for just being Big Hearted Howard DeVore.

Mary Jo Walker and Jack Williamson for collecting the papers of Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett at Eastern New Mexico University.

Gene Bundy, Patrice Caldwell, Ph.D., and the Special Collections Staff at Eastern New Mexico University for their support and assistance.

Chris Kalb for his digital skill and expertise.

John Jakes for his his personal memories of Ed & Leigh.

Alex Ebel for his wonderful work.

STARK AND THE STAR KINGS

ILLUSTRATIONS

"Creatures that looked like men—but

they melted when I fired at them!"

xviii

Berild lifted a crystal rod from the

coffer, a wand of sorcerous fire.

202

". . . I was to say that he wanted

me to lead you into an ambush . . ."

268

Stark saw her fight the

rearing beast she rode . . .

342

". . . I, Gordon, in Zarth Arn's

body—I fell in love with Lianna."

416

. the other side of the galaxy is being attacked by this menace . . ."

586

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

BY JOHN JAKES

THE STAR KINGS

QUEEN OF THE

MARTIAN CATACOMBS

203

ENCHANTRESS OF VENUS

269

BLACK AMAZON OF MARS

343

RETURN TO THE STARS

417

STARK AND THE STAR KINGS

587

INTRODUCTION

A LONG time ago—more than thirty years—on a hot sunny afternoon, two friends and I drove from Dayton to Cincinnati. I'lI call my friends Bruce and Walter because those are their first names. The three of us worked at a small ad agency owned by an affable gentleman once groomed to be "the next Benchley" (he gave it up; he liked to travel more than he liked to work). The agency was run by a pretentious stuffed shirt widely disliked, but this piece is about science fiction and not the tortures of the Ad Game.

Failing memory has lowered a haze over many details of that sunny day. Why did we decide to go to this particular convention? I have no idea. What was the name of the convention? I can't remember. Who drove? I wish I knew.

In synch with the few other "cons" I had attended (few because of lack of funds, lack of time, and a frank lack of interest in attempting to curry favor with "fandom" in the hope of winning awards), this Cincinnati gathering was held at a hotel or motel that would rate one star, if that. The mettlesome trio of con-goers somehow reached an upper floor and a designated room into which we proceeded to barge in search of "headquarters" or "registration."

Uproar! dim shapes barely revealed by drawn blinds began to shout and hector us. There were a dozen or less lounging in that Stygian setting, and the loudest of them informed us that this was neither "headquarters" nor "registration" but a meeting of "First Fandom."

Well! I had certainly heard of that august group, comprised of courageous writers and fans who went back to the halcyon days when stating that you were a science fiction reader induced snickers, if not more violent behavior. (Bear in mind, those were the days when we had no "Sci Fi" cable network, And the very term "sci fi" made aficionados gag; it was rather like saying "Philly" or "Frisco" in place of the proper name, but now it seems we can do nothing about that.)

Rebuffed and rebuked by the thunderous, sandpapery voice—which we later discovered belonged to one of First Fandom's stalwarts, Lou Tabakow—we backed toward the door. Evidently First Fandom hadn't been dealing with much of an agenda, for the tone quickly softened, blinds were raised a few inches, and Lou revealed himself to be the genial, gentle man that he was by overlooking our gauche behavior and inviting us to stay for beer and "samwidges."

We pretended that we'd eaten a mountainous lunch and resumed our backing to the door. Well, said Lou, at least some introductions. I don't know who else was named, for I was riveted by a quiet, bespectacled gentleman sunk down in a chair—"Ed Hamilton"—and a tall, middle-aged lady with the vague look of a farm woman—"Leigh Brackett." Leigh rushed forward, planted a big wet kiss on my lips and repeated the invitation to stay and schmooze.

I stood rooted and speechless. Here were two of my idols from my teen years of reading, and trying to write, sf. I had devoured work by both, and knew they were a team, married. Tthey spent some of the year at a farm at Kinsman, Ohio, in the northeastern corner of the state.

The rest of that meeting, and the rest of the day, are blurs. I don't know how long Bruce and Walter and I stayed. I don't know what we talked about with the great ones of First Fandom. I don't know what time we arrived back home in Dayton. I only know I'd met two absolute gods I'd worshipped from afar years before. It was all wrapped up in my veneration of sf, and my yearning to write it, one of the first powerful drives of my apprenticeship (the others were to write westerns and to write private eye stories).

I'd read both Hamilton and Brackett before I ever began submitting my own stories to pulp magazines. The Hamilton work I devoured was mostly in the pages of Captain Future, one of the Thrilling pulps. Each number brought a new novel about the nemesis of galactic evil, Curt Newton (Capt. F), and his sturdy, mind-boggling associates: Grag, a robot; Otho, an android; the Brain, a sort of plastic box with eye-stalks and something spongy inside. These beloved sidekicks were illustrated in every issue, or so I remember. I don't believe Ed Hamilton wrote all of the Captain Future novels, though maybe he did. I only know I remember him as the author of those novels.

Leigh Brackett I read in a different pulp, Planet Stories, published by Fiction House. Brackett's tales were quite different from her husband's. They were straight out of Mars (John Carter of), and told of swordplay and seductions on planets where warriors rode horses (sometimes large lizards) and strange ships with billowing silken sails plowed the sandy wastes. Brackett's fictional creation, Eric John Stark, who appears in these pages, was a hero I tried to emulate as I began writing my own stuff.

Writers, in case you haven't heard it before, often start out aping their favorite authors. I did, with efforts in the style of young Ray Bradbury (I once got a gracious letter from him, in response to a fan letter of mine; it was typewritten on yellow opy cpaper and, damn it, I lost it long ago, stupid fool that I am). Also in this pantheon were Luke Short and John D. MacDonald.

And Leigh Brackett. I refer to the writer of magazine fiction, not the writer of screenplays, which was another distinguished career she enjoyed. (Can you imagine what it must have been like to work in a studio cubbyhole sorting out plot structure, scenes, dialogue, with collaborators such as William Faulkner?)

One of the first dozen pieces that I sold was imitation Brackett—a novelette with the purple title "War Drums of Mercury Lost." I can't remember much about it, though my legal files reveal that Planet Stories ("Strange Adventures on Other Worlds") published it in their January, 1953 number. I never tried imitating Ed Hamilton's Captain Future sagas. How could you possibly top the top?

Check out these fabulous opening lines from my Planet Stone, opus which, like so much of the sf I wrote way back then, ignored the realities of atmospherics on Mercury, as well as other worlds (but then, the editors ignored them too):

They were riding along a high rocky ridge. Here the wind blew, strong and with a faint trace of coolness, but it could not entirely dispel the scorching heat of the mid-day sun burning like a bloated red eye from the pale blue heavens of the Mercurial heat belt.

Their horses picked a leisurely path around the scattered boulders. Above them, sharp slopes rose to the mountains standing naked in the wind. Below, the hillside dropped away to the floor of the great circular valley of Nomoon.

Abruptly, one of the riders pulled his mount to a stop. He sat quietly, pulling at the wide loop of gold dangling from his left ear. The wind riffled his flame-scarlet hair, and his long jade eyes swept the valley floor.

There lay the city of Nomoon, a pile of yellow towering

stone ...

Pretty great stuff, huh? Don't you just love the "flame-scarlet- hair and the "long jade eyes," not to mention the hero's gold earring? I don't think so.

Nevertheless, setting aside my stylistic and scientific insufficiencies, Leigh Brackett's inspiration helped me sell my forgotten novelette (and several other short stories) to Planet. It also brought me in contact with another great of the science fiction world, Fritz Leiber.

Plaet, you see, wanted to shorten "War Drums" by a certain amount--maybe a thousand words. They would fo the cutting if I okayed it. I was at the time 18 or 19—what did I know about the practices, and perils, of pulp publishing? Zip. The same could be said for my parents. I had a sometime friend who warned me that my "ideas" would be "stolen" if I got too clubby with these New York types, and seemed too much of a pushover.

Somehow I knew that Fritz Leiber had a day job in downtown Chicago; an editorship at what I remember as a true-science magazine, digest sized. I wrote him a letter and was cordially invited to his home on the South Side, to which I journeyed by "L" one memorable evening.

I remember a dignified but friendly man, tall and thin, with angular features inherited from his actor father, also Fritz Leiber (the author was Junior, I think), whom I saw playing sages and wise old viziers in Cecil B. DeMille epics. Fritz the author must have found the company of an inquisitive teenager boring, but he was gracious, and so was his wife, who served refreshments. He thought over my quandary and said, no, he didn't believe there was anything wrong with giving the Planet editors permission to cut the story. They were, after all, part of an established and temporarily thriving house, and I wanted to see one of my stories in the magazine, didn't I? You bet I did. The falsehoods peddled by my ill-informed friend were dismissed and forgotten.

After that evening in Chicago, I never saw Fritz Leiber again, though I became his devoted fan for life. After that sunny Saturday in Cincinnati, I never saw Ed Hamilton and Leigh Brackett again either, but I remain their devoted fan as well. I am only too delighted to pay tribute to them from my dimming memory banks, and to applaud the re-appearance of some of their fiction in this collection. I know I owe some kind of debt not only to Eric John Stark but to the Star Kings, because one of my own favorite sf novels, the first of a rambling Ace series, was entitled When the Star Kings Die.

Brackett and Hamilton were giants. They were also very real mentors and instructors at long range, long before I met them in Cincinnati. Some of their stories in this collection I have read, some I have not. Regardless, I'll read them all now with a sense of indebtedness.

I'll read them with pleasure, too. So will you.

John Jakes

Hilton Head Island

January 3, 2003

THE STAR KINGS

1: John Gordon

When John Gordon first heard the voice inside his mind, he thought that he was going crazy.

It came first at night when he was just falling asleep. Through his drowsing thoughts, it spoke sharp and clear.

"Can you hear me, John Gordon? Can you hear me call?"

Gordon sat up, suddenly wide awake and a little startled. There had been something strange and upsetting about it.

Then he shrugged. The brain played strange tricks when a man was half-asleep and the will relaxed. It couldn't mean anything.

He forgot it until the next night. Then, just as he began to slip into the realm of sleep, that clear mental voice came again.

"Can you hear me? If you can hear me, try to answer my call!"

Again Gordon woke up with a start. And this time he was a little worried. Was there something the matter with his mind? He had always heard it was bad if you started to hear voices.

He had come through the war without a scratch. But maybe those years of flying out in the Pacific had done something to his mind. Maybe he was going to be a delayed psychoneurotic casualty.

"What the devil, I'm getting excited about nothing," Gordon told himself roughly. "It's just because I'm nervous and restless."

Restless? Yes, he was that. He had been, ever since the war ended and he returned to New York.

You could take a young accountant clerk out of a New York insurance office and make him into a war pilot who could handle thirty tons of bomber as easily as he handled his fingers. You could do that, for they had done it to Gordon.

But after three years of that, it wasn't so easy to give that pilot a discharge button and a "thank you" and send him back to his office desk. Gordon knew that, too, by bitter experience.

It was queer. All the time he had sweated and risked his neck out there over the Pacific, he had been thinking how wonderful it would be to get back to his old job and his comfortable little apartment.

He had got back, and they were just the same as before. But he wasn't. The John Gordon who had come back was used to battle, danger and sudden death, but not used to sitting at a desk and adding up figures.

Gordon didn't know what he wanted, but it wasn't an office job in New York. Yet he'd tried to get these ideas out of his mind. He'd fought to get back into the old routine, and the fight had made him more and more restless.

And now this queer calling voice inside his brain! Did that mean that his nervousness was getting the best of him, that he was cracking up?

He thought of going to a psychiatrist, but shied at the idea, It seemed better to fight down this thing himself.

So the next night, Gordon grimly waited for the voice to call and prepared to prove to himself that it was a delusion.

It did not come that night, nor the next. He supposed it was over. Then the third night, it came more strongly than ever.

"John Gordon, listen to me! You are not having delusions! I am another man, speaking to your mind by means of a science I possess."

Gordon lay there in semi-sleep, and that voice seemed wonderfully real to him.

"Please try to answer me, John Gordon! Not with speech, but with thought. The channel is open-you can answer if you try."

Dazedly, Gordon sent an answering thought out into the darkness.

"Who are you?"

The reply came quickly and clearly, with a pulse of eagerness and triumph in it.

"I am Zarth Arn, prince of the Mid-Galactic Empire. I speak to you from two hundred thousand years in your future."

Gordon felt vaguely aghast. That couldn't be true! Yet that voice was so real and distinct in his mind.

"Two hundred thousand years? That's insane, impossible, to speak across a time like that. I'm dreaming."

Zarth Arn's reply came quickly. "I assure you that it is no dream and that I am as real as you are, even though two thousand centuries separate us."

He went on. "Time cannot be crossed by any material thing. But thought is not material. Thought can cross time. Your own mind travels a little into the past every time that you remember something."

"Even if it's true, why should you call me?" Gordon asked numbly.

"Much has changed in two hundred thousand years," Zarth Arn told him. "Long ago, the human race to whose first era you belong spread out to the other stars of the galaxy. There are great star-kingdoms now, of which the greatest one is the Mid-Galactic Empire.

"I am high in that Empire, and am a scientist and seeker of truth above all else. For years, I and a colleague have been delving into the past by throwing my mind back across the ages, groping and making contact with minds of men whose spirits are attuned to my own.

"With many of those men of the past, I have temporarily exchanged bodies! The mind is a web work of electrical energy which inhabits the brain. It can be drawn by suitable forces from the brain, and another electric webwork, another mind, installed in its place. My apparatus can accomplish that by sending my whole mind instead of just a thought-message into the past.

"Thus my mind has occupied the body of a man of past ages, while his mind was simultaneously drawn across time to inhabit my body. In that way, I have lived in and explored the history of many different eras of past human history.

"But I have never gone so far back in time as your own remote era. I want to explore your age, John Gordon. Will you help me? Will you consent to a temporary exchange of bodies with me?"

Gordon's first reaction was a panicky refusal. "No! It would be ghastly, insane!"

"There would be no danger," Zarth Arn insisted. "You would merely spend some weeks in my body in this age, and I in yours. And then Vel Quen, my colleague here, would effect our re-exchange.

"Think, John Gordon! Even as it would give me a chance to explore your long-dead age, so would it give you a chance to see the wonders of my time!

"I know your spirit, restless, eager for the new and unknown. No man of your age has ever been given such a chance to plunge across the great gulf of time into the future. Will you reject it?"

Suddenly Gordon felt caught by the glamour of the idea. It was like a wild bugle-call summoning to adventure hitherto undreamed.

A world and universe two thousand centuries in the future, the glories of a star-conquering civilization-to behold all that with his own eyes?

Was it worth risking life and sanity for? If all this was true, was he not being offered a supreme chance at the adventure for which he had been so restlessly longing?

Yet still he hesitated. "I wouldn't know anything about your world when I awoke in it!" he told Zarth Arn. "Not even the language."

"Vel Quen would be here to teach you everything," the other answered quickly. "Of course, your age would be equally strange to me. For that reason, if you agree, I should want you to prepare thought-spools from which I could learn your language and ways."

"Thought-spools? What are they?" Gordon asked, puzzled.

"They are not yet invented in your age?" said Zarth Arn.

"In that case, leave me some children's picture-books and dictionaries for learning your language and some sound-records of how it is spoken."

He continued. "You don't need to decide at once, John Gordon. Tomorrow I'll call you again and you can give me your decision then."

"Tomorrow I'll think that all this has just been a crazy dream!" Gordon exclaimed.

"You must assure yourself that it is no dream," Zarth Arn said earnestly. "I contact your mind when you are partly asleep because then your will is relaxed and the mind is receptive. But it is no dream."

When Gordon awoke in the morning, the whole incredible thing came back to him with a rush.

"Is it a dream?" he asked himself wonderingly. "Zarth Arn said it would seem like one. Of course, a dream-person would say that."

Gordon still could not make up his mind whether or not it had been real, by the time he went to work.

Never had the insurance office looked so utterly drab and stifling as on that long day. Never had the petty routine of his duties seemed so barren and monotonous.

And all through the day, Gordon found himself dreaming wild visions of the splendor and magic wonder of great star-kingdoms two hundred thousand years in the future, of worlds new, strange, luring.

By the end of the day, his decision was reached. If this incredible thing was really true, he was going to do what Zarth Arn asked.

He felt a little foolish as he stopped on his way home and bought children's picture-books, language texts, and phonograph records intended for the teaching of English.

But that night, Gordon went early to bed. Strung to the highest pitch of feverish excitement, he waited for Zarth Arn's call.

It did not come. For Gordon could not even begin to fall asleep. He was too tautly excited even to doze.

For hours, he tossed and turned. It was nearly dawn by the time he fell into a troubled doze.

Then, at once, the clear mental voice of Zarth Arn came into his mind.

"At last I can contact you! Now tell me, John Gordon, what is your decision?"

"I'll do it, Zarth Arn," answered Gordon. "But I must do it at once! For if I spend many more days thinking about the thing, I'll believe myself going crazy over a dream."

"It can be done at once!" was the eager reply. "Vel Quen and I have our apparatus ready. You will inhabit my body for six weeks. At the end of that time, I will be ready for the re-exchange."

Zarth Arn continued rapidly. "You must first make me one promise. Nobody in this age but Vel Quen will know of this mind-exchange. You must tell no one here in my time that you are a stranger in my body. To do so might bring disaster on us both."

"I promise," Gordon replied quickly. He added troubledly, "You'll be careful with my body, won't you?"

"You have my word," was the answer of Zarth Arn. "Now relax yourself, so that your mind will offer no resistance to the force that draws it across the time-dimension."

That was easier to say than to do. Relaxing was not what a man felt like doing when his mind was about to be drawn from his body.

But Gordon tried to obey, to sink deeper into the dozing state.

Suddenly he felt a strange, uncanny turning inside his brain. It was not a physical sensation, but it gave a feeling of magnetic power.

Fear such as John Gordon had never before experienced shrieked in his mind as he felt himself rushing into unplumbed darkness.

2: Future Universe

Consciousness came back slowly to Gordon. He found himself lying on a high table in a room of brilliant sunlight.

For some moments he lay looking up dazedly, feeling a terrible weakness and shakiness. Right over his head, as though just swung back, was a curious apparatus like a silver cap with many wires.

Then a face bent down into his view. It was the wrinkled face of an old, white-haired man. But the excitement he evidently felt made his blue eyes youthfully eager.

He spoke to Gordon in a voice shrill with excitement. But he spoke in a language that was almost entirely unfamiliar.

"I can't understand you," Gordon said helplessly.

The other pointed to himself and spoke again. "Vel Quen," he said.

Vel Quen? Gordon remembered now. Zarth Arn had said that was the name of his scientific colleague in the future.

The future? Then the two scientists had effected that incredible exchange of minds and bodies across the abyss of time?

With sudden wild excitement, Gordon tried to sit up. He couldn't do it. He was still too weak, and slipped back.

But he had got a glimpse of his own body as he sat up, and the sight had stunned him.

It wasn't his body. It was not John Gordon's stocky, muscular figure. This was a taller, slimmer body he now inhabited, one dressed in silky white sleeveless shirt and trousers, and sandals.

"Zarth Arn's body!" husked Gordon. "And back in my own time, Zarth Arn is awaking in mine!"

Old Vel Quen apparently recognized the name he spoke. The old scientist nodded quickly.

"Zarth Arn-John Gordon," he said, pointing at him.

The exchange had worked! He had crossed two thousand centuries and was now in another man's body!

It didn't feel any different. Gordon tried moving his hands and feet. Every muscle responded perfectly. Yet his hair still bristled from the ghastly strangeness of it. He had an hysterical nostalgia for his own body.

Vel Quen seemed to understand his feelings. The old man patted his shoulder reassuringly, then offered him a crystal beaker filled with foaming red liquid. Gordon drank it, and began to feel stronger.

The old scientist helped him get up from the table, and steadied him as he stood looking wonderingly around the room.

Brilliant sunlight poured through tall windows that filled all eight sides of the octagonal chamber. The light flashed and glittered off machines and instruments and racks of queer metal spools. Gordon was no scientist, and all this science of the future baffled him.

Vel Quen led him toward a corner in which there was a tall mirror. He stood transfixed the moment he caught a glimpse of himself in the glass.

"So this is what I look like now!" Gordon whispered, staring wildly at his own image.

His figure was now that of a tall, black-haired young man of well over six feet. The face was dark, aquiline and rather handsome, with serious dark eyes. It was altogether different from John Gordon's own square, tanned face.

He saw that he was wearing snug-fitting shirt and trousers. Vel Quen threw a long, silky white cloak around his shoulders. The old scientist himself was similarly attired.

He gestured to Gordon that he must rest. But weak as Gordon felt, he couldn't without first looking out at this unknown world of the far future.

He stumbled to one of the windows. He expected to look forth on wondrous vistas of super-modern cities, marvelous metropoli of the star-conquering civilization. But Gordon was disappointed.

Before him lay a scene of wild, forbidding natural grandeur. This octagonal chamber was the upper floor of a massive little cement tower which was perched on a small plateau at the edge of a sheer precipice.

Stupendous mountain peaks crowned with glittering white snow rose in the bright sunlight. From them and from the tower, dark and awesome defiles dropped for thousands of feet. There was not another building in sight. It looked much like the Himalayas of his own time.

Weakness made John Gordon sway dizzily. Vel Quen hastily led him out of the tower-room and down to a small bedroom on the floor below. He stretched on a soft couch and was almost instantly asleep.

When Gordon awoke, it was another day. Vel Quen came in and greeted him, then checked his pulse and respiration. The old scientist smiled reassuringly, and brought him some food.

There was a thick, sweet, chocolate-colored drink, some fruit, some wafers like dry biscuits. It was all evidently charged with nutritional elements, for Gordon's hunger vanished after the slight meal.

Then Vel Quen began to teach him his language. The old man used a box-like little apparatus which produced realistic stereoscopic images, carefully naming each object or scene he exhibited.

Gordon spent a week in his task, not going outside the tower. He picked up the language with astonishing quickness, partly because of Vel Quen's scientific teaching and partly because it was based on his own English. Two thousand centuries had greatly enlarged and changed its vocabulary, but it was not like a completely alien tongue.

At the end of that week Gordon's strength had fully returned, and by that time he was able to speak the language fluently.

"We are on the planet Earth?" was the first eager question he had put to Vel Quen.

The old scientist nodded. "Yes, this tower is located amid the highest mountains of Earth."

So it was the Himalayas whose snowy peaks rose around the tower, as Gordon had guessed. They looked as wild and lonely and grand as when he had flown over them in war days long ago.

"But aren't there any cities or people left on Earth?" he cried.

"Certainly there are. Zarth Arn chose this lonely spot on the planet simply so that his secret experiments would not be disturbed.

"From this tower, he has been exploring the past by going back into the bodies of many men in various epochs of human history. Yours is the remotest period of the past that Zarth Arn has yet tried to explore."

It was a little overwhelming to John Gordon to realize that other men had found themselves in his own uncanny present position.

"Those others-they were able to return without trouble to their own bodies and times?"

"Of course-I was here to operate the mind-transmitter, and when the time came I effected the re-exchange just as I will do with you later."

That was reassuring. Gordon was still wildly excited by this unprecedented adventure into a future age, but he hated to think that he might be marooned indefinitely in a stranger's body.

Vel Quen explained to Gordon in detail the amazing scientific method of contacting and exchanging minds across time.

He showed him the operation of the telepathic amplifier that could beam its thought-message back to any selected mind in the past. And then he outlined the operation of the mind-exchange apparatus itself.

"The mind is an electric pattern in the neurons of the brain. The forces of this apparatus detach that pattern and embody it in a network of 'nonmaterial photons.'

"That photon-mind can then be projected along any dimension. And since time is the fourth dimension of matter, the photon-mind can be hurled into past time. The forces operate in a two-way channel, simultaneously detaching and projecting both minds so as to exchange them."

"Did Zarth Arn himself invent this method of exchanging minds?" Gordon asked wonderingly.

"We invented it together," Vel Quen said. "I had already perfected the principle. Zarth Arn, my most devoted scientific pupil, wanted to try it out and he helped me build and test the apparatus.

"It has succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. You see those racks of thought-spools[1]? In them is the vast mass of information brought back by Zarth Arn from past ages he has explored thus. We've worked secretly because Arn Abbas would forbid his son to take the risk if he knew."

"Arn Abbas?" repeated Gordon questioningly. "Who is he, Vel Quen?"

"Arn Abbas is sovereign of the Mid-Galactic Empire, ruling from its capital world at the sun Canopus. He has two sons. The oldest is his heir, Jhal Arn. The second son is Zarth Arn."

Gordon was astounded. "You mean that Zarth Arn, the man whose body I now inhabit, is son of the greatest ruler in the galaxy?"

The old scientist nodded. "Yes, but Zarth is not interested in power or rule. He is a scientist and scholar, and that is why he leaves the court at Throon to carry on his exploration of the past from this lonely tower on Earth."

Gordon remembered now that Zarth Arn had said he was high in the Empire. But he had had no suspicion of his true exalted position.

"Vel Quen, what exactly is the Mid-Galactic Empire? Does it take in all the galaxy?"

"No, John Gordon. There are many star-kingdoms in the galaxy, warlike rivals at times. But the Mid-Galactic Empire is the largest of them."

Gordon felt a certain disappointment. "I had thought the future would be one of democracy, and that war would be banished."

"The star-kingdoms are really democracies, for the people rule," Vel Quen explained. "We simply give titles and royal rank to our leaders, the better to hold together the widely separated star-systems and their human and aboriginal races."

Gordon could understand that. "I get it. Like the British democracy in my own day, that kept up the forms of royalty and rank to hold together their realm."

"And war was banished on Earth, long ago," Vel Quen went on. "We know that from traditional history. The peace and prosperity that followed were what gave the first great impetus to space-travel.

"But there have been wars between the star-kingdoms because they are so widely separated. We are now trying to bring them together in union and peace, as you unified Earth's nations long ago."

Vel Quen went to the wall and touched a switch beside a bank of lenses. From the lenses was projected a realistic little image of the galaxy, a flat, disk-shaped swarm of shining sparks.

Each of those little sparks represented a star, and their number was dizzying to John Gordon. Nebulae, comets, dark clouds-all were faithfully represented in this galactic map. And the map was divided by zones of colored light into a number of large and small sections.

"Those colored zones represent the boundaries of the great star-kingdoms," Vel Quen explained. "As you see, the green zone of the Mid-Galactic Empire is much the largest and includes the whole north and middle of the galaxy. Here near its northern border is Sol, the sun of Earth, not far from the wild frontier star-systems of the Marches of Outer Space.[2]

"The little purple zone south of the Empire comprises the Baronies of Hercules, whose great Barons rule the independent star-worlds of Hercules Cluster. Northwest lies Fomalhaut Kingdom, and south of it stretch the kingdoms of Lyra, Cygnus, Polaris and others, most of these being allied to the Empire.

"This big black blot southeast of the Empire is the largest dark cloud in the galaxy, and within it lies the League of Dark Worlds, composed of suns and worlds engulfed in the perpetual dimness of that cloud. The League is the most powerful and jealous rival of the Empire.

"The Empire is dominant and has long sought to induce the star-kingdoms to unite and banish all war in the galaxy. But Shorr Kan and his League have intrigued against Arn Abbas' policy of unification, by fomenting the jealousies of the smaller star-kingdoms."

It was all a little overwhelming for John Gordon, man of the 20th Century. He looked in wonder at that strange map.

Vel Quen added, "I shall teach you how to use the thought-spools and then you can learn that great story."

In the following days while he learned the language, Gordon had thus learned also the history of two thousand centuries.

It was an epic tale that the thought-spools unfolded of man's conquest of the stars. There had been great feats of heroism in exploration, disastrous wrecks in cosmic clouds and nebulae, bitter struggles against stellar aborigines too alien for peaceful contact.

Earth had been too small and remote to govern all the vast ever-growing realm of man. Star-systems established their own governments, and then banded into kingdoms of many stars. From such a beginning had grown the great Mid-Galactic Empire which Arn Abbas now governed.

Vel Quen finally told Gordon, "I know you want to see much of our civilization before you return to your own body and time. First let me show you what Earth looks like now. Stand upon this plate," He referred to one of two round quartz plates set in the floor, which were part of a curious, complex apparatus.

"This is a telestereo, which projects and receives stereoscopic images that can see and hear," Vel Quen explained. "It operates almost instantaneously over any distance."[3]

Gordon stood gingerly with him on the quartz plate. The old scientist touched a switch.

Abruptly, Gordon seemed to be in another place. He knew he was still in the tower laboratory, but a seeing, hearing image of himself now stood on a stereo-receiver on a terrace high in a great city.

"This is Nyar, largest city of Earth," said Vel Quen. "Of course, it cannot compare with the metropoli of the great star-worlds."

Gordon gasped. He was looking out over a mammoth city of terraced white pyramids.

Far out beyond it he could glimpse a spaceport, with rows of sunken docks and long, fishlike star-ships in them. There were also a few massive, grim-looking warships with the Empire's comet emblem on them.

But it was the great city itself that held his stunned gaze. Its terraces were flowering green gardens with gay awnings and crowds of pleasure-seeking people.

Vel Quen switched them to other stereo-receivers in Nyar. He had glimpses of the interior of the city, of halls and corridors, of apartments and workshops, of giant underground atomic power plants.

The scene suddenly vanished from John Gordon's fascinated eyes as Vel Quen snapped off the telestereo and darted toward a window.

"There is a ship coming!" he exclaimed. "I can't understand it. No ship ever lands here!"

Gordon heard a droning in the air and glimpsed a long, slim, shining craft dropping out of the sky toward the lonely tower.

Vel Quen looked alarmed, "It's a warship, a phantom-cruiser, but has no emblem on it. There's something wrong about this!"

The shining ship landed with a rush on the plateau a quarter-mile from the tower. A door in its side instantly slid open.

From it poured a score of gray-uniformed, helmeted men who carried weapons like long, slim-barreled pistols, and who advanced in a run toward the tower.

"They wear the uniform of Empire soldiers but they should not have come here," Vel Quen said. His wrinkled face was puzzled and worried. "Could it be-"

He broke off, seeming to reach a sudden decision. "I am going to notify the Nyar naval base at once!"

As the old scientist turned from John Gordon toward the telestereo, there came a sudden loud crash below.

"They have blasted in the door!" cried Vel Quen. "Quick, John Gordon, take the-"

Gordon never learned what he meant to tell him. For at that moment, the uniformed men came rushing up the stair into the room.

They were strange-looking men. Their faces were white, a pallid, colorless and unnatural white.

"League soldiers!" cried Vel Quen, the instant he saw them thus close. He whirled to turn on the telestereo.

The leader of the invaders raised his long, slim pistol. A tiny pellet flicked from it and buried itself in Vel Quen's back. It instantly exploded in his body. The old scientist dropped in his tracks.

Until that moment, ignorance and bewilderment had held Gordon motionless. But he felt a hot rage burst along his nerves as he saw Vel Quen fall. He had come to like the old scientist, in these days.

With a fierce exclamation, Gordon plunged forward. One of the uniformed men instantly raised his pistol.

"Don't blast him-it's Zarth Arn himself!" yelled the officer who had shot down Vel Quen. "Grab him!"

Gordon got his fists home on the face of one of them, but that was all. A dozen hands grasped him, his arms were twisted behind his back, and he was held as helpless as a raging child.

The pallid officers spoke swiftly to Gordon. "Prince Zarth, I regret we had to blast your colleague but he was about to call for help and our presence here must not be detected."

The officer continued rapidly. "You yourself will not be harmed in the slightest. We have been sent to bring you to our leader."

Gordon stared at the man. He felt as though all this was a crazy dream.

But one thing was clear. They didn't doubt he was Zarth Arn. And that was natural, seeing that he was Zarth Arn, in body.

"What do you mean?" he demanded furiously of the other. "Who are you?"

"We come from the Cloud!" answered the pallid officer instantly. "Yes, we are from the League and have come to take you to Shorr Kan."

It was still all baffling to John Gordon. Then he remembered some of the things that old Vel Quen had told him.

Shorr Kan was leader of the League of the Dark Worlds, which was the greatest foe of the Empire. That meant that these men were enemies of the great star-kingdom to whose ruling house Zarth Arn belonged.

They thought that he was Zarth Arn and were kidnapping him! Zarth Arn had never foreseen anything like this happening when he had planned the exchange of bodies!

"I'm not going with you!" Gordon cried! "I'm not leaving Earth!"

"We'll have to take him by force," rasped the officer to his men. "Bring him along."

3: Mystery Raiders

There was a sudden interruption. Into the tower came running a uniformed soldier, his face livid with excitement.

"The radar officer reports three craft of cruiser size heading in from space toward this quarter of Earth!"

"Empire patrol-cruisers!" yelled the League officer. "Quick, out of here with him!"

But Gordon had seized the moment of their alarm to bunch himself. Now with a violent effort he broke free of their grasp.

He grabbed up a heavy metal tool as the pallid men rushed him and struck savagely with it at their faces.

They were at a disadvantage for they did not want to kill or injure him, while he had no such reluctance. His savage blows dropped two of the soldiers. Then the others seized him again and wrested his makeshift weapon from him.

"Now to the ship with him!" panted the pallid League officer. "And hurry!"

Held by four big League soldiers, Gordon was dragged down the stairs and out of the tower into the biting, frosty air.

They were halfway to the shining ship when he saw the grim black gun-muzzles that projected from its side swinging suddenly to point skyward. Volleys of small shells burst upward from them.

The pallid officer yelled as he looked upward. John Gordon glimpsed three massive, fish-shaped warships diving straight down toward them.

There was an immense explosion. It hit Gordon and his captors like a giant hand and hurled them from their feet.

Half stunned, Gordon heard the deafening drone of great ships swooping toward the ground. By the time he stumbled to his feet, it was all over.

The League ship was a wreck of fused metal. The three cruisers that had destroyed it were landing. Even as they touched the ground, their small guns flicked deadly explosive pellets that picked off the dazed League soldiers who still sought to fight.

Gordon found himself standing, his late captors a heap of torn, blasted corpses less than a hundred feet away. The doors of the cruisers were sliding open, and men in gray helmets and uniforms came running toward Gordon.

"Prince Zarth, you're not hurt?" cried their leader to Gordon.

The man was big and burly, with bristling black hair and a craggy, knobby face whose complexion was faintly copper-red. His black eyes were snapping with cheerful excitement.

"I'm Hull Burrel, captain commanding a Sirius-sector patrol," he told Gordon, saluting. "Our radar spotted an unauthorized vessel approaching Earth, and we followed it to find it at your laboratory here."

He glanced at the dead men. "Cloudmen, by Heaven! Shorr Kan has dared send men to abduct you! This could be cause for war!"

John Gordon thought swiftly. These excited Empire officers also naturally took him for the son of their ruler.

And he couldn't tell them the truth, couldn't tell them he was John Gordon in Zarth Arn's body! For Zarth Arn had made him promise to tell that to no one, had warned that to do so would mean disaster! He'd have to keep up the strange imposture with these men until rid of them.

"I'm not hurt," Gordon said unsteadily. "But they shot Vel Quen and I'm afraid he's dead."

They hurried with him to the tower. He ran hastily up the stairs and bent over the old scientist.

One look was enough. A gaping hole had been blasted in Vel Quen's body by the explosion of the tiny atomic pellet.

Gordon was appalled. The death of the old scientist meant that he was now completely on his own in this unfamiliar future universe.

Could he ever get back to his own body and time? Vel Quen had thoroughly explained the principle and operation of the mind-projecting apparatus. He might be able to operate it if he could get into telepathic contact with the real Zarth Arn.

Gordon quickly made up his mind. It was vital for him to stay here in the tower with the apparatus which alone could restore him to his own body and time.

"I must report this attack at once to your father, Prince Zarth," the captain named Hull Burrel was saying.

"There is no need," Gordon said quickly. "The danger is over. Keep the whole matter confidential."

He expected his authority as son of the sovereign to overawe the captain. But Hull Burrel, surprise on his craggy copper face, demurred.

"It would be a breach of duty if I failed to report so serious a matter as a League raid like this!" the captain protested.

He went to the telestereo and touched its switches. In a moment on its receiver-plate appeared the image of a uniformed officer.

"Chief of Fleet Operations speaking from Throon," he said crisply.

"Captain Hull Burrel of the Sirius-sector patrol wishes to report a matter of the utmost importance to his highness, Arn Abbas," declared the big coppery captain.

The official stared. "Cannot the matter be submitted to Commander Corbulo?"

"It cannot-its importance and urgency are too great," Hull Burrel declared. "I take the responsibility for insisting on this audience."

There was a little wait. Then on the telestereo the image of a different man flashed into being.

He was a massive giant, well past middle age, with shaggy, bristling brows over penetrating, hard gray eyes. He wore a brilliantly embroidered cloak over a dark jacket and trousers, and his great, graying head was bare.

"Since when do mere naval captains insist-," he began angrily, and then as his image looked past Hull Burrel he caught sight of John Gordon. "So this concerns you, Zarth? What's wrong?"

Gordon realized that this massive, bleak-eyed man was Arn Abbas, sovereign of the Mid-Galactic Empire and Zarth Arn's father-his father.

"It's nothing serious," Gordon began hastily, but Hull Burrel interrupted.

"Your pardon, Prince Zarth, but this is serious!" He continued to the emperor. "A League phantom-cruiser clipped in to Earth and made an attempt to kidnap the prince. By chance my patrol was making an unscheduled stop at Sol, and we detected them by radar and followed them here just in time to destroy them."

Arn Abbas uttered an angry roar. "A League warship violating Empire space? And trying to kidnap my son? Curse that devil Shorr Kan for his insolence! He's gone too far this time!"

Hull Burrel added, "We weren't able to take any of the Cloud-men alive but Prince Zarth can give you the details of the attempt."

Gordon wanted above all else to minimize the whole thing and finish the nerve-racking strain of having to keep up this imposture.

"It must have been just a surprise sneak attempt," he said hastily to Arn Abbas. "They won't dare try it again-I'll be in no more danger here."

"No danger? What are you talking about?" rumbled Arn Abbas angrily. "You know as well as I do why Shorr Kan was trying to get his hands on you, and what he'd have done if he succeeded!"

The massive ruler continued commandingly to Gordon. "You're not going to stay there on Earth any longer, Zarth! I've had enough of your slipping away to that remote old planet for your crazy secret scientific studies. This is what comes of it! We'll take no more such chances! You're going to come here to Throon at once!"

John Gordon's heart sank. To Throon, the royal planet of the sun Canopus which lay nearly halfway across the galaxy? He couldn't go there!

He couldn't carry on this masquerade in Zarth Arn's body at the court itself! And if he left the laboratory here, he'd have no chance of contacting Zarth Arn and re-exchanging their bodies.

"I can't come to Throon now," Gordon protested desperately. "I have to remain here on Earth for a few days more to carry out my researches."

Arn Abbas uttered a bellow of anger. "You do as I say, Zarth! You'll come to Throon and you'll come right now!"

And the emperor swung his angry gaze to Hull Burrel and ordered, "Captain, bring the prince here at once in your cruiser. And if he refuses, bring him here under guard!"

4: Magic Planet

The big cruiser sped through the interstellar spaces at a velocity already hundreds of times that of light. Earth and Sol had hours before receded astern. Ahead of the ship expanded the heart of the galaxy, thick with glittering star-swarms.

John Gordon stood in the wide, many-windowed bridge of the Caris with Hull Burrel and two helmsmen, feeling a quaking inward awe as he looked at that incredible vista ahead. The enormous speed of the warship was evidenced by the fact that the stars ahead grew visibly brighter as he watched.

Gordon felt no acceleration, thanks to the dim, blue-glowing stasis of force that cradled everything in the ship. He tried to remember what he had learned about the motive power of these great ships. They were propelled by an energy drive which utilized the famous sub-spectrum rays that were the basis of galactic civilization.[4]

"It still seems crazy of Shorr Kan to send a League cruiser into our realm on such an errand!" Hull Burrel was saying. "What good would it do him if he did manage to capture you?"

Gordon had wondered about that himself. He couldn't see the reason for wanting to capture the mere second son of the emperor.

"I suppose," he ventured, "that Shorr Kan figured he could use me as a hostage. I'm glad you got the murderous devils, for killing Vel Quen."

To forestall the strain of further conversation, Gordon turned abruptly. "I think I'd like to rest, captain."

With a quick word of apology, Hull Burrel led the way from the bridge and down by narrow corridors and catwalks through the ship.

Gordon pretended to glance only casually about him, but was really devoured by interest in what he saw. There were long, narrow galleries of atomic guns, navigation rooms and radar rooms on this upper deck.

Officers and men whom they met snapped to attention, saluting him with deep respect. These men of the Mid-Galactic Empire differed in complexion, some of them faintly blue of skin, others reddish, others tawny yellow. He knew it was because they came from different star-systems, and had learned that Hull Burrel himself was an Antarian.

Hull Burrel slid open the door of an austere little room. "My own cabin, Prince Zarth. I beg you'll use it till we reach Throon."

Left alone, John Gordon felt a slight relaxing of the extreme tension under which he had been laboring for hours.

They had left Earth as soon as Vel Quen's burial was over. And every moment of the hours since then had impressed on Gordon the vital necessity of playing a part.

He could not tell the weird truth about himself. Zarth Arn had insisted that to tell anyone would bring disaster on both Gordon and himself. Why was it so dangerous? Gordon couldn't guess, as yet.

But he was sure that he must heed that warning, must let no one suspect that he was the prince only in physical body. Even if he told, they wouldn't believe him! Old Vel Quen had said that Zarth Arn's weird experiments had been wholly secret. Who would credit such a crazy story?

Gordon had determined that his only possible course of action was to play the part of Zarth Arn as best he could at Throon, and return as soon as possible to the tower-laboratory on Earth. Then he could plan a way to re-effect the exchange of minds.

"But it seems that I'm being sucked into some crazy tangle of galactic conflict that'll make it hard to get away," he thought, dismayed.

Lying on the padded bunk, Gordon wondered wearily if any man since time began had ever found himself in such a situation as this.

"There's nothing for it but to bull ahead and play it out as Zarth Arn, if I can," he thought. "If Vel Quen had only lived!"

He felt again a pang of regret for the old scientist. Then, tired and unstrung, he fell asleep.

When Gordon awoke, he unconsciously expected to see the familiar plaster ceiling of his New York apartment overhead. Instead, he looked at a glittering metal ceiling and heard a deep, steady drone.

He realized then it had been no wild dream. He was still in Zarth Arn's body, in this big warship that was racing through the galaxy toward a doubtful reception for himself.

A uniformed man who bowed respectfully when he entered brought him food-an unfamiliar red substance that seemed to be synthetic meat, fruit, and the chocolate-like drink he already knew.

Hull Burrel came in then. "We're making almost two hundred parsecs an hour and will reach Canopus in three days, highness."[5]

Gordon did not venture any reply other than a nod. He realized how fatally easy it would be to make slips of pure ignorance.

That possibility was a weight on his mind in the hours that followed, adding to the already superhuman strain of his imposture.

He had to go through the big cruiser as though such a ship was familiar to him, he had to accept references to a thousand things which Zarth Arn would know, without betraying his ignorance.

He carried it off, he hoped, by wrapping himself in brooding silence. But could he carry it off at Throon?

On the third day, John Gordon entered the spacious bridge to be dazzled by a blinding flare of light that forced a way even thorough the heavy filter-screens across the windows.

"Canopus at last," remarked Hull Burrel. "We shall dock at Throon in a few hours."

Again, wild bugle-calls of excitement soared in Gordon's mind as he looked through the windows at a tremendous spectacle.

It was worth all risk and danger, it was worth that nightmare traverse from body to body across the gulf of time, for a man of the 20th Century to look on such a sight as this!

The majesty of Canopus was a thundering impact on his senses. The colossal sun revised all his limited ideas of grandeur. It blazed here in white splendor like a firmament aflame, drenching the warship and all space with a glorious, supernal radiance.

Gordon's senses reeled, as he tried to keep his face impassive. He was only a man of the past and his brain was not used to such a shock of wonder as this.

The drone of the great pressure-ray generators dropped in key as the cruiser swung in around an Earth-sized planet that was one of a dozen worlds circling this monster star.

And this was Throon. This world of green continents and silver seas spinning in opalescent white sunshine was the heart and brain of the Empire that stretched half across the galaxy.

"We'll dock at Throon City, of course," Hull Burrel was saying. "Commander Corbulo has stereoed me to bring you to Arn Abbas at once."

Again, Gordon tensed. "I will be glad to see my father," he ventured.

His father? A man he had never seen, a ruler who governed the titanc expanse of suns and worlds behind him, and who was parent of the man in whose physical body Gordon now lived?

Again, Zarth Arn's remembered warning steadied Gordon. Tell no one the truth-no one! Brazen through this incredible imposture somehow, and get back to Earth for the re-exchange as soon as he could-

The silvery seas and green continents of Throon rushed up toward the Caris as the warship made planetfall with massive disregard of preliminary deceleration.

Gordon caught his breath as he looked down. From the edge of a silver ocean rose a lofty range of mountains that flashed and glittered as though of glass. They were of glass, he saw a moment later, a towering range formed by extrusion of vast masses of molten silicates from the planet.

And perched on a plateau of these Glass Mountains high above the sea was a fairy, unreal city, Its graceful domes and towers were like bubbles of colored glass themselves. Pinnacles and terraces took the light of Canopus and flashed it back in a glory of quivering effulgence. Throon City, this-the core and capital of the Empire.

The big cruiser sank toward a huge spaceport just north of the fairy city. In its sunken docks and quays brooded scores, hundreds, of the Empire's star-roving warships. Massive, thousand-foot long battleships, heavy cruisers, fast destroyers and slim phantom-cruisers and ponderous, tub-shaped monitors with huge guns-all these craft wore the shining comet-emblem of the Mid-Galactic Empire.

Gordon stepped out of the Caris with Hull Burrel and the respectful officers, into sunlight so weirdly white and beautiful that not even the urgency of his situation prevented him looking about in increased wonder.

The brooding bulks of the great battleships loomed up in the docks all around him, their batteries of grim atom-guns silhouetted against the sky. In the distance rose the incredible, shimmering domes and spires of the city.

Hull Burrel's puzzled voice jerked Gordon from his petrification, recalling him to the necessities of the present. "The car is waiting for us in the tubeway, highness," reminded the Antarian captain.

"Of course," Gordon said hastily, forcing himself to move.

He had to watch the trend of Hull Burrel's direction, so as not to go astray. They made their way between the looming ships, past great mobile cranes, respectfully saluting officers, uniformed men standing at rigid attention.

Every minute John Gordon felt more strongly the hopelessness of what he had set out to do. How could he maintain his impersonation, when everything here was so stunningly new and strange?

"Disaster for both of us if you tell!" That warning of Zarth Arn-the real Zarth Arn-rang through his mind again with a chilling, steadying effect.

"Bull it through!" he told himself. "They can't dream that you're not the prince, no matter what mistakes you make. Watch every moment-"

They reached the opening of a lighted stair that led down beneath the tarmac of the spaceport. Below were round metal tunnels branching off into the darkness. A cylindrical metal car waited.

No sooner had Gordon and Hull Burrel taken their places in its pneumatic-slung chairs, than the car started moving with great speed. Its velocity was so great that to Gordon it seemed barely five minutes before they stopped.

They stepped out into a similar lighted, underground vestibule. But here uniformed guards with slim, rifle-like atom-guns were on duty. They saluted with the weapons to Gordon.

A young officer, saluting likewise, informed Gordon, "Throon rejoices at your return, highness."

"There's no time now for civilities," Hull Burrel broke in impatiently.

Gordon walked with the Antarian captain to an open doorway beyond which lay a corridor with alabaster walls.

The floor of the corridor began to move smoothly as they stepped onto it, almost startling Gordon into an exclamation. As it bore them forward and up long winding ramps, Gordon numbly comprehended that they were already in the lower levels of Arn Abbas' palace.

The very nerve-center of the vast star-empire whose rule swayed suns and worlds across thousands of light-years! He couldn't yet fully grasp and realize it, or the coming ordeal.

The moving walk swept them into an antechamber in which another file of guards saluted and stood apart from high bronze doors. Hull Burrel stood back as Gordon went through into the room beyond.

It was a small room wholly without magnificence. Around its walls were many telestereo instruments, and there was a curious low desk with a panel of grids and screens on its face.

Behind the desk a man sat in a metal chair, with two other men standing beside him. All three looked at Gordon as he approached. His heart hammered violently.

The man in the chair was a giant, dominating figure in dull-gold garments. His massive, powerful face, bleak gray eyes and thick black hair graying at the temples gave a leonine impression.

Gordon recognized him as Arn Abbas, ruler of the Empire, Zarth Arn's father. No, his father! He had to keep thinking of it that way!

The younger of the two standing men was like Arn Abbas himself, thirty years younger-tall and stalwart but with more friendliness in his face. That would be Jhal Arn, his elder brother, he guessed.

And the third man, grizzled, stocky, square-faced, wearing the uniform of the Empire navy but with golden bars of rank on his sleeve-this must be Chan Corbulo, the Commander of the space fleet.

Gordon, his throat tight with tension, stopped in front of the seated man. He nerved himself against those bleak eyes, knowing that he had to speak.

"Father-," he began tightly. Instantly, he was interrupted.

Arn Abbas, glaring at him, uttered an exclamation of wrath.

"Don't call me father! You're not my son!"

5: Weird Masquerade

Gordon felt a staggering shock. Could Arn Abbas suspect the weird impersonation he was carrying on?

But the next words of the giant ruler a little reassured Gordon, even though they were furious in tone.

"No son of mine would go straying off to the edge of the Empire to play scientific hermit for months, when I need him here! Your cursed science-studies have made you utterly forget your duty."

Gordon breathed a little more easily. "Duty, father?" he repeated.

"Duty to me and to the Empire!" roared Arn Abbas. "You know that I need you here. You know the game that's being played across the galaxy, and what it means to all our star-worlds!"

His big fist pounded his knee. "And see what burying yourself there on Earth nearly brought about! Shorr Kan nearly scooped you up! You know what that would mean?"

"Yes, I know," Gordon nodded. "If Shorr Kan had got hold of me, he could use me as a hostage against you."

Next moment, he realized that he had blundered. Arn Abbas stared at him, and Jhal Arn and Corbulo looked surprised.

"What in the name of all the star-devils are you talking about?" demanded the emperor. "You should know as well as I why Shorr Kan wanted his hands on you. To get the secret of the Disrupter, of course!"

The Disrupter? What was that? Gordon desperately realized that again his ignorance had betrayed him.

How could he keep going in this mad imposture when he didn't know the vital facts about Zarth Arn's life and background?

Gordon might have blurted out the truth then and there had not remembrance of his promise to Zarth Arn steadied him. He tried to look unruffled.

"Of course-the Disruptor," he said hastily. "That's what I was referring to."

"You certainly did not sound like it!" snapped Arn Abbas. He uttered a fierce exclamation. "By Heaven, at a time when I need sons to help me, I've got one real son and I've got another who's so cursed dreamy-eyed he doesn't even remember the Disruptor!"

The massive ruler leaned forward, anger dissolving momentarily into an earnestness that betrayed his deep anxiety.

"Zarth, you've got to wake up! Do you realize that the Empire stands on the verge of a terrible crisis? Do you realize just what that devil Shorr Kan is planning?

"He's sent ambassadors to the Hercules Barons, to the kingdoms of Polaris and Cygnus, even to Fomalhaut Kingdom. He's doing everything to detach our allies from us. And he's building every new warship and weapon he can, there inside the Cloud."

Grizzled Commander Corbulo nodded grimly. "It's certain vast preparations are going on inside the Cloud. We know that, even though our scanner-beams can't get through the screens that Shorr Kan's scientists have flung around their work."

"It's the dream of his life to crack the Empire and reduce the galaxy to a ruck of small warring kingdoms that the League could devour one by one!" Arn Abbas went on. "Where we are trying to unify the galaxy in peace, he wants to split and separate it.

"Only one thing holds Shorr Kan back and that is the Disruptor. He knows we have it, but he doesn't know just what it is or what it can do, any more than anyone else does. And because only you and Jhal and I know the secret of the Disruptor, that arch-devil has tried to get his hands on you!"

Light broke upon John Gordon's mystification. So that was what the Disruptor was-some mysterious weapon whose secret was known only to three men of the Empire's ruling house?

Then Zarth Arn knew that secret. But he didn't know it, even though he wore Zarth Arn's body! Yet he had to pretend that he did.

"I never thought of it that way, father," Gordon said hesitatingly. "I know the situation is critical."

"So critical that things may well come to a crisis within weeks!" affirmed Arn Abbas. "It all depends on how many of our allied kingdoms Shorr Kan is able to detach, and whether he will dare to risk the Disruptor."

He added loudly, "And because of that, I forbid you to go back to your hideout on Earth any more, Zarth! You'll stay here and do your duty as the second prince of the Empire should."

Gordon was appalled. "But father, I've got to go back to Earth for at least a short time-"

The massive ruler cut him off. "I told you I forbade it, Zarth! Do you dare to argue with me?"

Gordon felt the crash of all his desperate plans. This was disaster.

If he couldn't go back to Earth and the laboratory there, how could he contact Zarth Arn and re-exchange their bodies?

"I'll hear no more objections!" continued the emperor violently as Gordon started to speak. "Now get out of here! Corbulo and I have things to discuss."

Blindly, helplessly, Gordon turned back toward the door. More strongly than even before, he felt a dismayed consciousness of being utterly trapped and baffled. Jhal Arn went with him, and when they had reached the antechamber the tall elder prince put his hand on Gordon's dim.

"Don't take it too hard, Zarth," he encouraged. "I know how devoted you are to your scientific studies, and what a blow Vel Quen's death must have been to you. But father is right-you are needed here, in this gathering crisis."

Gordon, even in his dismay, had to choose his words. "I want to do my duty. But what help can I give?"

"It's Lianna that father is referring to," Jhal Arn said seriously. "You have dodged your duty there, Zarth."

He added, as though anticipating objections from Gordon. "Oh, I know why-I know all about Murn. But the Fomalhaut Kingdom is vital to the Empire in this crisis. You'll have to go through with it."

Lianna? Murn? The names had no meaning to John Gordon. They were mystery, like everything else in this mad imposture.

"You mean that Lianna-," he began, and left the words hanging in hope of provoking further explanation from Jhal Arn.

But Jhal only nodded. "You've got to do it, Zarth. Father is going to make the announcement at the Feast of Moons tonight."

He clapped Gordon on the back. "Buck up, it's not as bad as all that! You look as though you'd been condemned to death. I'll see you at the Feast."

He turned back into the inner room, leaving Gordon staring blankly after him.

Gordon stood, bewildered and badly worried. What kind of tangled complications was his involuntary impersonation of Zarth Arn getting him into? How long could he hope to carry it through?

Hull Burrel had gone into the inner room when Gordon came out. Now as Gordon stood frozenly, the big Antarian came out too.

"Prince Zarth, I owe you good fortune!" he exclaimed. "I expected to get reprimanded by Commander Corbulo for putting off my regular patrol course to touch at Sol."

"And he didn't reprimand you?" Gordon said mechanically.

"Sure he did-gave me the devil with bells on," Burrel grinned. "But your father said it turned out so lucky in giving me a chance to rescue you, that he's appointed me aide to the Commander himself!"

Gordon congratulated him. But he spoke perfunctorily, for his mind was upon his own desperately puzzling position.

He couldn't just stand here in the anteroom longer. Zarth Arn must have apartments in this great palace, and he'd be expected to go to them. The devil of it was he had no idea where there were!

He couldn't let his ignorance be suspected, though. So he took leave of Hull Burrel and walked confidently out of the anteroom by a different door, as though he knew quite well where he was going.

Gordon found himself in a corridor, on a gliding motowalk. The motowalk took him into a great circular room of shining silver. It was brilliantly illuminated by white sunlight pouring through high crystal windows. Around its walls marched black reliefs depicting a wilderness of dark stars, embers of burned out suns and lifeless worlds.

John Gordon felt dwarfed by the majesty and splendor of this great, somber chamber. He crossed it and entered another vast room, this one with walls that flamed with the glowing splendor of a whirling nebula.

"Where the devil are Zarth Arn's quarters in this place?" he wondered.

He realized his helplessness. He couldn't ask anyone where his own quarters were. Neither could he wander aimlessly through this vast palace without arousing wonder, perhaps suspicion.

A gray-skinned servant, a middle-aged man in the black livery of the palace, was already looking at him wonderingly across this Hall of the Nebula. The man bowed deeply as Gordon strode to him.

Gordon had had an idea. "Come with me to my apartments," he told the servant brusquely. "I have a task for you."

The gray man bowed again. "Yes, highness."

But the man remained there, waiting. Waiting for him to walk ahead, of course!

Gordon made an impatient gesture. "Go ahead! I'll follow."

If the servant found it strange he let none of that feeling appear in his masklike face. He turned and proceeded softly out of the great nebula room by another door. Gordon followed him into a corridor and onto a motowalk that glided upward like a sliding ramp. Swiftly and quietly the moving walk took them up through splendid, lofty corridors and stairs.

Twice they confronted groups coming downward by the return walk-two brilliantly-jeweled white girls and a laughing, swarthy naval captain in one; two grave gray officials in the other. All of them bowed in deep respect to Gordon. The motowalk switched off down a shimmery, pearl-walled passageway. A door ahead slid softly open of its own accord. Gordon followed through it into a high chamber with pure white walls.

The gray servant turned inquiringly toward him. "Yes, highness?"

How to get rid of the man? Gordon cut that problem short by taking the easiest method.

"I find I won't need you after all," he said carelessly. "You may go."

The man bowed himself out of the room, and Gordon felt a slight relaxing of his tension. Clumsy, his stratagem-but at least it had got him to the temporary refuge of Zarth Arn's apartments.

He found himself breathing heavily as though from exhausting effort. His hands were shaking. He had not realized the nervous effort his impersonation cost him. He mopped his brow.

"My God! Was any man ever in a position like this before?"

His tired mind refused to grapple with the problem now. To evade it, he walked slowly through the rooms of the suite.

Here was less splendor than he had seen elsewhere in the great palace. Apparently, Zarth Arn had not been of luxurious tastes. The rooms were comparatively austere.

The two living rooms had silken hangings and a few pieces of metal furniture of beautiful design. There was a rack of hundreds of thought-spools and one of the thought-spool: "readers." A side room held much scientific apparatus, was in fact a small laboratory.

He glanced into a small bedroom, then went on toward tall windows that opened on a terrace gay with green verdure and flooded by sunlight. Gordon went out onto the terrace, and then froze.

"Throon City! Good Lord, who ever dreamed of a place like this!"

The little garden-terrace of his suite was high in the west wall of the huge, oblong palace. It looked out across the city.

City of the great star-empire's glory, gathering in itself an epitome of the splendor and power of that vast realm of many thousand star-worlds! Metropolis of grandeur so great that it stunned and paralyzed the eyes of John Gordon of little Earth!

The enormous white disk of Canopus was sinking toward the horizon, flashing a supernal brilliance across the scene. In that transfiguring radiance, the peaks and scarps of the Glass Mountains here above the sea flung back the sunset in banners and pennons of wild glory.

And outshining even the stupendous glory of the glassy peaks shone the fairy towers of Throon. Domes, minarets, graceful porticoes, these and the great buildings they adorned were of shimmering glass. Mightiest among the structures loomed the gigantic palace on whose high terrace he stood. Surrounded by wondrous gardens, it looked out royally across the great metropolis and the silver ocean beyond.

In the radiant sunset out there over the glittering peaks and heaving ocean there flitted swarms of fliers like shining fireflies. From the spaceport to the north, a half-dozen mighty battleships rose majestically and took off into the darkening sky.

The full grandeur and vastness of this star-empire hammered into Gordon's mind. For this city was the throbbing heart of those vast glooms and linked stars and worlds across which he had come.

"And I am supposed to be one of the ruling house of this realm!" he thought, dazed. "I can't keep it up. It's too vast, too overpowering-"

The enormous sun sank as Gordon numbly watched. Violet shadows darkened to velvet night across the metropolis.

Lights came on softly all through the glittering streets of Throon, and on the lower terraces of this giant palace.

Two golden moons climbed into the heavens, and hosts of countless stars broke forth in a glory of unfamiliar constellations that rivaled the soft, throbbing lights of the city.

"Highness, it grows late!"

Gordon turned jerkily, startled. A grave servant, a stocky man with bluish skin, was bowing.

One of Zarth Arn's personal servants, he guessed. He would have to be careful with this man!

"Yes, what of that?" he asked, with an assumption of impatience.

"The Feast of Moons will begin within the hour," reminded the servant. "You should make ready, highness."

Gordon suddenly remembered what Jhal Arn had said of a Feast. A royal banquet, he guessed, to be held this night.

What was it Jhal had said of some announcement that Arn Abbas was to make? And what had been the talk of "Murn" and "Lianna" and his duty?

Gordon braced himself for the ordeal. A banquet meant exposing himself to the eyes of a host of people-all of whom, no doubt, knew Zarth Arn and would notice his slightest slip. But he had to go.

"Very well, I will dress now," he told the servant.

It was at least a slight help that the blue-skinned servitor procured and laid out his garments for him. The jacket and trousers were of silky black, with a long black cloak to hang from his shoulders.

When he had dressed, the servant pinned on his breast a comet-emblem worked in wonderfully-blazing green jewels. He guessed it to be the insignia of his royal rank in the Empire.

Gordon felt again the sense of unreality as he surveyed his unfamiliar figure, his dark, aquiline face, in a tall mirror.

"I need a drink," he told the servant jerkily. "Something strong."

The blue servant looked at him in faint surprise, for a moment.

"Saqua, highness?" he asked, and Gordon nodded.

The brown liquor the man poured out sent a fiery tingle through Gordon's veins.

Some of the shaky strain left his nerves as he drank another goblet of the saqua. He felt a return of reckless self-confidence as he left the apartment.

"What the devil!" Gordon thought. "I wanted adventure-and I'm getting it!"

More adventure than he had bargained for, truly! He had never dreamed of such an ordeal as was now ahead of him-of appearing before the nobility of this star-flung Empire as its prince!

All the mammoth, softly-lit palace seemed astir with soft sound and laughter and movement, as streams of brilliantly-garbed men and women moved along its motowalks. Gordon, to whom they bowed respectfully, noted their direction and went forward casually.

The gliding walks took him down through the lofty corridors and halls to a broad vestibule with wonderful golden walls. Here councilors, nobles, men and women high in the Empire, drew aside for him.

Gordon nerved himself, strode toward the high doors whose massive golden leaves were now thrown back. A silk-garbed chamberlain bowed and spoke clearly into the vast hall beyond.

"His highness, Prince Zarth Arn!"

6: The Feast Of Moons

Gordon stopped stock still, shaken by an inward quaking. He stood on a wide dais at the side of a circular hall that was of cathedral loftiness and splendor.

The vast, round room of black marble held rows of tables which themselves glowed with intrinsic light. They bore a bewildering array of glass and metal dishes, and along them sat some hundreds of brilliantly-dressed men and women.

But not all these banqueters were human! though humans were dominant, just as they were throughout the galaxy, there were also representatives of the Empire's aboriginal races. Despite their conventional garb, those he could see clearly looked grotesquely alien to Gordon-a frog-like, scaly green man with bulging eyes, a beaked, owl-faced winged individual, two black spidery figures with too many arms and legs.

John Gordon's dazed eyes lifted, and for a moment he thought this whole vast room was open to the sky. High overhead curved the black vault of the night heavens, gemmed with thousands of blazing stars and constellations. Into that sky, two golden moons and one of pale silver hue were climbing toward conjunction.

It took a moment for Gordon to realize that that sky was an artificial planetarium-ceiling, so perfect was the imitation. Then he became aware that the eyes of all these folk had turned upon him. On the dais, there was a table with a score of brilliant people, Jhal Arn's tall figure had risen and was beckoning impatiently to him.

Jhal Arn's first words shocked him back to realization of how badly his caution and self-control had slipped.

"What's the matter, Zarth? You look as though you'd never seen the Hall of Stars before!"

"Nerves, I guess," Gordon answered huskily. "I think I need another drink."

Jhal Arn burst into laughter. "So you've been fortifying yourself for tonight? Come, Zarth, it isn't that bad."

Gordon numbly slid into the seat to which Jhal Arn had led him, one separated by two empty chairs from the places where Jhal sat with his lovely wife and little son.

He found grizzled Commander Corbulo on his other side. Across the table sat a thin, nervous-eyed and aging man who he soon learned was Orth Bodmer, Chief Councilor of the Empire.

Corbulo, a stern figure in his plain uniform, bowed to Gordon as did the other people along this raised table.

"You're looking pale and downcast, Zarth," rumbled the grizzled space-admiral. "That's what you get, skulking in laboratories on Earth. Space is the place for a young man like you."

"I begin to think you're right," muttered Gordon. "I wish to Heaven I was there now."

Corbulo grunted. "So that's it? Tonight's announcement, eh? Well, it's necessary. The help of the Fomalhaut Kingdom will be vital to us if Shorr Kan attacks."

What the devil were they talking about, John Gordon wondered bitterly? The names "Murn" and "Lianna" that Jhal Arn had mentioned, this reference to Fomalhaut star-kingdom again-what did they portend?

Gordon found a servant bending obsequiously over his shoulder, and told the man, "Saqua, first."

The brown liquor spun his brain a little, this time. He was aware, as he drank another goblet, that Corbulo was looking at him in stern disapproval, and that Jhal Arn was grinning.

The brilliant scene before him, the shining tables, the splendid human and unhuman throng, and the wonderful sky-ceiling of stars and climbing moons, held Gordon fascinated. So this was the Feast of Moons?

Music that rippled in long, haunting harmonies of muted strings and woodwinds was background to the gay, buzzing chatter along the glittering tables. Then the music stopped and horns flared a loud silver challenge.

All rose to their feet. Seeing Jhal Arn rising, Gordon hastily followed his example.

"His highness, Arn Abbas, sovereign of the Mid-Galactic Empire, Suzerain of the Lesser Kingdoms, Governor of the stars and worlds of the Marches of Outer Space!

"Her highness, the Princess Lianna, ruler of the Kingdom of Fomalhaut!"

The clear, loud announcements gave John Gordon a shock of astonishment even before the giant, regal figure of Arn Abbas strode onto the dais, with a girl upon his arm.

So "Lianna" was a girl, a princess-ruler of the little western star-kingdom of Fomalhaut? But what had she to do with him?

Arn Abbas, magnificent in a blue-black cloak upon which blazed the glorious jewels of the royal comet-emblem, stopped and turned his bleak eyes angrily on Gordon.

"Zarth, are you forgetting protocol?" he snapped. "Come here!"

Gordon stumbled forward. He got only a swift impression of the girl beside the emperor.

She was tall, though she did not look so beside Arn Abbas' giant height. As tall as himself, her slim, rounded figure perfectly outlined by her long, shimmering white gown, she held her ash-golden head proudly high.

Pride, beauty, consciousness of authority-these were what Gordon read in the chiseled white face, the faintly scornful red mouth, the cool, clear gray eyes that rested gravely on him.

Arn Abbas took Gordon's hand in one of his, and Lianna's in the other. The towering sovereign raised his voice.

"Nobles and captains of the Empire and our allied star-kingdoms, I announce to you the coming marriage of my second son, Zarth Arn, and the Princess Lianna of Fomalhaut!"

Marriage? Marriage to this proudly beautiful star-kingdom princess? Gordon felt as though hit by a thunderbolt. So that was what Jhal Arn and Corbulo had been referring to? But good God, he couldn't go through with this! He wasn't Zarth Arn-

"Take her hand, you fool!" snarled the emperor. "Have you lost your wits?"

Numbly, John Gordon managed to grasp the girl's slim, ring-laden fingers.

Arn Abbas, satisfied, stalked forward to take his seat at the table. Gordon remained frozen.

Lianna gave him a sweet, set smile, but her voice was impatient as she said in an undertone, "Conduct me to our place, so that the others can sit down."

Gordon became aware that the whole host in the Hall of Stars remained standing, looking at himself and the girl.

He stumbled forward with her, clumsily handed her into her chair, and sat down beside her. There was the rustle of the hosts re-seating themselves, and the rippling music sounded forth again.

Lianna was looking at him with fine brows arched a little, her eyes clouded by impatience and resentment.

"Your attitude toward me will create gossip. You look positively appalled!"

Gordon nerved himself. He had to keep up his imposture for the time being. Zarth Arn was apparently being used as a political pawn, was being shoved into this marriage and had agreed to it.

He had to play the real Zarth's part, for now. He'd find some way of getting back to Earth to exchange places with the real Zarth Arn, before the marriage.

He drained his saqua goblet again, and leaned toward Lianna with a sudden recklessness.

She expected him to be an ardent fiancé, to be Zarth Arn. All right, blast it, he would be! It was no fault of his if there was deception in it. He hadn't asked to play this role!!

"Lianna, they're so busy admiring you that they don't even look at me," he told her.

Lianna's clear eyes became puzzled in expression. "I never saw you like this before, Zarth."

Gordon laughed. "Why, then, there's a new Zarth Arn-Zarth Arn is a different man, now!"

Truth enough in that assertion, as only he knew! But the girl looked more perplexed, her fine brows drawing together in a little frown.

The feast went on, in a glow of warmth and color and buzzing voices. And the saqua Gordon had drunk swept away his last trace of apprehension and nervousness.

Adventure? He'd wanted it and he'd gotten it, adventure such as no man of his time had ever dreamed. If death itself were the end of all this, would he not still be gainer? Wasn't it worth risking life to sit here in the Hall of Stars at Throon, with the lords of the great star-kingdoms and a princess of far-off suns at his side?

Others beside himself had drunk deeply. The handsome, flushed young man who sat beyond Corbulo and whom Gordon had learned obliquely was Sath Shamar, ruler of the allied kingdom of Polaris, crashed his goblet down to punctuate a declaration.

"Let them come, the sooner the better!" he was exclaiming to Corbulo. "It's time Shorr Kan was taught a lesson."

Commander Corbulo looked at him sourly. "That's true, highness. Just how many first-line battleships will Polaris contribute to our fleet, if it comes to teaching him that lesson?"

Sath Shamar looked a little dashed. "Only a few hundred, I fear. But they'll make up for it in fighting ability."

Arn Abbas had been listening, for the emperor's rumbling voice sounded from his throne-like seat on Gordon's right.

"The men of Polaris will prove their fidelity to the Empire, no fear," declared Arn Abbas. "Aye, and those of Fomalhaut Kingdom, and of Cygnus and Lyra and our other allies."

Sath Shamar flushedly added, "Let the Hercules Barons but do their part and we've nothing to fear from the Cloud."

Gordon saw all eyes turn to two men further along the table. One was a cold-eyed oldster, the other a tall, rangy man of thirty. Both wore on their cloaks the flaring sun-cluster emblem of Hercules Cluster.

The oldster answered. "The Confederacy of the Barons will fulfill all its pledges. But we have made no formal pledge in this matter."

Arn Abbas' massive face darkened a little at that cool declaration. But Orth Bodmer, the thin-faced chief Councilor, spoke quickly and soothingly to the cold-eyed Baron.

"All men know the proud independence of the great Barons, Zu Rizal. And all know you'd never acquiesce in an evil tyranny's victory."

Arn Abbas, a few moments later, leaned to speak frowningly to Gordon.

"Shorr Kan has been tampering with the Barons! I'm going to find out tonight from Zu Rizal just where they stand."

Finally Arn Abbas arose, and the feasters all rose with him. The whole company began to stream out of the Hall of Stars into the adjoining halls.

Courtiers and nobles made way for Gordon and Lianna as they went through the throng. The girl smiled and spoke to many, her perfect composure bespeaking a long training in the regal manner.

Gordon nodded carelessly in answer to the congratulations and greetings. He knew he was probably making many blunders, but he didn't care by now. For the first time since leaving Earth, he felt perfectly carefree as that warm glow inside him deepened.

That saqua was a cursed good drink! Too bad he couldn't take some of it back with him to his own time. But nothing material could go across time. That was a shame-

He found himself with Lianna on the threshold of a great hall whose fairy-like green illumination came from the flaming comets that crept across its ceiling "sky." Hundreds were dancing here to dreamy, waltz-like music from an unseen source.

Gordon was astounded by the dream-like, floating movements of the immeasurably graceful dance. The dancers seemed to hover half-suspended in the air each step. Then he realized that the room was conditioned somehow by anti-gravity apparatus to reduce their weight.

Lianna looked up at him doubtfully, as he himself realized crestfallenly that he couldn't perform a step of these floating dances.

"Let's not dance," Lianna said, to his relief. "You're such a poor dancer as I remember it, that I'd rather go out in the gardens."

Of course-the retiring, studious real Zarth Arn would be that! Well, so much the better.

"I greatly prefer the gardens," Gordon laughed. "For believe it or not, I'm an even poorer dancer than I was before."

Lianna looked up at him perplexedly as they strolled down a lofty silver corridor. "You drank a great deal at the Feast. I never saw you touch saqua before."

Gordon shrugged. "The fact is that I never drank it before tonight."

He uttered a low exclamation when they emerged into the gardens. He had not expected such a scene of unreal beauty as this.

These were gardens of glowing light, of luminous color! Trees and shrubs bore masses of blossoms that glowed burning red, cool green, turquoise blue, and every shade between. The soft breeze that brought heavy perfume from them shook them gaily like a forest of shining flame-flowers, transcendently lovely.

Later, Gordon was to learn that these luminous flowers were cultivated on several highly radioactive worlds of the star Achernar, and were brought here and planted in beds of similarly radioactive soil. But now, suddenly coming on them, they were stunning.

Behind him, the massive terraces of the gigantic oblong palace shouldered the stars. Glowing lights flung boldly in step on climbing step against the sky! And the three clustered moons above poured down their mingled radiance to add a final unreal touch.

"Beautiful, beyond words," Gordon murmured, enthralled by the scene.

Lianna nodded. "Of all your world of Throon, I love these gardens the best. But there are wild, unpeopled worlds far in our Fomalhaut Kingdom that are even more lovely."

Her eyes kindled and for the first time he saw emotion conquer the regal composure of her lovely little face.

"Lonely, unpeopled worlds that are like planets of living color, drenched by the wonderful auroras of strange suns! I shall take you to see them when we visit Fomalhaut, Zarth."

She was looking up at him, her ash-gold hair shining like a crown in the soft light.

She expected him to make love to her, Gordon thought. He was-or at least, she thought he was-her fiancé, the man she had chosen to marry. He'd have to keep up his imposture, even now.

Gordon put his arm around her and bent to her lips. Lianna's slim body was pliant and warm inside the shimmering white gown, and her half-parted lips were dizzyingly sweet.

"I'm a cursed liar!" Gordon thought, dismayed. "I'm kissing her because I want to, not to keep up my role!"

He abruptly stepped back. Lianna looked up at him with sheer amazement on her face.

"Zarth, what made you do that?"

Gordon tried to laugh, though that thrillingly sweet contact still seemed trembling through his nerves.

"Is it so remarkable for me to kiss you?" he countered.

"Of course it is-you never did before!" Lianna exclaimed. "You know as well as I that our marriage is purely a political pretense!"

Truth crashed into Gordon's mind like a blast of icy cold, sweeping the fumes of saqua from his brain.

He had made an abysmal slip in his imposture! He should have guessed that Lianna didn't want to marry Zarth Arn any more than he wanted to marry her-that it was purely a political marriage and they but two pawns in the great game of galactic diplomacy.

He had to cover up this blunder as best he could, and quickly! The girl was looking up at him with that expression of utter mystification still on her face.

"I can't understand you doing this when you and I made agreement to be mere friends."

Gordon desperately voiced the only explanation possible, one perilously close to the truth.

"Lianna, you're so beautiful I couldn't help it. Is it so strange I should fall in love with you, despite our agreement?"

Lianna's face hardened and her voice had scorn in it. "You in love with me? You forget that I know all about Murn."

"Murn?" The name rang vaguely familiar in Gordon's ears. Jhal Arn had mentioned "Murn."

Once more Gordon felt himself baffled by his ignorance of vital facts. He was cold sober now, and badly worried.

"I-I guess maybe I just had too much saqua at the Feast, after all," he muttered.

Lianna's amazement and anger had faded, and she seemed to be studying him with a curiously intent interest.

He felt relief when they were interrupted by a gay throng streaming out into the gardens. In the hours that followed, the presence of others made Gordon's role a little easier to play.

He was conscious of Lianna's gray eyes often resting on him, with that wondering look. When the gathering broke up and he accompanied her to the door of her apartments, Gordon was uneasily aware of her curious, speculative gaze as he bade her good night.

He mopped his brow as he went on the gliding motowalk to his own chambers. What a night! He had had about as much as one man could bear!

Gordon found his rooms softly lit, but the blue servant was not in evidence. He tiredly opened the door of his bedroom. There was a quick rush of little bare feet. He froze at sight of the girl running toward him, one he had never seen before.

She seemed of almost childish youthfulness, with her dark hair falling to her bare shoulders and her soft, beautiful little face and dark-blue eyes shining with gladness. A child? It was no child's rounded figure that gleamed whitely through the filmy robe she wore!

Gordon stood, stupefied by this final staggering surprise in an evening of surprises, as the girl ran and threw soft bare arms around his neck.

"Zarth Arn!" she cried. "At last you've come! I've been waiting so long!"

7: Star-Princess

John Gordon for the second time that night held in his arms a girl who thought he was the real Zarth Arn. But the dark-haired, lovely young girl who had thrown her arms around him was far different from the proud Princess Lianna.

Warm lips pressed his own in eager passionate kisses, as he stood bewildered. The dark hair that brushed his face was soft and perfumed. For a moment, impulse made Gordon draw her lithe figure closer.

Then he pushed her back a little. The beautiful little face that looked up at him was soft and appealing.

"You never told me that you had come back to Throon!" she accused. "I didn't know until I saw you at the Feast!"

Gordon stumbled for an answer. "I didn't have time. I-"

This final surprise of the day had staggered him badly. Who was this lovely young girl? One with whom the real Zarth Arn had been conducting an intrigue?

She was smiling up at him fondly, her little hands still resting on his shoulders.

"It's all right, Zarth. I came up right after the Feast and I've been waiting for you."

She snuggled closer. "How long will you be staying on Throon? At least, we'll have these few nights together."

Gordon was appalled. He had thought his fantastic imposture difficult before. But this-!

A name suddenly bobbed into his thoughts, a name that both Jhal Arn and Lianna had mentioned as though he knew it well. The name of "Murn." Was it the name of this girl?

He thought it might be. To find out, he spoke to her diffidently.

"Murn-"

The girl raised her dark head from his shoulder to look at him inquiringly.

"Yes, Zarth?"

So this was Murn? It was this girl of whom Lianna had mockingly reminded him. So that Lianna knew of his intrigue?

Well, the name was something, anyway. Gordon was trying to grope his way through the complexities of the situation. He sat down, and Murn promptly nestled in his lap.

"Murn, listen-you shouldn't be here," he began huskily. "Suppose you were seen coming to my apartment?"

Murn looked at him with astonishment in her dark blue eyes. "What difference does that make, when I'm your wife?"

His wife? Gordon, for the twentieth time that day, was smitten breathless by the sudden, complete destruction of his pre-conceived ideas.

How in Heaven's name could he keep up the part of Zarth Arn when he didn't know the most elementary facts about the man? Why hadn't Zarth Arn or Vel Quen told him these things?

Then Gordon remembered. They hadn't told him because it wasn't supposed to be necessary. It had never been dreamed that Gordon, in Zarth Arn's body, would leave Earth and come to Throon. That raid of Shorr Kan's emissaries had upset all the plan, and had introduced these appalling complications.

Murn, her dark head snuggled under his chin, was continuing in a plaintive voice.

"Even though I'm only your morganatic wife, surely there's nothing wrong about my being here?"

So that was it! A morganatic, an unofficial, wife! That custom of old had survived to the days of these star-kings!

For a moment, John Gordon felt a hot anger against the man whose body he inhabited. Zarth Arn, secretly married to this child whom he could not acknowledge publicly and at the same time preparing for a state marriage with Lianna-it was a nasty business!

Or was it? Gordon's anger faded. The marriage with Lianna was purely a political device to assure the loyalty of the Fomalhaut Kingdom. Zarth had understood that, and so did Lianna. She knew all about Murn, and apparently had not resented. Under those circumstances, was Zarth Arn not justified in secretly finding happiness with this girl he loved?

Gordon suddenly woke again to the fact that Murn did not doubt for a moment that he was her loved husband-and that she had every idea of spending the night here with him!

He lifted her from his lap and rose to his feet, looking down at her uncertainly.

"Murn, listen, you must not spend tonight here," he told her. "You will have to avoid my apartment for these next few weeks."

Murn's lovely face became pale and stricken. "Zarth, what are you saying?"

Gordon racked his brain for an excuse. "Now don't cry, please. It isn't that I don't love you anymore."

Murn's dark blue eyes had filled with tears. "It's Lianna! You've fallen in love with her. I saw how you paid attention to her at the Feast!"

The pain in her white face made it seem more childlike than ever. Gordon cursed the necessities of the situation. He was deeply hurting this girl.

He took her face between his hands. "Murn, you must believe me when I tell you this. Zarth Arn loves you as much as ever-his feelings have not changed."

Murn's eyes searched his face, and the intense earnestness in it and in his voice seemed to convince her. The pain left her face.

"But if that's so, Zarth, then why-"

Gordon had thought of an excuse, by now. "It's because of the marriage with Lianna, but not because I love the princess," he said.

"You know, Murn, that the marriage is designed to assure the support of the Fomalhaut Kingdom in the coming struggle with the Cloud."

Murn nodded her dark head, her eyes still perplexed. "Yes, you explained that to me before. But I still don't see why it should come between us. You said it wouldn't, that you and Lianna had agreed to regard it as a mere form."

"Yes, but right now we must be careful," Gordon said quickly. "There are spies of Shorr Kan here at Throon. If they discovered I have a secret morganatic wife, they could publish the fact and wreck the marriage."

Murn's soft face became understanding. "Now I see. But Zarth, aren't we going to see each other at all?"

"Only in public, for a few weeks," Gordon told her. "Soon I shall leave Throon again for a little while. And I promise you that when I come back it will all be the same between us as before."

And that was truth, Gordon fervently hoped! For if he could get to Earth and effect the re-exchange of bodies, it would be the real Zarth Arn who would come back to Throon.

Murn seemed relieved in mind but still a little rueful, as she threw on a black silk cloak and prepared to leave.

She raised herself on tiptoe to press warm lips lovingly to his. "Good night, Zarth."

He returned the kiss, not with passion but with a queer tenderness. He could understand how Zarth Arn had fallen in love with this exquisite, childlike girl.

Murn's eyes became a little wider, faintly puzzled, as she looked up at him after that kiss.

"You are somehow different, Zarth," she murmured. "I don't know how-"

The subtle instinct of a woman in love had given her vague warning of the incredible change in him, Gordon knew. He drew a long breath of relief when she had gone.

Gordon stretched himself on the bed in the little sleeping-room, but found his muscles still tense as steel cords. Not until he had lain many minutes staring at the glowing moonlight that streamed into the dark room, did his nerves relax a little.

One paramount necessity cried aloud in Gordon's mind. He had to get out of this crazy imposture at the earliest possible moment! He couldn't much longer carry on his weird impersonation of one of the focal figures in the approaching crisis of the great star-kingdoms. Yet how? How was he to get back to Earth to re-exchange bodies with Zarth Arn?

Gordon awoke next morning to glimmering white dawn and found the blue Vegan servant standing beside his bed.

"The princess Lianna asks you to breakfast with her, highness," the servant informed.

Gordon felt quick surprise and worry. Why had Lianna sent this invitation? Could she suspect something? No, impossible. And yet-

He bathed in a little glass room where, he found by pushing buttons at hazard, he could cause soapy, salty or perfumed waters of any temperatures to swirl up neck-high around him.

The Vegan had a silken white suit and cloak ready for him. He dressed quickly, and then went through the palace to Lianna's apartments.

These were suites of fairy-like pastel-walled rooms beyond which one of the broad, flower-hung terraces looked out over Throon. Boyish in blue slacks and jacket, Lianna greeted him on the terrace.

"I have had breakfast laid here," she told him. "You are just in time to hear the sunrise music."

Gordon was astonished to detect a faint shyness in Lianna's gaze as she served him iced, red-pulped fruits and winy purple beverage. She did not now seem the regally proud princess of the night before.

And what was the sunrise music? He supposed that was another of the things he should know but didn't.

"Listen, it is beginning now!" Lianna said suddenly.

High around the city Throon loomed the crystal peaks of the Glass Mountains, lofty in the sunrise. Down from those glorious distant peaks now shivered pure, thrillingly sweet notes of sound.

Storms of music broke louder and louder from the glittering peaks! Wild, angelic arpeggios of crystalline notes rang out like all the bells of heaven. Tempests of tiny tinklings like pizzicati of fairy strings was background to the ringing chords.

Gordon realized now that he was hearing the sounds given forth by the sudden expansion of the glassy peaks as Canopus' rays warmed them. He heard the crystal music reach its ringing crescendo as the big white sun rose higher. Then it died away in a long, quivering note.

Gordon exhaled a long breath. "That was the most wonderful thing I've ever heard."

Lianna looked at him, surprised. "But you've heard it many times before."

He realized he had made another slip. They had walked to the rail of the terrace, and Lianna was looking up at him intently.

She suddenly asked a question that startled him. "Why did you send Murn away last night?"

"How did you know about that?" he exclaimed.

Lianna laughed softly. "You should know there are no secrets in this palace. I've no doubt it is buzzing right now with the news that we breakfasted together."

Was that so? Gordon thought in dismay. In that case, he might have some explaining to do to Murn when next they met.

"Did you and she quarrel?" Lianna persisted. Then she flushed slightly and added, "Of course, it's really none of my affair."

"Lianna, it is your affair," Gordon said impulsively. "I only wish-"

He stopped. He could not go on, to say that he only wished he could tell her the truth.

He did wish that with all his heart and soul, at this moment. Murn was adorable, but it was Lianna whom he would never forget.

Lianna looked up at him with puzzled gray eyes. "I don't understand you as well as I thought I did, Zarth." She was silent for a moment, and then suddenly spoke a little breathlessly.

"Zarth, I can't fence with people. I have to speak straight out. Tell me-did you really mean it when you kissed me last night?"

Gordon's heart jumped, and the answer sprang from his lips. "Lianna, I did!"

Her gray eyes looked up at him gravely, wondering. "It seemed strange yet I felt you did. Yet I still can hardly believe-"

She suddenly, with the imperiousness that betrayed regal training, put her hands on his shoulders. It was open invitation to kiss her again.

Not if the whole palace had crumbled about them could Gordon have resisted doing so. And again, the feel of her slim, electrically alive figure in his arms, the touch of sweet, breathless lips, shook him.

"Zarth, you've changed!" Lianna whispered, wonderingly, unconsciously repeating Murn. "I almost believe that you love me-"

"Lianna, I do!" burst from Gordon. "I have, from the first moment I saw you!"

Her eyes softened, clung brilliantly to his. "Then you want our marriage to be a real one? You would divorce Murn?"

Gordon came to himself with a crashing shock. Good God, What was he doing?

He couldn't compromise the real Zarth, who loved Murn with all his heart.

8: The Spy From The Cloud

Gordon was temporarily delivered from his impasse of bewilderment by a providential interruption. It came from a chamberlain who hesitantly emerged onto the terrace.

"Highness, your father requests you and the Princess Lianna to come to the tower-suite," he told Gordon, bowing.

Gordon seized upon the chance to evade further discussion. He said awkwardly, "We had better go at once, Lianna. It may be important."

Lianna remained looking at him with steady gaze, as though expecting him to say more. But he didn't.

He couldn't! He couldn't tell her that he loved her, only to have the real Zarth Arn come back and deny it!

She was silent as they followed the chamberlain by gliding ramps up to the highest tower of the palace. Here were rooms whose glass walls looked out over all the shimmering towers of Throon and the stupendous encircling panorama of glassy peaks and sea.

Arn Abbas was restlessly pacing the room, a giant, dominating figure. The thin-faced Chief Councilor, Orth Bodmer, was speaking to him, and Jhal Arn was also present.

"Zarth, this matter concerns you and Lianna both," Arn Abbas greeted them.

He explained curtly. "The crisis between us and the League is deepening. Shorr Kan has called all League star-ships home to the Cloud. And now I'm afraid the Hercules Barons are wavering toward him."

Gordon quickly recalled the lukewarm attitude of Zu Rizal and the other Hercules Baron the night before.

Arn Abbas' massive face was dark. "I sounded Zu Rizal last night after the Feast. He said the Barons couldn't commit themselves to full alliance with the Empire. They're worried by persistent rumors to the effect that Shorr Kan has some powerful new weapon.

"I believe, though, that Zu Ruzal doesn't represent the feelings of all the Barons. They may be doubtful but they don't want to see the Cloud conquer. I think they can be brought into full alliance with the Empire. And I'm going to send you to accomplish that, Zarth."

"Send me?" Gordon exclaimed, startled. "But I couldn't carry out a mission like that!"

"Who could carry it out better, highness?" Orth Bodmer said earnestly to him. "As the emperor's own son, your prestige would make you a potent ambassador."

"We're not going to argue about it-you're going whether you like it or not!" snapped Arn Abbas.

Gordon was swept off his feet. He to act as ambassador to the great star-lords of Hercules Cluster? How could he?

Then he saw a chance in this. Once in space on that mission, he might manage to touch at Earth and would then be able to re-exchange bodies with the real Zarth Arn! If he could do that-

"This means," Arn Abbas was saying, "that your marriage to Lianna must take place sooner than we planned. You must leave for Hercules in a week. I shall announce that your marriage to Lianna will be solemnized five days from now."

Gordon felt as though he had suddenly stepped through a trapdoor into an abyss.

He had assumed that this marriage lay so far in the future he didn't need to worry about it! Now his assumption was wrecked!

He desperately voiced protest. "But is it necessary for us to hold the marriage before I go to Hercules as an ambassador?"

"Of course it is!" declared Arn Abbas. "It's vital to hold the western star-kingdoms to us. And as husband of the princess of Fomalhaut Kingdom, you'll carry more weight with the Barons."

Lianna looked at Gordon with that curiously steady gaze and said, "Perhaps Prince Zarth has some objection?"

"Objection? What the devil objection could he have?" demanded Arn Abbas.

Gordon realized that open resistance would do him no good. He had to stall for time, as he had been doing since he was first flung into this involuntary impersonation.

He'd surely find a way somehow to dodge this nightmare complication. But he'd have to have time to think.

He said lamely, "Of course it's all right with me if Lianna approves."

"Then it's settled," said Arn Abbas. "It's short notice but the star-kings can get here in time for the ceremony. Bodmer and I will frame the announcement now."

That was a dismissal, and they left the room. Gordon was glad that Jhal Arn came with them, for the last thing he wanted at this moment was to face Lianna's clear, questioning eyes.

The next few days seemed utterly unreal to Gordon. All the palace, all the city Throon, hummed with activity of preparations. Hosts of servants were busy, and each day swift star-ships arrived with guests from the more distant parts of the Empire and the allied kingdoms.

Gordon was at least relieved that he hardly saw Lianna in this hectic time except at the magnificent feasts that celebrated the coming event. Nor had he seen Murn, except at a distance. But time was running out and he had not found any way out of this fantastic impasse.

He couldn't tell them the truth about himself. That would break his solemn promise to Zarth Arn. But then what was he to do? He racked his brain, but on the eve of the appointed day he still had found no solution.

That night in the Hall of Stars was held the great reception for the royal and noble guests who had come from far across the galaxy for the wedding. The scene was one of staggering splendor.

Gordon and Lianna stood on the raised reception-dais, with Arn Abbas' giant figure on one side of them and Jhal Arn and his beautiful wife Zora on the other. Behind them were Commander Corbulo and Orth Bodmer and the other highest officials of the Empire.

The brilliant throng whom chamberlains announced as they streamed toward the dais, the majestic magnificence of the Hall of Stars, the televisor screens through which he knew half the galaxy was watching-all this numbed John Gordon. He felt more and more like a man in a strange and impossible dream. Surely he would wake up at any moment and find himself back in his own 20th Century world?

"The King of the Cygnus Suns!" rang the chamberlain's measured announcements. "The King of Lyra!"

They streamed before Gordon in a blurred succession of faces and voices. He recognized but few of them-the cold-eyed Zu Rizal of the Hercules Barons, young Sath Shamar of Polaris, one or two others.

"The King-Regent of Cassiopeia! The Counts of the Marches of Outer Space!"

Lesser luminaries and officials of the Empire continued the procession to the dais. Among these last came a bronzed naval captain who offered Gordon a thought-spool as he bowed.

"A small petition from my squadron to your highness on this happy occasion," the officer murmured. "We hope that you will listen to it."

Gordon nodded. "I will, captain-"

He was suddenly interrupted by Commander Corbulo. The grizzled naval chief had been staring at the bronzed officer's insignia and he suddenly pushed forward.

"No officer of that squadron should be nearer here than Vega right now!" snapped Corbulo. "What is your name and division-number?"

The bronzed captain looked suddenly gray and haggard. He recoiled, his hand darting into his jacket.

"That man's a spy, perhaps an assassin!" yelled Corbulo. "Blast him!"

The detected spy already had a short, stubby atom-pistol flashing in his hand.

Gordon swept Lianna swiftly behind him. He whirled back then toward the other.

But, at Corbulo's shouted command, from secret apertures high in the walls of the Hall of Stars had flicked down swift atom-pellets that tore into the spy's body and instantly exploded. The man fell to the floor, a torn, blackened corpse.

Screams rent the air, as the crowd recoiled in sudden panic. Gordon was as stunned as everyone else in the Hall by what had happened.

But Arn Abbas' rumbling roar rose quickly to dominate the scene. "There is nothing to fear! The man is dead, thanks to Corbulo's vigilance and our guards inside the walls!"

The big ruler shot orders. "Take the body into another room. Zarth, you and Jhal come along. Corbulo, have that thought-spool ray-searched, it may be dangerous. Lianna, will you reassure our guests?"

Gordon went with the giant emperor into another, smaller room where the blasted body of the spy was quickly carried.

Jhal Arn bent over the body, ripped away the scorched jacket. The mangled torso was not bronze in color like the face. It was a curiously pallid white.

"A Cloud-man! A League spy, as I thought!" snapped Arn Abbas. "One of Shorr Kan's agents in clever disguise!"

Jhal Arn looked puzzled. "Why did he come here? He wasn't primarily trying to assassinate any of us-he didn't draw his weapon until he was detected."

"The thought-spool he was trying to give Zarth may tell us something," muttered the ruler. "Here's Corbulo."

Commander Corbulo had the thought-spool in his hand. "It's been thoroughly ray-examined and is a simple thought-spool and nothing more," he reported.

"It's cursed strange!" rumbled Arn Abbas, his face dark. "Here, put the spool in this reader and we'll listen to it."

The thought-spool was inserted in the reading-mechanism on the desk. Arn Abbas flicked the switch.

The spool started unwinding. Gordon felt the impact of its recorded, amplified thought-pulsations beating into his mind as into the minds of the others.

A clear, resonant voice seemed speaking in his mind as he listened.

"Shorr Kan to the Prince Zarth Arn: It is unfortunate that the arrangements we agreed on for bringing you to the Cloud were thwarted by the chance interference of an Empire patrol. I regret this as much as you do. But rest assured that I will make new arrangements at once for getting you here in safety and secrecy.

"The terms upon which we agreed still stand. As soon as you join forces with me and impart to us the secret of the Disrupter, we of the Cloud will be able to attack the Empire without fear of defeat and you will be publicly recognized as my co-equal in ruling the entire galaxy. Make no move that might arouse suspicion, but wait until my trusted agents are able to bring you safely to me."

9: In the Palace Prison

To Gordon, at first, that thought-message did not make sense. A message from Shorr Kan to him, to Zarth Arn?

Then as the significance of it sank in, he felt a shock of bewilderment and dismay. And his dismay deepened as he encountered the raging eyes of Arn Abbas.

"By Heaven, my own son a traitor to the Empire!" cried the ruler. "My own son intriguing secretly to betray us to the Cloud!"

Gordon found his voice. "This message is a lie! I never made any arrangements with Shorr Kan, nor had any discussions with him!"

"Then why would he send you such a secret message as this!" roared the emperor.

Gordon caught desperately at the only explanation that suggested itself to him.

"Shorr Kan must have sent this message hoping it would be discovered and make trouble! There can be no other reason."

Jhal Arn, whose handsome face was deeply troubled, spoke quickly.

"Father, that sounds possible enough. It's impossible to believe that Zarth could be a traitor."

"Bah, it's too thin!" raged Arn Abbas. "Shorr Kan is too clever to devise such a harebrained plan that would gain him so little. Why, his spy was only detected at all by the mere chance of Corbulo noticing his naval insignia."

His massive face darkened. "Zarth, if you have been secretly plotting with the Cloud, the fact that you're my son won't save you!"

"I swear I haven't!" Gordon cried. "I didn't arrange with those League raiders to come to Earth for me. And why in the world should I betray the Empire?"

"You're my second son," Arn Abbas reminded grimly. "You may have secretly envied Jhal the succession, all the time you pretended to be absorbed in your scientific studies. Such things have happened!"

If his position had seemed nightmare to John Gordon before, it seemed doubly nightmare now.

"This thing is going to be sifted to the bottom!" roared Arn Abbas. "In the meantime, you'll remain locked up in the palace prison!"

Jhal Arn protested. "You can't send Zarth down there!"

Commander Corbulo supported the protest. "At least for appearance's sake, confine Prince Zarth to his own quarters."

Arn Abbas glared at them. "Have you two lost your wits? Don't you realize that if Zarth is a traitor, he represents mortal danger to the Empire?

"He knows the secret of the Disruptor, that only Jhal and I beside him know! Let Shorr Kan get that secret, and the Cloud will strike like lightning! Do you want to take a chance of that?"

"But the wedding tomorrow, the guests-" Jhal began. "Announce that Prince Zarth was suddenly taken ill," snapped the ruler. "Corbulo, you take him down to the prison. And you're responsible for him with your life!"

Gordon's thoughts were whirling wildly. Suppose he told them the truth, the real truth? Suppose he told them that he was only Zarth Arn in physical body and was really John Gordon of the 20th Century? Surely Zarth Arn couldn't blame him for breaking his pledge of secrecy now!

But would they believe if he told? He knew that they wouldn't. No one would believe that incredible story. Zarth Arn had kept his method of mind-exchange secret, and no one even dreamed of its possibility. They'd think he was merely trying a desperate, wild lie to save himself.

Gordon's shoulders sagged. He made no further protest but dully went with Commander Corbulo out of the room.

On the corridor motowalk that bore them downward to the lower levels of the palace, Corbulo spoke to him bluntly.

"Zarth, I don't believe a word of all this talk of treachery on your part. I have to lock you up, but you can depend on me to do everything I can to clear you."

The unexpected support from the veteran officer pulled Gordon a little out of his stunned despair.

"Corbulo, I swear the whole thing is some kind of frame-up! Surely my father can't believe I'd really betray the Empire?"

"You know as well as I what a violent temper Arn Abbas has," said the Commander. "But as soon as he cools off, I'll make him listen to reason."

Deep down beneath the great palace they came to a massive metal door. Corbulo flashed a tiny beam from a heavy ring on his finger, into a needle-hole in the door. It slid aside and revealed a square, bare little metal room.

"This is a cell of your father's secret prison, Zarth. I never thought I'd be locking you in here. But don't worry-we'll do our best to change Arn Abbas' mind."

Gordon gripped his hand gratefully, and entered the room. The massive door slid shut.

The room had only a cot with a thin pad for furniture. There were two taps in the wall, one for water and the other for nutritional fluid. Walls, floor and ceiling were of solid metal.

Gordon sat down heavily. At first, he felt a little cheered by Corbulo's assurance of support. But then his hope faded. Even if Corbulo and Jhal believed in him, how could they prove his innocence?

And, the thought forced into his mind, what if he really was guilty of treachery? What if Zarth Arn, the real Zarth Arn, had in the past been intriguing with Shorr Kan?

Gordon shook his head. "No, I can't believe that! Zarth Arn was a scientific enthusiast, not a schemer. And if he'd been plotting with the Cloud, he'd not have exchanged minds with me."

But if Zarth Arn had been innocent of intrigue, why had Shorr Kan sent him that message referring to their past discussions?

Gordon gave it up. "I'm just out of my depth. I should have known that my ignorance would get me into some disaster if I tried to play Zarth's part!"

He thought miserably of Lianna. They'd have to tell her what had happened, even if they kept it concealed from everyone else.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10: Flight Into the Void

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Zarth, come here!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

11: Galactic Plot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Because," smiled the Sirian, "it's the most effective way to split the Empire and leave it wide open to the Cloud's attack. And there's another reason that Shorr Kan will explain to you."

The malice and triumph in Them Eldred's eyes detonated the rage that gathered in John Gordon's mind.

He plunged forward, heedless of Them Eldred's warning shout. He managed by a swift contortion of his body to avoid the glass paralyzer that the other jabbed at him. His fist smashed into the Sirian's face.

Them Eldred, as he sprawled backward, had Gordon atop him like a leaping panther. But the Sirian had managed to cling to his weapon. And before Gordon could carry out his intention of wrestling it away, Them Eldred desperately jabbed up with it again.

The crescent at the end of the glass rod touched Gordon's neck. A freezing shock smote like lightning through his body. He felt his senses darken swiftly.

When Gordon for a second time came back to consciousness, he was again lying in one of the bunks. This time, the freezing ache in his body was more painful. And this time, Lianna was sitting beside him and looking down at him with anxious gray eyes.

Her eyes lighted as he opened his own. "Zarth, you've been unconscious more than a day! I was beginning to worry."

"I'm-all right," he muttered. He tried to sit up, but her little hands quickly forced him back down onto the pad.

"Don't, Zarth-you must rest until your nerves recover from the electroshock."

He glanced at the porthole window. The vista of blazing stars outside seemed unchanged. He could glimpse the black blot of the Cloud, looking only a little larger in the distant forest of suns.

Lianna followed his glance. "We are travelling at tremendous speed, but it will still require a few days before we reach the Cloud. In that time, we may encounter an Empire patrol."

Gordon groaned. "Lianna, there's no hope for that. This is itself an Empire cruiser and could pass any patrol. And if Corbulo is really leader of this treachery, he'd have his patrols arranged so that this ship could pass unseen."

"I've thought and thought about it and I still can hardly believe it," Lianna said. "Corbulo a traitor! It seems fantastic! And yet-"

Gordon himself no longer doubted. The evidence was too overwhelming.

"Men will betray any trust when ambition drives them, and Corbulo is ambitious," he muttered. Then, as deeper realization came to him, "Good God, this means that if the League does attack the Empire, the Commander of the Empire forces will sabotage their defense!"

He rose painfully from the bunk despite Lianna's protestations.

"If we could only get word back to Throon somehow! That would at least put Jhal Arn on his guard!"

Lianna shook her ash-golden head a little sadly. "I fear there's no chance of that, once we're prisoners in the Cloud. Shorr Kan is not likely to let us go."

It all spun in John Gordon's mind in a bewildering chaos of known and unknown factors, in the hours that followed.

A few things, though, stood out clearly. They all, everyone in this universe, thought that he was Zarth Arn. And thus it was believed that he knew the secret of the Disrupter, that mysterious scientific weapon known only to Arn Abbas and his two sons.

That was why Corbulo had risked the plot that was sending him and Lianna now as prisoners to the Cloud! Once Shorr Kan had that secret, mysterious weapon, he would have nothing to fear from the Empire whose fleet was commanded by his own man. He would attack them at once!

The Markab droned on and on. When the ship bells signaled evening of the arbitrary "day," the aspect of the starry firmament had changed. Orion Nebula flamed now in all its titan glory far in the east.

Straight ahead, far in the distance against the remotest suns of the galaxy, brooded the black blot of the Cloud. It was visibly larger than before, and its gigantic dimensions were now becoming more clearly apparent.

Neither Them Eldred nor any of his officers or men entered the cabin. There was no opportunity for a second attack. And after searching vainly through the room, Gordon conceded defeatedly that there was nothing in it that might facilitate escape.

Sick anxiety for Lianna's safety deepened in him. He reproached himself again for letting her accompany him on this flight.

But she did not seem afraid as she looked up at him. "Zarth, at least we're together for a little while. It may be all of happiness we'll get."

Gordon found his arms instinctively starting to go around her, his hand touching her shining hair. But he forced himself to step back.

"Lianna, you'd better get some sleep," he said uncomfortably.

Lianna, looked at him with a wondering little smile. "Why, Zarth, what's the matter?"

Gordon had never in his life wanted anything so much as to reach forth to her. But to do so would be the blackest treachery.

Treachery to Zarth Arn, who had trusted his body, his life, to Gordon's pledge! Yes, and treachery to Lianna herself.

For if he were able to reach the Earth laboratory, it would be the real Zarth Arn who would come back to her-Zarth Arn, who loved Murn and not Lianna.

"That won't ever happen!" whispered a subtle, tempting voice in Gordon's mind. "You and she will never escape from the Cloud. Take what happiness you can, while you can!"

Gordon desperately fought down that insinuating voice. He spoke huskily to the puzzled girl.

"Lianna, you and I will have to forget all talk of love."

She seemed stricken by amazement, unbelief. "But Zarth, at Throon that morning you told me you loved me!"

Gordon nodded miserably. "I know. I wish to God I hadn't. It was wrong."

Little clouds began to gather in Lianna's gray eyes. She was white to the lips.

"You mean that you are still in love with Murn, after all?"

Gordon forced the answer to that out of strained, desperate resolve. He spoke what he knew was the exact truth.

"Zarth Arn does still love Murn. You have to know that, Lianna."

The incredulity in Lianna's white face gave way to a hurt that went deep in her gray eyes.

Gordon had expected stormy resentment, wrath, bitter reproach. He had steeled himself against them. But he had not expected this deep, voiceless hurt, and it was too much for him.

"To the devil with my promise!" he told himself fiercely. "Zarth Arn wouldn't hold me to it if he knew that situation-he couldn't!"

And Gordon stepped forward and grasped the girl's hand. "Lianna, I'm going to tell you the whole truth! Zarth Arn doesn't love you-but I do!"

He rushed on. "I'm not Zarth Arn. I'm an entirely different man, in Zarth Arn's body. I know it sounds incredible, but-"

His voice trailed off. For he read in Lianna's face her quick disbelief and scorn.

"Let us at least have no more lies, Zarth!" she flared.

"I tell you, it's true!" he persisted. "This is Zarth Arn's physical body, yes. But I am a different man!"

He knew from the expression on her face that his attempt had failed. He knew that she did not believe and never would believe.

How could he expect her to believe it? If positions had been reversed, would he have credited such a wild assertion? He knew he wouldn't.

No one in this universe would credit it, now Vel Quen was dead. For only Vel Quen had known about Zarth Arn's fantastic experiments.

Lianna was looking at him, her eyes now calm and level and without a trace of emotion in her face.

"There is no need for you to explain your actions by wild stories of dual personality, Zarth. I understand clearly enough. You were simply doing what you conceived to be your duty to the Empire. You feared lest I might refuse the marriage at the last moment, so you pretended love for me to make sure of me and of Fomalhaut's support."

"Lianna, I swear it isn't so!" Gordon groaned. "But if you won't trust me to speak truth-"

She ignored his interruption. "You need not have done it, Zarth. I had no thought of refusing the marriage, since I knew how much depended on my kingdom supporting the Empire.

"But there's no further need for stratagems. I will keep my promise and so will my kingdom. I will marry you, but our marriage will be only a political formality as we first agreed."

John Gordon started to protest, then stopped. After all, the course she proposed was the only one he could take.

If the real Zarth Arn returned, his marriage with Lianna could not be anything more than political pretense.

"All right, Lianna," Gordon said heavily. "I repeat, that I never lied to you. But it all doesn't make much difference now, anyway."

He gestured, as he spoke, toward the porthole. Out there in the star-blazing void ahead of the rushing cruiser, the monster blot of the Cloud was looming ever bigger and closer.

Lianna nodded quietly. "We do not have much chance of escaping Shorr Kan's clutches. But if a chance does present itself, you will find me your ally. Our personal emotions mean little compared to the urgent necessity of getting back with a warning to the Empire."

Gordon saw less and less chance of that, in the hours that followed. For now the Markab, its velocity at great heights, was rushing ever nearer the Cloud.

That "night" when the ship lights dimmed, he lay in his bunk thinking bitterly that of all men in history he had had the most ironic joke played upon him.

The girl across the cabin loved him, and he loved her. And yet soon a gulf of space and time incredible might forever separate them, and she would always believe him faithless.

12: In The Cosmic Cloud

Next "morning" they woke to find that the cloud was colossal now ahead. Its vast blotch loomed across half the firmament, a roiling gloom that reached out angry, ragged arms of shadow like an octopus whose dark tentacles clutched at the whole galaxy.

And the Markab now was being companioned through space by four massive black battleships with the black disk of the League of Dark Worlds marked on their bows. They were so close, and maintained so exactly the same speed, they could be clearly seen.

"We might have known that Shorr Kan would send an escort," Lianna murmured. She glanced at Gordon. "He thinks that he has the secret of the Disrupter almost in his hands, in your person."

"Lianna, set your mind at rest on one thing," Gordon told her. "He'll never get that secret from me."

"I know you are not traitor to the Empire," she said somberly. "But the League scientists are said to be masters of strange tortures. They may force it from you."

Gordon laughed shortly. "They won't. Shorr Kan is going to find that he had made one bad miscalculation."

Nearer and nearer the five ships flew toward the Cloud. All the universe ahead was now a black, swirling gloom.

Then, keeping to their tight formation, the squadron plunged into the Cloud.

Darkness swept around the ship. Not a total darkness but a gloomy, shadowy haze that seemed smothering after the blazing glory of open space.

Gordon perceived that the cosmic dust that composed the Cloud was not as dense as he had thought. Its huge extent made it appear an impenetrable darkness from outside. But once inside it, they seemed racing through a vast, unbroken haze.

There were stars in here, suns that were visible only a few parsecs away. They shone wanly through the haze, like smothered bale-fires, uncanny witch-stars.

The Markab and its escort passed comparatively close to some of these star-systems. Gordon glimpsed planets circling in the feeble glow of the smothered suns, worlds shadowed by perpetual twilight.

Homing on secret radar beams, the ships plunged on and on through the Cloud. Yet it was not until next day that deceleration began.

"We must be pretty nearly there," Gordon said grimly to the girl.

Lianna nodded, and pointed ahead through the window. Far ahead in the shadowy haze burned a dull red, smoldering sun.

"Thallarna," she murmured. "The capital of the League of Dark Worlds, and the citadel of Shorr Kan."

Gordon's nerves stretched taut as the following hours of rapid deceleration brought them closer to their destination.

Meteor-hail rattled off the ships. They twisted and changed course frequently. The shrilling of meteor-alarms could be heard each few minutes, as jagged boulders rushed upon them and then vanished in the automatic trip-blast of atomic energy from the ship.

Angry green luminescence that had once been called nebulium edged these stormy, denser regions. But each time they emerged into thinner haze, the sullen red sun of Thallarna glowed bigger ahead.

"The star-system of Thallarna was not idly chosen for their capital," Lianna said. "Invaders would have a perilous time threading through these stormy mazes to it."

Gordon felt the sinister aspect of the red sun as the ships swung toward it. Old, smoldering, sullen crimson, it glowed here in the heart of the vast and gloomy Cloud like an evil, watching eye.

And the single planet that circled it, the planet Thallarna itself, was equally somber. Strange white plains and white forests of fungoid appearance covered much of it. An inky ocean dashed its ebon waves, eerily reflecting the bloody light of the red sun.

The warships sank through the atmosphere toward a titan city. It was black and massive, its gigantic, blocklike buildings gathered in harshly geometrical symmetry.

Lianna exclaimed and pointed to the huge rows of docks outside the city. Gordon's incredulous eyes beheld a vast beehive of activity, thousands of grim warships docked in long rows, a great activity of cranes and conveyors and men.

"Shorr Kan's fleet makes ready, indeed!" she said. "And this is only one of their naval bases here. The League is far stronger than we dreamed!"

Gordon fought a chilling apprehension. "But Jhal Arn will be calling together all the Empire's forces, too. And he has the Disruptor. If Corbulo can only be prevented from further treachery!"

The ships separated, the four escort battleships remaining above while the Markab sank toward a colossal, cubical black pile.

The cruiser landed in a big court. They glimpsed soldiers running toward it-Cloud-men, pallid-faced men in dark uniforms.

It was some minutes before the door of their own cabin opened. Them Eldred stood in it with two alert League officers.

"We have arrived and I learn that Shorr Kan wishes to see you at once," the Sirian traitor told Gordon. "I beg you to make no resistance, which would be wholly futile and foolish."

Gordon had had two experiences with the glass paralyzers to convince him of that. He stood, with Lianna's hand on his, and nodded curtly.

"All right. The sooner we get this over with, the better."

They walked out of the ship, their gravitation-equalizers[8] preventing them from feeling any difference in gravity. The air was freezing and the depressing quality was increased by the murky gloom that was thickening as the red sun set.

Cold, gloomy, shadowed forever by the haze, this world at the heart of the Cloud struck Gordon as a fitting place for the hatching of a plot to rend the galaxy.

"This is Durk Undis, a high officer of the League," the Sirian was saying, "The Prince Zarth Arn and the Princess Lianna, Durk."

Durk Undis, the League officer, was a young man. But though he was not unhandsome, his pallid face and deep eyes had a look of fanaticism in them.

He bowed to Gordon and the girl, and gestured toward a doorway.

"Our Commander is waiting," he said clippedly.

Gordon saw the gleam of triumph in his eye, and in the faces of the other rigid Cloud-men they passed.

He knew they must be exultant, at this capture of one of the Empire's royal family and the striking down of mighty Arn Abbas.

"This ramp, please," Durk Undis said, as they entered the building. He could not help adding proudly to Gordon, "You are doubtless surprised at our capital? We have no useless luxuries here."

Spartan simplicity, an austere bareness, reigned in the gloomy halls of the great building. Here there was none indeed of the luxury and splendor of the great palace at Throon. Uniforms were everywhere. This was the center of a military empire.

They came to a massive door guarded by a file of stalwart, uniformed Cloud-men armed with atom-guns. These stepped aside, and the door opened.

Durk Undis and the Sirian walked on either side of Gordon and Lianna into a forbidding room.

It was even more austere than the rest of the place. A single desk with its row of visors and screens, a hard, uncushioned chair, a window looking out on the black massiveness of Thallarna-these were all.

The man behind the desk rose. He was tall, broad-shouldered, about forty years of age. His black hair was close-clipped, his strong, pallid face sternly set, and his black eyes harsh and keen.

"Shorr Kan, Commander of the League of the Dark Worlds!" intoned Durk Undis, with fanatic intensity. And then, "These are the prisoners, sir!"

Shorr Kan's stern gaze fastened on Gordon's face, and then briefly on Lianna's.

He spoke in clipped tones to the Sirian. "You have done well, Them Eldred. You and Chan Corbulo have proved your devotion to the great cause of the League, and you will not find it ungrateful."

He went on, "You had better take your cruiser back at once to the Empire and rejoin your fleet lest suspicion fall on you."

Them Eldred nodded quickly. "That will be wisest, sir. I shall be ready to execute any orders you send through Corbulo."

Shorr Kan added, "You can go too, Durk. I shall question our two unwilling guests now."

Durk Undis looked worried. "Leave them here with you alone, sir? It is true they have no weapons, but-"

Shorr Kan turned a stern face on the young fanatic. "Do you think I stand in any danger from this flabby Empire princeling? And even if there were danger, do you think I would shrink from it if it was required by our cause?"

His voice deepened. "Will not millions of men soon hazard their lives for that cause, and gladly? Should one of us shrink from any peril when upon our unswerving devotion depends the success of all we have planned?

"And we will succeed!" rang his voice. "We shall take by force our rightful heritage in the galaxy, from the greedy Empire that thought to condemn us to perpetual banishment in these dark worlds! In that great common enterprise, do you believe I think of risks?"

Durk Undis bowed, almost worshipfully, and the Sirian imitated the action. They withdrew from the room.

Gordon had felt an astonishment at Shorr Kan's thundering rhetoric. But now he was further astonished.

For as the door closed, Shorr Kan's stern face and towering figure relaxed. The League commander lounged back in his chair and looked up at Gordon and Lianna with a grin on his dark face.

"How did you like my little speech, Zarth Arn?" he asked. "I know it must sound pretty silly, but they love that kind of nonsense."

Gordon could only stare, so amazed was he by the sudden and utter transformation in the personality of Shorr Kan.

"Then you don't believe in any of that stuff yourself?" he demanded.

Shorr Kan laughed. "Do I look like a complete fool? Only crazy fanatics would swallow it. But fanatics are the mainspring of any enterprise like this, and I have to be the biggest fanatic of all when I'm talking to them."

He motioned to chairs. "Sit down. I'd offer you a drink but I don't dare to keep the stuff around here. It might be found and that would destroy the wonderful legend of Shorr Kan's austere life, his devotion to duty, his ceaseless toil for the people of the League."

He looked at them with calmly cynical, keen black eyes for a moment.

"I know a good bit about you, Zarth Arn. I've made it my business to find out. And I know that while you're a scientific enthusiast rather than a practical man, you're a highly intelligent person. I'm also aware that your fiancée, the Princess Lianna, is not a fool.

"Very well, that makes things a lot easier. I can talk to intelligent people. It's these idiots who let their emotions rule them who have to be handled with high-sounding nonsense about destiny, and duty, and their sacred mission."

Gordon, his first shock of surprise over, began to understand this ruler whose name shadowed the whole galaxy.

Utterly intelligent, and yet at the same time utterly cynical, ruthless, keen and cold as a sword-blade, was Shorr Kan.

Gordon felt a strange sense of inferiority in strength and shrewdness to this arch-plotter. And that very feeling made his hatred more bitter.

"You expect me to discuss things calmly with you, after having me brought here by force and branded to the galaxy as a parricide?"

Shorr Kan shrugged. "I admit that that's unpleasant for you. But I had to have you here. You'd have been here days ago, if the men I sent to seize you at your Earth laboratory hadn't failed."

He shook his dark head ruefully. "It just shows how chance can upset the cleverest plans. They should have had no trouble bringing you from Earth. Corbulo had given us a complete schedule of the Empire patrols in that sector, so they could be avoided. And then that cursed Antarian captain had to make an unscheduled visit to Sol!"

The cloud-leader concluded. "So I had to get you here some other way, Prince Zarth. And the best way was to send you an incriminating thought-message that would get you into trouble. Corbulo, of course, had orders to "discover" my messenger, and then later to assist your flight from Throon so his killing of Arn Abbas would be blamed on you!"

Gordon seized on one point in that explanation. "Then it's true that Chan Corbulo is working for you?"

Shorr Kan grinned. "I'll wager that was a bad shock to you, wasn't it? Corbulo is pretty cunning. He's mad for power, for a star-kingdom of his own to rule. But he's always concealed that under the bluff, honest spaceman pose that made the whole Empire admire him."

He added, "It may assuage your disillusion to learn that only Corbulo and a score of other officials and officers in the Empire are traitors. But they're enough to wreck the Empire fleet's chances when it comes to the showdown."

Gordon leaned forward tensely. "And just when is that showdown going to come?"

13: Master of the Cloud

Shorr Kan lounged back in his chair before he answered. "Zarth Arn, that depends to some extent on whether or not you're willing to cooperate with me."

Lianna spoke scornfully. "By 'cooperate' you mean, betray the Empire."

The League commander was not ruffled. "That's one way of putting it. I'd prefer to define it as simply to become realistic."

He leaned forward and his strong, mobile face was in deep earnest as he continued.

"I'll put my cards on the table, Zarth. The League of Dark Worlds has secretly built up its fleet here stronger than the Empire navy. We have every weapon of war you have, and a brand new weapon that will play the devil with your fleet when we use it."

"What kind of a weapon? Sounds like a bluff to me," commented Gordon.

Shorr Kan grinned. "You can't fish information out of me. But I will tell you that it's a weapon that can strike down enemy warships from inside them."

He added, "With that new weapon, with our powerful fleet, and above all with your Commander Corbulo secretly in our pay, your Empire fleet won't have a chance when we attack! We'd have attacked before now if it hadn't been for one thing. And that's the Disruptor.

"Corbulo couldn't tell us about the Disruptor, since only the royal house of the Empire are allowed to know about it. And while the traditions of its awful power may be exaggerated, we know that they are not baseless. For your ancestor Brenn Bir did with the Disruptor somehow completely annihilate the alien Magellanians who invaded the galaxy two thousand years ago."

Shorr Kan's face tightened. "You know the secret of that mysterious weapon or power, Zarth. And I want it from you!"

John Gordon had expected no less. But he continued to fence. "I suppose," he said ironically, "that you're going to offer me a star-kingdom if I give you the secret of the Disruptor?"

"More than that," Shorr Kan said levelly. "I'm offering you the sovereignty of the whole galaxy!"

Gordon was astonished by the audacity of this man. There was something breathtaking about him.

"We agreed to talk intelligently," Gordon snapped. "Do you suppose me stupid enough to believe that after you conquered the Empire and power over the whole galaxy, you'd give it to me?"

Shorr Kan smiled. "I said nothing about giving you the power. I spoke of giving you rule. They are different things."

He explained rapidly. "Once the Disruptor secret is mine, I can shatter the Empire and dominate the galaxy. But half the galaxy would still hate me as a usurper, an alien. There would be endless revolts and unrest.

"So, once I've got my hand on everything, I'd put forward Zarth Arn, legitimate son of the late Arn Abbas, as new sovereign of the galaxy! I, Shorr Kan, would merely be your trusted advisor. It would be a peaceful federation of the whole galaxy, I'd announce."

He grinned again. "See how much simpler it would make things for me? A legitimate emperor, no revolts, no unrest. You and Lianna would be the rulers, and enjoy every luxury and respect. I don't care for the pomp and outward show of power, and would be quite content to wield the real power from behind the throne."

"And if I decided to use my position as nominal ruler to turn the tables on you?" Gordon asked curiously.

Shorr Kan laughed. "You wouldn't, Zarth. The core of the armed forces would be loyal Cloud-men I could trust."

He stood up "What do you say? Remember that right now you're a fugitive from the Empire, sought for the murder of your own father. All that can be cleared up, the charge can be disproved, and you can live the greatest sovereign in history. Isn't it intelligent to do so?"

Gordon shrugged. "Your proposal is certainly clever. But I'm afraid you've wasted your time. The stumbling-block is that under no circumstances will you get the Disruptor secret from me."

He expected a burst of rage from the League ruler. But Shorr Kan merely looked disappointed.

"I was hoping you'd be clearheaded enough to discount all this nonsense about patriotism and loyalties, and use a little sense."

Lianna flashed, "Of course you cannot understand loyalty and honor, when you have none yourself!"

Shorr Kan looked at her frowningly, though still apparently without anger.

"No, I don't have any," he agreed. "What, after all, are loyalty, honor, patriotism, all those admirable qualities? Just ideas that people happen to think are praiseworthy, and therefore will die for. I'm a realist. I refuse to injure myself for any mere idea."

He turned again to Gordon. "Let's not talk any more about it right now. You're tired, your nerves are taut, you're in no shape to make a decision. Get a good night's rest, and think it over tomorrow-and use your brains, not your emotions. You'll surely see that I'm right."

He added, more slowly, "I could tell you that if you persist in refusing to cooperate, there's a highly unpleasant alternative. But I don't want to threaten you, Zarth! I want you to come in with me, not from any love of me or the League, but simply because you're smart enough to recognize your own interests."

Gordon for the first time glimpsed the steel within the velvet glove, as he saw the glint in Shorr Kan's black eyes.

The League commander had pressed a signal-button as he spoke. The door opened and Durk Undis entered.

"Give Prince Zarth and his fiancée the best possible quarters," Shorr Kan told the younger Cloud-man. "They must be strictly guarded, but let the guard be unobtrusive. Any disrespect to them will be severely punished."

Durk Undis bowed and stood waiting. Gordon took Lianna's arm and silently left the room.

All the way through the corridors and ramps of the gloomy building, Gordon felt that unsettling sense of having met a man who was far stronger than he in shrewdness and cunning, and who might be able to handle him like putty.

This huge citadel of the League of Dark Worlds was a dreary place, by night. The lights that glowed at intervals along its corridors could not dispel the insidious haze that wrapped this world.

The apartment to which they were conducted was far from luxurious. The square, white-walled rooms were strictly utilitarian in design and furniture, with transparent sections of wall looking out over the somber city Thallarna.

Durk Undis bowed stiffly to them. "You will find nutrition-dispensers and all else needful. Let me warn you not to try venturing out of these rooms. Every exit is strictly guarded."

When the League officer had gone, John Gordon turned and looked at Lianna, who stood by the window.

Something in the brave erectness of her little figure choked him with tenderness. He went to her side.

"Lianna, if I could assure your safety by giving up the secret of the Disruptor, I would," he said huskily.

She turned quickly. "You must not give it up! Without it, Shorr Kan still hesitates to move. And while he hesitates, there is a chance that Corbulo's treachery may be discovered."

"There's little chance of our exposing him, I'm afraid," Gordon said. "There's no possibility of escape from here."

Lianna's slim shoulders sagged a little. "No, I realize that," she murmured. "Even if by some miracle we could escape this building and seize a ship, we could never find our way out through the mazes of the Cloud."

The Cloud! It was the sky here, dark, heavy and menacing, showing no star as its ebon folds enwrapped this grim city.

That dark sky gave Gordon a feeling of claustrophobia, a sense of all the trillions of miles of shadowy gloom that encompassed him and shut him from the star-bright spaces of the galaxy outside.

Thallarna was not sleeping. Out there in the severely straight streets streamed many heavy vehicles. Fliers came and went in swarms. Thunderous reverberations droned dimly to them from the distant docks where squadrons of heavy warships were constantly coming and going.

Gordon took the couch in the living-room of their austere apartment, without expectation of being able to sleep. But his tired body relaxed in almost drugged slumber in a short time.

Dawn awoke him-a sickly, shadowy dawn that only slowly revealed the outlines of the room. He found Lianna sitting on the edge of his couch, looking down at him with curious intentness.

She flushed slightly. "I wondered if you were awake. I have our breakfast ready. It is not bad, the nutritional fluid. Though it's likely to become monotonous."

"I doubt if we will be here long enough to grow tired of it," Gordon said grimly.

She looked at him. "You think that Shorr Kan will insist on your giving him the Disrupter secret today?"

"I'm afraid so," he said. "If that secret is all that is holding back his attack, he'll want it as soon as possible."

Through the hours of the gloomy day, as the red sun swept with somber slowness across the shadowy sky, they expected Shorr Kan's summons.

But it was not until night had returned that Durk Undis and four armed soldiers entered the apartment.

The young fanatic Cloud-man again bowed stiffly. "The commander will see you now, Prince Zarth. Alone," he added quickly, as Lianna stepped forward with Gordon.

Lianna's eyes flashed. "I go where Zarth goes!"

"I regret that I must carry out my orders," said Durk Undis coldly. "Will you come now, Prince Zarth?"

Lianna apparently realized the hopelessness of further resistance. She stood back.

Gordon hesitated, then let impulse sweep him and strode back to her. He took her face between his hands and kissed her.

"Don't worry, Lianna," he said, and turned away.

His heart beat painfully as he followed Durk Undis through the corridors. He was certain that he had seen Lianna for the last time.

Maybe better this way! he thought. Maybe better to forget her in death than to go back to his own time and be forever haunted by memory of love irrevocably lost.

Gordon's desperate thoughts received a check when he followed his guards into a room. It was not the austere study of the previous day.

This was a laboratory. There was a table, above which hung a massive metal cone connected by cables to a complicated apparatus of banked, vacuum tubes and moving tapes. Here were two thin, nervous-looking Cloud-men-and Shorr Kan.

Shorr Kan dismissed Durk Undis and the guards, and quickly greeted Gordon.

"You've slept, rested? That's good. Now tell me what you've decided."

Gordon shrugged. "There was no decision to make. I can't give you the secret of the Disruptor."

Shorr Kan's strong face changed slightly in expression, and he spoke after a pause.

"I see. I might have expected it. Old mental habits, old traditions-even intelligence can't conquer them, sometimes."

His eyes narrowed slightly. "Now listen, Zarth. I told you yesterday that there was an unpleasant alternative if you refused. I didn't go into details because I wanted to gain your willing cooperation.

"But now you force me to be explicit. So let me assure you first of one thing. I am going to have the Disruptor secret from you, whether you give it willingly or not."

"Torture, then?" sneered Gordon. "That is what I expected."

Shorr Kan made a disgusted gesture. "Faugh, I don't use torture. It's clumsy and undependable, and alienates even your own followers. No, I have quite another method in mind."

He gestured to the older of the two nervous-looking men nearby. "Land Allar, there, is one of our finest psycho-scientists. Some years ago he devised a certain apparatus which I've been forced to utilize several times."

"It's a brain-scanner. It literally reads the brain, by scanning the neurons, plotting the synaptic connections, and translating that physical set-up into the knowledge, memories and information possessed by that particular brain. With it, before this night is over, I can have the Disruptor secret right out of your brain."

"That," said John Gordon steadily, "is a rather unclever bluff,"

Shorr Kan shook his dark head "I assure you it is not. I can prove it to you if you want me to Otherwise, you must take my word that the scanner will take everything from your brain."

He went on, "The trouble is that the impact of the scanning ray on the brain for hour after hour in time breaks down the synaptic connections it scans. The subject emerges from the process a mindless idiot. That is what will happen to you if we use it on you."

The hair bristled on Gordon's neck. He had not a doubt now that Shorr Kan was speaking the truth. If nothing else, the pale, sick faces of the two scientists proved his assertion.

Weird, fantastic, nightmarishly horrible-yet wholly possible to this latter day science! An instrument that mechanically read the mind, and in reading wrecked it!

"I don't want to use it on you, I repeat," Shorr Kan was saying earnestly. "For as I told you, you'd be extremely valuable to me as a puppet emperor after the galaxy is conquered. But if you persist in refusing to tell that secret, I simply have no choice."

John Gordon felt an insane desire to laugh. This was all too ironic.

"You've got everything so nicely calculated," he told Shorr Kan. "But again, you find yourself defeated by pure chance."

"Just what do you mean?" asked the League ruler, with dangerous softness.

"I mean that I can't tell you the secret of the Disruptor because I don't know it!"

Shorr Kan looked impatient. "That is a rather childish evasion. Everyone knows that as son of the emperor you would be told all about the Disruptor."

Gordon nodded. "Quite true. But I happen not to be the emperor's son. I'm a different man entirely."

Shorr Kan shrugged. "We are gaining nothing by all this. Go ahead."

The last words were addressed to the two scientists. At that moment Gordon savagely leaped for Shorr Kan's throat!

He never reached it. One of the scientists had a glass paralyzer ready, and swiftly jabbed it at the back of his neck.

Gordon sank, shocked and stunned. Only dimly, he felt them lifting him onto the metal table. Through his dimming vision, Shorr Kan's hard face and cool black eyes looked down.

"Your last chance, Zarth! Make but a signal and you can still avoid this fate."

Gordon felt the hopelessness of it all, even as his raging anger made him glare up at the League commander.

The paralyzer touched him again. This shock was like a physical blow. He just sensed the two scientists busy with the massive metal cone above his head, and then darkness claimed him.

14: Dark-World Menace

Gordon came slowly to awareness of a throbbing headache. All the devil's triphammers seemed to be pounding inside his skull, and he felt a sickening nausea.

A cool glass was held to his lips, and a voice spoke insistently in his ear.

"Drink this!"

Gordon managed to gulp down a pungent liquid. Presently his nausea lessened and his head began to ache less violently.

He lay for a little time before he finally ventured to open his eyes. He still lay on the table, but the mental cone and the complicated apparatus were not now in sight.

Over him was bending the anxious face of one of the two Cloud scientists. Then the strong features and brilliant black eyes of Shorr Kan came down in his field of vision.

"Can you sit up?" asked the scientist. "It will help you recover faster."

The man's arm around his shoulders enabled Gordon weakly to slide off the table and into a chair.

Shorr Kan came and stood in front of him, looking down at him with a queer wonder and interest in his expression.

He asked, "How do you feel now, John Gordon?"

Gordon started. He stared back up at the League commander.

"Then you know?" he husked.

"Why else do you think we halted the brain-scanning?" Shorr Kan retorted. "If it weren't for that, you'd be a complete mental wreck by now."

He shook his head wonderingly. "By Heaven, it was incredible! But the brain-scanner can't lie. And when the first minutes of its reading drew out the fact that you were John Gordon's mind in Zarth Arn's body, and that you did not know the Disruptor secret, I stopped the scanning."

Shorr Kan added ruefully. "And I thought I had that secret finally in my grasp! The pains I've taken to fish Zarth Arn into my net, and all for nothing! But who'd dream of a thing like this, who'd guess that a man of the ancient past was inside Zarth's body?"

Shorr Kan knew! John Gordon tried to rally his dazed faculties to deal with this startling new factor in the situation.

For the first time, someone in this future universe was cognizant of the weird imposture he had carried out! Just what would that mean to him?

Shorr Kan was striding to and fro. "John Gordon of ancient Earth, of an age two hundred thousand years in the past, here inside the brain and body of the second prince of the Empire! It still doesn't make sense!"

Gordon answered weakly. "Didn't your scanner tell you how it happened?"

The League commander nodded. "Yes, the outlines of the story were clear after a few minutes' scanning, for the whole fact of your imposture was uppermost in your mind."

He uttered a soft curse. "That young fool Zarth Arn! Trading bodies with another man across time! Letting his crazy scientific curiosity about the past take him ages away, at the very moment his Empire is in danger."

He fastened his gaze again on Gordon. "Why in the devil's name didn't you tell me?"

"I tried to tell you, and got nowhere with it," Gordon reminded him.

Shorr Kan nodded. "That's right, you did. And I didn't believe. Who the devil would believe a thing like this, without the brain-scanner's proof of it?"

He paced to and fro, biting his lip. "Gordon, you've upset all my careful plans. I was sure that with you I had the Disruptor secret."

John Gordon's mind was working swiftly now as his strength slowly returned. The discovery of his true identity changed his whole situation.

It might give him a remote chance of escape! A chance to get away with Lianna and warn the Empire of Corbulo's treachery and the imminent danger! Gordon thought he dimly saw a way.

He spoke a little sullenly to Shorr Kan. "You're the first one to discover the truth about me. I deceived all the others-Arn Abbas, Jhal Arn, Princess Lianna. They didn't dream the truth."

Shorr Kan's eyes narrowed a little. "Gordon, that sounds as though you liked being prince of the Empire?"

Gordon laughed mirthlessly. "Who wouldn't? Back in my own time I was a nobody, a poor ex-soldier. Then, after Zarth Arn proposed that strange exchange of bodies across time, I found myself one of the royal family of the greatest star-kingdom in the universe! Who wouldn't like that change?"

"But you had promised to go back to Earth and re-exchange bodies with Zarth Arn, according to what the scanner revealed," pointed out Shorr Kan. "You'd have had to give up all your temporary splendor."

Gordon looked up at him, with what he hoped was a cynical expression.

"What the devil?" he said contemptuously to Shorr Kan. "Do you really think I'd have kept that promise?"

The League commander stared at him intently. "You mean that you were planning to deceive the real Zarth Arn, and keep his body and identity?"

"I hope you're not going to get righteous with me!" flared Gordon. "It's what you would have done yourself in my place, and you know it!

"Here I was, set for life as one of the great men of this universe, about to marry the most beautiful girl I've ever seen. No one could possibly ever doubt my identity. All I had to do was simply forget my promise to Zarth Arn. What would you have done?"

Shorr Kan burst into laughter. "John Gordon, you're an adventurer after my own heart! By Heaven, I see that they bred bold men back in those ancient times on Earth!"

He clapped Gordon on the shoulder, his good spirits seeming partly restored.

"Don't get downhearted because I know the truth about you, Gordon. No one else knows it, except these scientists who'll never speak. You might still be able to live out your life as Prince Zarth Arn."

Gordon pretended to catch eagerly at the bait. "You mean-you wouldn't give me away?"

"That's what I mean. You and I ought to be able to help each other," Shorr Kan nodded.

Gordon sensed that the high-powered brain behind those keen black eyes was working rapidly.

He realized that trying to fool this utterly intelligent and ruthless plotter was the hardest task he had ever essayed. But unless he succeeded, Lianna's life and the Empire's safety were forfeit.

Shorr Kan helped him to his feet. "You come with me and we'll talk it over. Feel like walking yet?"

When they emerged from the laboratory, Durk Undis stared at Gordon as though he saw a man risen from the dead.

The fanatic young Cloud-man had not expected him to emerge from that room living and sane, Gordon knew.

Shorr Kan grinned. "It's all right, Durk. Prince Zarth is cooperating with me. We shall go to my apartments."

"Then you already have the Disruptor secret, sir?" burst out the young fanatic eagerly.

Shorr Kan's quick frown checked him. "Are you questioning me?" snapped the commander.

As they walked on, John Gordon's mind was busy with this byplay. It encouraged him in the belief that his dim scheme might be made to work.

But he would have to go carefully, carefully! Shorr Kan was the last man in the universe to be easily deceived. Gordon sweated with realization that he walked a sword-edge over an abyss.

Shorr Kan's apartments were as austere as the bare office in which Gordon had first seen him. There were a few hard chairs, bare floors, and in another room an uncomfortable-looking cot.

Durk Undis had remained outside the door. As Gordon looked around, Shorr Kan's smile returned.

"Miserable hole for the master of the Cloud to live in, isn't it?" he said. "But it all helps to impress my devoted followers. You see, I've worked them up to attack the Empire by stressing the poverty of our worlds, the hardness of our lives. I daren't live soft myself."

He motioned Gordon to a chair, and then sat down and looked at him intently.

"It's still cursed hard to believe," he declared. "Talking here to a man of the remotest past! What was it like, that age of yours when men hadn't even left the little Earth?"

Gordon shrugged. "It wasn't so much different, at bottom. There was war and conflict, over and over. Men don't change much."

The League commander nodded emphatically. "The mob remains always stupid. A few million men fighting on your old planet, or ten thousand star-worlds ranged against each other in this universe-it's the same thing at bottom."

He continued swiftly. "Gordon, I like you. You're intelligent, daring and courageous. Since you are intelligent, you understand that I wouldn't let a mere passing liking influence me powerfully. I think we can help each other."

He leaned forward. "You're not Zarth Arn. But no one in the universe knows that, but me. So, to the galaxy, you are Zarth Arn. And as such, I can use you as I hoped to use the real Zarth, to act as puppet ruler after the Cloud has conquered the galaxy."

John Gordon had hoped for this. But he pretended startled astonishment.

"You mean, you'd make me the nominal ruler of the galaxy?"

"Why not?" retorted the other. "As Zarth Arn, one of the Empire's royal blood, you'd still serve to quiet rebellion after the Empire is conquered. Of course, I'd wield the real power, as I said."

He added frankly, "From one viewpoint you're better for my purpose than the real Zarth Arn. He might have had scruples, might have given me trouble. But you have no loyalties in this universe, and I can depend on you to stick with me from pure self-interest."

Gordon felt a brief flash of triumph. That was exactly what he had wanted Shorr Kan to think-that he, John Gordon, was merely an ambitious, unscrupulous adventurer from the past.

"You'd have everything you could desire," Shorr Kan was continuing. "Outwardly, you'd be the ruler of the whole galaxy. The Princess Lianna for your wife, power and wealth and luxury beyond your dreams!"

Gordon pretended a stunned, rapt wonder at the prospect. "I, the emperor of the galaxy? I, John Gordon?"

And then suddenly, without warning, the plan he was precariously trying to carry through slipped away from Gordon's mind and the voice of the tempter whispered in his ear.

He could do this thing, if he wanted to! He could be at least nominally the supreme sovereign of the entire galaxy with all its thousand on thousands of mighty suns and circling worlds! He, John Gordon of New York, could rule a universe with Lianna at his side!

All he had to do was to join with Shorr Kan and attach his loyalty to the Cloud. And why shouldn't he do that? What tie bound him to the Empire? Why shouldn't he strike out for himself, for such power and splendor as no man in all human history had ever dreamed of attaining?

15: Mystery of the Galaxy

John Gordon fought a temptation whose unexpectedness added to its strength. He was appalled to realize that he wanted with nearly all his soul to seize this unprecedented opportunity.

It wasn't the pomp and power of galactic rule that tempted him. He had never been ambitious for power, and anyway it would be Shorr Kan who had the real power. It was the thought of Lianna that swayed him. He'd be with her always then, living by her side-

Living a lie! Pretending to be another man, haunted for the rest of his life by memory of how he had betrayed Zarth Arn's trust and wrecked the Empire! He couldn't do it! A man had his code to live by, and Gordon knew he could never break his pledge.

Shorr Kan was watching him keenly. "You seem stunned by the prospect, Gordon. It's a tremendous opportunity for you, all right."

Gordon rallied his wits. "I was thinking that there are lots of difficulties. There's the Disruptor secret, for instance."

Shorr Kan nodded thoughtfully. "That's our biggest difficulty. And I was so sure that once I had Zarth Arn, I'd have it!"

He shrugged. "But that can't be helped. We shall have to make our attack on the Empire without it, and rely on Corbulo to see that Jhal Arn never gets a chance to use the Disruptor."

"You mean-assassinate Jhal Arn as he did Arn Abbas?" questioned Gordon.

The Cloud-man nodded. "Corbulo was to do that anyway on the eve of our attack. He'll be appointed one of the regents for Jhal's child. Then it'll be even easier for him to sabotage the Empire's defense."

Gordon realized that Shorr Kan's failure to gain the Disruptor secret was not going to stave off the League's impending attack!

"Those are your problems," Gordon said bluntly. "It's my own prospects I was thinking of. You're to make me puppet emperor when the galaxy is conquered. But if we don't have that Disruptor secret, maybe your own League forces won't accept me."

Shorr Kan frowned. "Why should they refuse to accept you on that account?"

"They, like everyone else, think I'm Zarth Arn and believe I know the Disruptor secret," Gordon pointed out. "They'll ask, 'If Zarth Arn is now on our side, why doesn't he give us that secret?' "

The Cloud-man swore. "I hadn't thought of that difficulty. Curse the Disruptor, anyway! Its existence hampers us at every turn!"

"What is the Disruptor, really?" Gordon asked. "I've had to pretend I know all about it, but I haven't any idea what it is."

"No one has!" Shorr Kan replied. "Yet it's been a terrible tradition in the galaxy for the last two thousand years.

"Two thousand years ago the alien, unhuman Magellanians invaded the galaxy. They seized several star-systems and prepared to expand their conquests. But Brenn Bir, one of the great scientist-kings of the Empire, struck out against them with some fearful power or weapon. Tradition says he destroyed not only the Magellanians but also the star-systems they infested, and nearly destroyed the galaxy itself!

"Just what Brenn Bir used, no one now knows. It's been called the Disruptor, but that tells nothing. The secret of it, known only to the Empire's royal house, has never been used since. But memory of it haunts the galaxy, and has maintained the Empire's prestige ever since."

"No wonder you've tried to get hold of it before attacking the Empire," said Gordon. "But there's still a way we can get that secret!"

Shorr Kan stared. "How? Jhal Arn is the only remaining one who knows about it, and we've no chance of capturing him."

"There's one other man who knows the secret," Gordon reminded swiftly. "The real Zarth Arn!"

"But the real Zarth's mind is back in that remote past age in your body-" Shorr Kan began. Then he stopped, eyeing Gordon narrowly. "You've something in mind. What?"

Gordon was tense as he unfolded the scheme on which his dim, precarious plan of escape depended.

"Suppose we can make the real Zarth tell us that secret, across time?" he proposed boldly. "There in Zarth's laboratory on Earth are the psycho-mechanisms by which I could speak to him across time. I learned the method from Vel Quen, and I could reach him.

"Suppose I tell him-'Shorr Kan's men hold me prisoner and won't release me unless I tell the Disruptor secret, which I don't know. I won't be permitted to re-exchange minds with you until they have the secret.'

"Suppose I tell the real Zarth that? What do you think he'll do? He doesn't want to be marooned back there in my own world and age, in my own body, for the rest of his life. This is his universe, he's got a morganatic wife here he dearly loves, he'd sacrifice anything to get back here. He'll tell us that secret, across time!"

Shorr Kan looked at him in wondering admiration. "By Heaven, Gordon, I believe it would work! We could just get the Disruptor secret that way!"

He stopped and asked suddenly, "Then when you had forced that secret out of Zarth, you'd re-exchange minds with him?"

Gordon laughed. "Do I look like a complete fool? Of course I won't. I'll simply break the contract then and let Zarth Arn live the rest of his life back in my own time and body while I keep on playing his part."

Shorr Kan threw back his head in a burst of laughter. "Gordon, I repeat, you're a man after my own heart!"

He began to pace to and fro as seemed his habit when thinking rapidly.

"The main difficulty will be to get you to Earth to make that contact with the real Zarth," he declared. "Empire patrols are thick all along the frontier, and the main Empire fleet is maneuvering near the Pleiades. And Corbulo can't order that whole region cleared, without arousing suspicion."

Shorr Kan paused, then continued. "The only kind of League ship that has any chance of reaching Earth through all that is a phantom-cruiser. Phantoms are able to slip through tight places, where even a battle-squadron couldn't fight a way."

Gordon, who had only the mistiest notion of what kind of a warship was mentioned, looked puzzled. "A phantom? What's that?"

"I forgot for a moment that you're really a stranger in this age," Shorr Kan said. "A phantom-cruiser is a small cruiser with armament of a few very heavy atom-guns. It can become totally invisible in space."

He explained, "It does that by projecting a sphere of force around itself that refracts perfectly all light and radar rays. So no ship can detect it. But to hold that concealing sphere of force requires terrific power, so a phantom is only good for twenty or thirty hours travel 'dark'."

John Gordon nodded understandingly. "I get it. And it looks like the best chance to reach Earth, all right."

"Durk Undis will go with you with a full crew of trusted men," Shorr Kan continued.

That was bad news to Gordon. That fanatic young Cloud-man hated him, he knew.

"But if Durk Undis learns that I'm not really Zarth Arn-" he began to object.

"He won't," Shorr Kan interrupted. "He'll simply know that he's to take you to your laboratory on earth for a brief time, and that he's to bring you back safely."

Gordon eyed the Cloud-man. "It sounds as though he's to be a guard. You don't entirely trust me?"

"What the devil made you think I did?" Shorr Kan retorted cheerfully. "I trust no man entirely. I do trust to men following their self-interest, and that's why I feel I can rely on you. But just to make sure-Durk Undis and a crew of picked men go with you."

Again, Gordon chilled to a realization that he was playing his desperate game against a man so shrewd and skilled in intrigue that it seemed almost hopeless he could succeed.

He nodded coolly, however. "That's fair enough. But I might also say that I don't entirely trust you, Shorr Kan. And for that reason, I don't go on this mission unless Lianna goes with me."

Shorr Kan looked genuinely surprised for a moment. "The Fomalhaut girl? Your fiancée?"

Then an ironic smile flickered in his eyes. "So that's your weak point, Gordon-that girl?"

"I love her and I'm not going to leave her here for you to tamper with," Gordon asserted sullenly.

Shorr Kan snorted. "If you knew me better, you'd know that one woman means no more to me than another. Do you think I'd risk my plans for a pretty face? But if you're jealous, you can take her with you."

He added, "How are you going to explain it all to her, though? You can't very well tell her the truth about our deal."

Gordon had thought of that already. He said slowly, "I'll make up a story that you're going to let us go if I bring you certain valuable scientific secrets from my Earth laboratory."

Shorr Kan nodded understandingly. "That will be your best course."

He added rapidly, "I'll give orders at once to have our best phantom-cruiser prepared. You ought to be able to start tomorrow night."

Gordon stood up. "I'll be glad to get some rest. I feel as though I've been through a grinder."

Shorr Kan laughed. "Man, that's nothing to what the brain-scanner would have made of you if it had run longer than a few minutes. What a twist of fate! Instead of a mindless idiot, you're to be nominal emperor of the galaxy!"

He added, his face setting for just a moment to a steely hardness, "But never forget that your power is only nominal and that it is I who will give the orders "

Gordon met his searching gaze steadily "I might forget it if I thought I'd gain by that. But I'm pretty sure I wouldn't. I'm pretty sure that once I'm ruler, I'll fall if you fall. So you will be able to rely on me-or on my self-interest."

The Cloud-man chuckled. "You're right. Didn't I say I always like to deal with intelligent people? We'll get along."

He pressed a button. When Durk Undis quickly entered the room, he told him:

"Escort Prince Zarth back to his quarters and then return here for orders."

All the way back through the corridors, Gordon's thoughts were feverish. Relaxation from the intolerable strain of playing his part left him trembling.

So far, his precarious scheme for escape was succeeding. He had gambled on Shorr Kan's ruthless, cynical personality reacting in a certain way, and had won.

But he well knew that this success was only the beginning. Ahead loomed far greater difficulties which he had not yet found the least way of solving.

He'd have to go ahead, even though his scheme was suicidal in riskiness! There was no other way.

When he entered the somber apartment, Lianna sprang from a chair and ran toward him. She grasped his arm.

"Zarth, you're all right?" she cried, her gray eyes shining. "I was afraid-"

She loved him, still. Gordon knew it from her face, and again he felt that wild, hopeless rapture.

He had to fight his impulse to take her into his arms. Something of what he felt must have showed in his face, for Lianna flushed and stepped back a little.

"Lianna, I'm all right though a little shaky," Gordon told her, sinking into a chair. "I had a taste of Cloud science and it wasn't pleasant."

"They tortured you? They made you tell the Disrupter secret?"

He shook his head. "I didn't tell that secret. And I'm not going to. I convinced Shorr Kan he couldn't get it from me."

Gordon went on, telling her as much of the truth as he could. "I made that devil believe that I would have to go to my Earth laboratory to get that secret for him. And he's sending us to get it. We'll leave in a phantom-cruiser tomorrow night."

Lianna's eyes flashed. "You're going to outwit him? You have some plan?"

"I wish I did," groaned Gordon. "This is as far as my plan goes. It will get us out of the Cloud, that's all. Then it's up to me. Somehow, I'll have to find a way for us to escape that ship and get a warning of Corbulo's treachery to Jhal Arn."

He added wearily, "The only way I can think of is somehow to sabotage the phantom-cruiser so it'll be captured by Empire warships. But how to do that, I don't know. That young fanatic Durk Undis is going with a picked crew to guard us, and it won't be easy."

Faith and courage shone in Lianna's eyes. "You'll find a way somehow, Zarth. I know you will."

Her faith could not overcome the chill realization in Gordon's mind that his hare-brained scheme was almost impossible.

He might be dooming both Lianna and himself by trying it. But they were doomed anyway unless he betrayed the real Zarth Arn and the Empire, and the momentary temptation to do that had left Gordon forever.

He slept heavily, well into the next day. It was dusk when Shorr Kan and Durk Undis finally came.

"Durk Undis has all his orders, and the phantom is ready," Shorr Kan told Gordon. "You should get to Earth in five days, and be back here in eleven."

His face lit. "Then I'll announce to the galaxy that we have the Disruptor secret and that Zarth Arn has joined us, and will give Corbulo the secret signal and launch the League's attack!"

Two hours later, from the huge Thallarna spaceport, the slim, shining phantom-cruiser on which Gordon and Lianna had embarked rose from its dock and plunged headlong out through the Cloud.

16: Sabotage in Space

When Gordon and Lianna had entered the Dendra, the phantom-cruiser that was to bear them on the mission, they were led to the mid-deck corridor by Durk Undis.

The fanatic young Cloud-man bowed stiffly to them and gestured toward the door of a small suite of two tiny cabins. "These cabins will be your quarters. You will remain in them until we reach Earth."

"We will not remain in them!" Gordon flared. "The princess Lianna is already suffering from the confinement of the voyage here. We'll not stay cooped up in those tiny rooms for days more."

Durk Undis' lean face hardened. "The commander gave orders that you were to be strictly guarded."

"Did Shorr Kan say we were to be imprisoned in two tiny rooms every minute?" Gordon demanded. He saw the slight uncertainty in Durk Undis' face, and pressed his attack. "Unless we have a chance to get a little exercise, we'll refuse to carry out this whole plan."

The fanatic Cloud-man hesitated. Gordon had guessed rightly that Durk Undis did not want to go back to his superior and report the mission aborted by such a slight difficulty.

Finally, Durk Undis said grudgingly, "Very well, you will be permitted to walk in this corridor twice each day. But you will not be allowed in it any other time, or when we're running 'dark.' "

The concession was not as much as Gordon had wanted but he guessed that it was the most he could obtain. So, with anger still assumed, he followed Lianna into the cabin-suite and heard the lock click after them.

As the Dendra rose from Thallarna and started arrowing out at high speed through the gloomy hazes of the Cloud, Lianna looked inquiringly at Gordon.

"The confinement does not really bother me, Zarth. You have some plan?"

"No more than the plan I already mentioned, of somehow drawing the attention of an Empire patrol to this ship so that it'll be discovered and captured," he admitted.

He added determinedly, "I don't know yet how it can be done, but there must be a way."

Lianna looked doubtful. "This phantom undoubtedly has super-sensitive radar equipment, and will be able to spot ordinary patrols long before they spot us. It will dark-out till we're past them."

The steady drone of big drive-generators building up velocity became an unwavering background in the following hours.

The Dendra plunged through hails of tiny meteor-particles, through dust-currents that made it pitch and toss roughly. It often changed direction as it threaded its way out through the Cloud.

It was the middle of the following day before they emerged from the gloomy haze into the vast, clear vault of star-gemmed space. At once, the phantom-cruiser picked up still greater speed.

Gordon and Lianna looked from the window at the brilliant galactic spectacle ahead. To their astonishment, the distant spark of Canopus lay out of sight far on their left. Ahead of the Dendra glittered a vault of strange stars in which Orion Nebula glowed in flaming glory.

"We're not heading straight back into the Empire," Lianna said. "They're going to avoid the most guarded Empire frontier by swinging up west of Orion Nebula and on past the Marches of Outer Space to curve in toward Sol."

"Going the long way around to sneak into the Empire by the back way!" Gordon muttered. "It's probably the way that Cloud ship came that tried to kidnap me from Earth."

His faint hopes sank. "There's less chance of an Empire patrol catching us, if we're going through a little-travelled region."

Lianna nodded. "We are not likely to meet more than a few patrol cruisers, and Durk Undis can slip past them under dark-out."

Discouragedly, Gordon stared out at the brilliant scene. His gaze shifted to the direction in which he knew Canopus must lie.

Lianna caught the direction of his gaze and looked up at him questioningly. "You are thinking of Murn?"

It startled Gordon. He had almost forgotten the dark, lovely girl whom the real Zarth Arn loved.

"Murn? No! I was thinking of that black traitor Corbulo, spinning his plots back there on Throon and just waiting his chance to murder Jhal Arn and wreck the Empire's defenses."

"That is the greatest danger," Lianna agreed soberly. "If they could only be warned of Corbulo's treachery, the League's plan of attack could still be foiled."

"And we're the only ones who can warn them," Gordon muttered.

Yet on the third day after this, he had to confess to himself that it seemed more than ever an impossibility.

The Dendra was by now well inside the boundaries of the Empire, beating northward on a course that would take it just west of the gigantic, glowing Orion Nebula.

Once beyond the great Nebula, they would fly northwestward along the little-travelled edges of the Marches of Outer Space. Few Empire warships would be in the region bordering that wild frontier of unexplored star-systems. And Sol and its planet Earth would be nearby, then.

Twice during these three days, an alarm bell had rung through the Dendra as its radar operators detected Empire warships nearby. Each time, in their cabins, Gordon and Lianna had seen the whole vault of space outside the window suddenly blacked out.

Gordon had exclaimed in astonishment when it first happened. "What's wrong? All space has gone dark!"

Lianna looked at him in surprise. "They've turned on the dark-out of our ship. You surely remember that when a phantom-cruiser runs dark, those inside it can see nothing of outside space?"

"Oh, of course," Gordon said hastily. "It's been so long since I've been in one of these craft that I'd forgotten."

He understood now what was happening. The new, loud whine that permeated the cruiser was the sound of the dark-out generators that were flinging an aura of potent force around the ship.

That aura slightly refracted every ray of light or radar beam that struck it, so that the phantom-cruiser could neither be seen or ranged by radar. Of necessity, that deflection of all outside light left the cruiser moving in utter darkness.

Gordon heard the dark-out generators down in the lower deck whining for nearly an hour. They apparently required almost all the power of the ship, the drive-machinery merely purring and the ship moving almost on inertia.

The thing happened again the following morning, when the Dendra was drawing up closer to the west borders of Orion Nebula. That glowing mass now stretched billions of miles across the firmament beside them.

Gordon saw many hot stars inside the Nebula. He recalled that it was their electron-barrage that excited the hazy dust of the Nebula to its brilliant glow.

That "evening," he and Lianna were walking in the long corridor under the close scrutiny of an armed Cloud-man when the alarm bell again rang sharp warning through the ship.

The Cloud-man instantly stepped forward. "Dark-out! Return to your cabins immediately!"

Gordon had hoped for a chance like this and resolved to seize it. They might never have another.

As the familiar whine of the dark-out came on, as he and Lianna moved toward their cabins, he leaned to whisper to her, "Act faint and collapse just as we enter the cabin!"

Lianna gave not a sign of hearing him, except that her fingers quickly pressed his hand.

The Cloud-officer was a half-dozen paces behind them, his hand resting on the butt of his atom-pistol.

Lianna, at the door of the cabin, tottered weakly and pressed her heart.

"Zarth, I feel ill!" she whispered huskily, then began to sag to the floor.

Gordon caught her, held her. "She's fainted! I knew this confinement would be too much for her!"

He turned angrily toward the startled Cloud-man. "Help me get her into the cabin!" Gordon snapped.

The officer was anxious to get them out of the corridor. His orders had been that they were immediately to be re-confined whenever a dark-out began.

Zeal to obey his orders betrayed him. The Cloud-man stepped forward and stooped to help pick up Lianna and carry her inside.

As he did so, Gordon acted! He callously let Lianna fall to the floor, and snatched at the butt of the Cloud-man's atom-gun.

So swift was his movement that he had the gun out of its holster before the other realized it. The Cloud-man began to straighten and his mouth opened to yell an alarm.

Gordon smashed the barrel of the heavy atom-pistol against the man's temple below his helmet. The officer's face relaxed blankly, and he slumped like a bag of rags.

"Quick, Lianna!" sweated Gordon. "Into the cabin with him!"

Lianna was already on her feet. In an instant, they had dragged the limp form into the little room and shut the door.

Gordon stooped over the man. The skull was shattered.

"Dead," he said swiftly. "Lianna, this is my chance!"

He was beginning to strip off the dead man's jacket. She flew to his side. "Zarth, what are you going to do?"

"There must be at least one Empire patrol cruiser nearby," Gordon rasped. "If I can sabotage the Dendra's dark-out equipment, the patrol will spot us and capture the ship."

"More likely they'll blow it to fragments!" Lianna warned.

His eyes held hers. "I know that, too. But I'm willing to take the chance if you are."

Her gray eyes flashed. "I'm willing, Zarth. The future of the whole galaxy hangs in the balance."

"You stay here!" he ordered. "I'll put on this fellow's uniform and helmet and it may give me a little better chance."

In a few minutes, Gordon had struggled into the dead man's black uniform. He jammed on the helmet, then bolstered the atom-gun and slid out into the corridor.

The dark-out was still on, the Dendra cautiously groping its way through self-induced blackness. Gordon started aft.

He had already, during these past days, located the sound of the dark-out generators as coming from aft on the lower deck. He hastened in the direction of that loud whine.

There was no one in the corridor. During dark-out, every man and officer was at action stations.

Gordon reached the end of the corridor. He hurried down a narrow companionway to the lower deck. Here doors were open, and he glanced into the big drive-generator rooms. Officers stood at flight-panels, men watched the gauges of the big, purring energy-drive.

An officer glanced up surprisedly as Gordon quickly passed the door. But his helmet and uniform seemed to reassure the Cloud-man.

"Of course!" Gordon thought. "The guard I killed would be just returning to his station from locking us up!"

He was now closer to the loud whine of the dark-out generators. They were just forward of the main drive-machinery rooms, and the door of the dark-out room was also open.

Gordon drew his atom-pistol and stepped into the doorway. He looked into a big room whose generators were emitting that loud whine. One whole side of it was a bank of giant vacuum tubes that pulsed with white radiance.

There were two officers and four men in the room. An officer at the switch-panel beyond the tubes turned to speak to a man, and glimpsed Gordon's taut face in the doorway.

"Zarth Arn!" yelled the officer, grabbing for his gun. "Look out!"

Gordon triggered his pistol. It was the first time he had used one of these weapons and his ignorance betrayed him.

He was aiming at the vacuum tubes across the room but the gun kicked high in his hand. The exploding pellet blasted the ceiling. He flung himself down in a crouch as a pellet from the officer's pistol flicked across the room. It struck the doorframe above his head, flaring instantly.

"General alarm!" the officer was yelling. "Get-"

Gordon triggered again at that moment. This time he held his weapon down. The atomic pellets from his pistol exploded amid the bank of giant tubes.

Electric fire mushroomed out into the dark-out room! Two men and an officer screamed as raging violet flames enveloped them.

The officer with the gun swung around, appalled. Gordon swiftly shot him. He shot then at the nearest big generator.

His pellet only fused its metal shield. But the giant vacuum tubes were still popping, the whole room an inferno. The two men left there staggered in the violet fires, screaming and falling.

Gordon had recoiled into the corridor. He yelled exultantly as he saw the blackness outside the window suddenly replaced by a vault of brilliant stars.

"Our dark-out has failed!" yelled a voice on one of the upper decks.

Bells shrilled madly. Gordon heard a rush of feet as Cloud-men started pouring down from an upper deck toward the dark-out room.

17: Wrecked in the Nebula

Gordon glimpsed a dozen League soldiers bursting into the farther end of this lower-deck corridor. He knew that his game was up, but he turned his atom-pistol savagely loose upon them.

The pellets flew down the passage and exploded. The little flares of force blasted down half the Cloud-men there. But the others raced forward with wolfish shouts. And his pistol went dead in his hand, its loads exhausted.

Then it happened! The whole fabric of the Dendra rocked violently and there was a crash of riving plates and girders. All space outside the ship seemed illuminated by a brilliant flare.

"That Empire cruiser has spotted us and is shelling us!" yelled a wild voice. "We're hit!"

Continued rending crash of parting struts and plates was accompanied by the shrill singing of escaping air. Then came the quick slam-slam of automatic bulkheads closing.

The corridor in which Gordon stood was suddenly divided by the automatic doors closing! He was cut off from the men at its end.

"Battle-stations! Space-suits on!" rang Durk Undis' sharp voice from the annunciators throughout the ship. "We're crippled and have to fight it out with that Empire cruiser!"

Bells were ringing, alarms buzzing. Then came the swift shudder of recoil from big atom-guns broadsiding. Far away in space, out there in the vast blackness, Gordon glimpsed points of light suddenly flaring and vanishing.

A duel in space, this! His sudden sabotage of the darkout concealment had exposed the Dendra to the Empire cruiser which it had been trying to evade. That cruiser had instantly opened fire.

"Lianna!" Gordon thought wildly. "If she's been hurt-"

He turned and scrambled up the companionway to the mid-deck.

Lianna came running to meet him in the corridor there. Her face was pale but unafraid.

"There are space-suits in the locker here!" she exclaimed, "Quick, Zarth! The ship may be hit again any moment!"

The girl had kept her head enough to find one of the lockers of space-suits placed at strategic locations throughout the ship.

In their cabin, she and Gordon hastily struggled into the suits. They were of stiffened metallic fabric, with spherical glassite helmets whose oxygenators started automatically when they were closed.

Lianna spoke, and he heard her voice normally by means of the short-range audio apparatus built into each suit.

She cried to him, "That Empire cruiser is going to shell this ship to fragments now that it can't go dark!"

Gordon was dazed by the strangeness of the scene from the windows. The Dendra, maneuvering at high speed to baffle the radar of the other ship, was loosing its heavy atom-shells continuously.

Far in space, tiny pinpoints of light flared and vanished swiftly. So tremendous was the distance at which this duel was being conducted, that the gigantic flares of the exploding atom-shells were thus reduced in size.[9]

Space again burst into blinding light about them as the Empire cruiser's shells ranged close. The Dendra rocked on its beam-ends from the soundless explosions of force.

Gordon and Lianna were hurled to the floor by the violent shocks. He was aware that the drone of the drive-generators had fallen to a ragged whine. More automatic bulkheads were slamming shut.

"Drive-rooms half wrecked!" came a shout through his space-suit audiophone. "Only two generators going!"

"Keep them running!" rang Durk Undis' fierce order. "We'll disable that Empire ship with our new weapon, in a few moments!"

Their new weapon? Gordon swiftly recalled how Shorr Kan had affirmed that the League had a potent new weapon of offense that could strike down any ship.

"Lianna, they've got their hands too full to bother with us right now!" Gordon exclaimed. "This is our chance to get away! If we can get off in one of the spaceboats, we can reach that Empire ship!"

Lianna did not hesitate. "I am willing to try it, Zarth!"

"Then come on!" he exclaimed.

The Dendra was still rocking wildly, and he steadied Lianna as he led the way hastily down the corridor.

The space-suited gunners in the gun-galleries they passed were too engrossed in the desperate battle to glimpse them.

They reached the hatch in whose wall was a closed valve leading to one of the space life-boats attached to the hull. Gordon fumbled frantically for a moment with the valve.

"Lianna, I don't know how to open this! Can you do it?"

She swiftly grasped the catches, pulled at them. But there was no response.

"Zarth, the automatic trips have locked! That means that the space-boat is wrecked and unusable!"

Gordon refused to let despair conquer him: "There are other space-boats! On the other side-"

The Dendra was still rocking wildly, its parting girders cracking and screeching. Shells were still exploding blindingly outside.

But at that moment they heard a fiercely exultant cry from Durk Undis.

"Our weapon has disabled them! Now give them full broadsides!"

Almost instantly came a thin cheer. "We got them!"

Through the porthole beside the hatch, Gordon glimpsed far out there in the void a sudden flare like that of a new nova. It was no pinpoint of light this time, but a blazing star that swiftly flared and vanished.

"They've destroyed the Empire cruiser somehow!" cried Lianna.

Gordon's heart sank. "But we can still get away if we can get to one of the other space-boats!"

They turned to retrace their way. As they did so, two disheveled Cloud officers burst into the cross-corridor.

"Get them!" yelled one. They started to draw their atom-pistols from the holsters of their space-suits.

Gordon charged desperately, the heel of the staggering ship hurling him into the two men. He rolled with them on the corridor floor, fiercely trying to wrest a weapon from one.

Then more voices rang loud about him. He felt himself seized by many hands that tore him loose from his antagonists. Hauled to his feet, panting and breathless, Gordon found a half-dozen Cloud-men holding Lianna and himself.

Durk Undis' fierce, flushed face was recognizable inside the glassite helmet of the foremost man.

"You traitor!" he hissed at Gordon. "I told Shorr Kan no spawn of the Empire could be depended on!"

"Kill them both now!" urged one of the raging Cloud-men. "It was Zarth Arn who sabotaged the dark-out and got us into this fix!"

"No, they don't die yet!" snapped Durk Undis. "Shorr Kan will deal with them when we get back to the Cloud."

"If we get back to the Cloud," corrected the other officer bitterly. "The Dendra is crippled, its last two generators will barely run, the space-boats are wrecked. We couldn't make it halfway back."

Durk Undis stiffened. "Then we'll have to hide out until Shorr Kan can send a relief ship for us. We'll call him by secret wave and report what has happened."

"Hide out where?" cried another Cloud-officer. "This is Empire space! That patrol-cruiser undoubtedly got off a flash report before we finished it. This whole sector will be searched by Empire squadrons within twenty-four hours!"

Durk Undis bared his teeth. "I know. We'll have to get out of here, And there's only one place to go."

He pointed through a porthole to a brilliant coppery star that shone hotly just a little inside the glowing haze of huge Orion Nebula.

"That copper sun has a planet marked uninhabited on the charts. We can wait there for help. The cursed Empire cruisers won't look long for us if we jettison wreckage to make it appear we were destroyed."

"But the charts showed that that sun and its planet are the center of a dust-whorl! We can't go there!" objected another Cloud-man.

"The whorl will drift us in, and a high-powered relief ship will be able to come in and get back out," Durk Undis insisted. "Head for it with all the speed you can get out of the generators. Don't draw power yet to message Thallarna. We can do that after we're safe on that world."

He added, pointing to Gordon and Lianna, "And tie these two up and keep a man with drawn gun over them every minute, Linn Kyle!"

Gordon and Lianna were hauled into one of the metal cabins whose walls were badly bulged by the damage of battle. They were dumped into two recoil-chairs mounted on rotating pedestals.

Plastic fetters were snapped to hold their arms and legs to the frame of the chairs. The officer Linn Kyle then left them, with a big Cloud-soldier with drawn atom-pistol remaining guard over them.

Gordon managed to rotate his chair by jerks of his body until he faced Lianna.

"Lianna, I thought we had a chance but I've just made things worse," he said huskily.

Her face was unafraid as she smiled at him through her glassite helmet.

"You had to try it, Zarth. And at least you've thwarted Shorr Kan's scheme."

Gordon knew better. He realized sinkingly that his attempt to get the Dendra captured by Empire forces had been a complete failure.

Whatever was the new, potent weapon the Cloud-men had used, it had been too much for the Empire cruiser. He had succeeded only in proving to the Cloud-men and Shorr Kan that he was their enemy.

He'd never have a chance now to warn Throon of Corbulo's treachery and the impending attack! He and Lianna would be dragged back to the Cloud and to Shorr Kan's retribution.

"By God, not that!" Gordon swore to himself. "I'll make them kill us before I let Lianna be taken back there!"

The Dendra throbbed on for hours, limping on its last two generators. Then it cut off power and drifted. Soon the ship was entering the strange glow of the gigantic nebula.

At intervals came ominous cracklings and creakings from many parts of the ship. When a guard came to relieve their watchdog, Gordon learned from the brief talk of the two Cloud-men that only eighteen men remained alive of the officers and crew.

The staggering ship began some hours later to buck and lurch in the grip of strong currents. Gordon realized they must be entering the great dust-whorl in the nebula, to which Linn Kyle had referred.

More and more violent grew the bucking until the Dendra seemed shaking itself apart. Then came a loud crash, and a singing sound that lasted for minutes.

"The air has all leaked out from the ship now," Lianna murmured. "Without our space-suits, we'd all be dead."

Death seemed close to John Gordon, in any case. The crippled ship was now in the full grip of the mighty nebula dust-current that was bearing it on toward a crash on the star-world ahead.

Hours passed. The Dendra was now using the scant power of its two remaining generators again, to keep from being drawn into the coppery sun they were nearing.

Gordon and Lianna could get only occasional glimpses of their destination, through the porthole. They glimpsed a planet revolving around that copper-colored star-a yellow, tawny world.

Durk Undis' voice rang in a final order. "Strap in for crash-landing!"

The guard who watched Gordon and Lianna strapped himself into a recoil-chair beside them. Air began to scream through the wreck.

Gordon had a flashing glimpse of weird ocher forests rushing upward. The generators roared loud in a brief deceleration effort. Then came a crash that hurled Gordon into momentary darkness.

18: Monster Men

Gordon came to himself, dazed and shaken, to find that it was Lianna's anxious voice that had aroused him.

The girl was leaning toward him from the chair in which she was bound. Her face was worried.

"Zarth, I thought for a moment you were really hurt! Your recoil-chair almost broke loose completely."

"I'm all right," Gordon managed to answer. His eyes swung to take in the scene. "We've landed, all right!"

The Dendra was no longer a ship. It was now a twisted, wrecked mass of metal whose voyaging was forever ended.

Walls had bulged like paper, metal girders and struts had been shorn away like cardboard, by the impact of the crash. Hot coppery sunlight streamed through a gaping rent in the cabin wall. Through that opening, Gordon could glimpse the scene outside.

The wreck lay amid towering ocher jungles of strange trees whose broad leaves grew directly from their smooth yellow trunks. Trees and brush and strange shrubs of yellow-and-black flowers had been crushed by the fall of the wreck. Golden spore-dust drifted in the metallic sunlight, and strange webbed-winged birds or creatures flew through the ocher wilderness.

To Gordon's ears came the ragged hum of atomic turbines and generators, close to them in the wreck.

"Durk Undis' men have been working to start the two generators," Lianna said. "They were not badly damaged, it seems."

"Then they're going to send a call back to the Cloud," Gordon muttered. "And Shorr Kan will send another ship here!"

The officer Linn Kyle came into their cabin, no longer wearing a space-suit.

"You can take the suits off the prisoners," Linn Kyle told their guard. "Keep them fettered in the chairs, though."

Gordon was relieved to get rid of the heavy suit and helmet. He found the air breathable but laden with strange, spicy scents.

Just across the corridor from their prison was the stereo room. They heard a transmitter there soon begin its high-pitched whine. Then the taut voice of Durk Undis reached them.

"Calling headquarters at Thallarna! Dendra calling!"

Lianna asked, "Won't their call arouse attention? If it's heard by Empire warships, it will."

Gordon had no hope of that. "No, Durk Undis mentioned a secret wave they would use. No doubt that means they can call Thallarna without being overheard."

For minutes, the calls continued. Then they heard Durk Undis order the transmitter turned off.

"We'll try again," they heard him say. "We've got to keep trying until we reach headquarters."

Gordon hitched his recoil-chair around by imperceptible jerks of his body. He could now look across the shattered corridor into the stereo-room, whose door sagged from its frame.

In there, two hours later, he saw Durk Undis and his operator again try to reach Thallarna with a call. As the generators astern began humming, the operator closed the switches of his transmitter and then carefully centered a series of vernier dials on his panel.

"Be careful to keep exactly on the wave," Durk Undis cautioned. "If the cursed Empire ships get even a whisper of our call, they'll run a direction-fix on it and be here to hunt us."

Then, again, began the series of calls. And this time, Durk Undis succeeded in obtaining a response.

"Dendra calling, Captain Durk Undis speaking!" he exclaimed eagerly into the transmitter. "I can't go stereo, for lack of power. But here's my identification."

He uttered a series of numbers, evidently a prearranged identification code. Then he rapidly gave the space coordinates of the planet inside the nebula where the wreck lay, and reported the battle and its sequel.

Shorr Kan's ringing voice came from the receiver of the apparatus.

"So Zarth Arn tried to sabotage the mission? I didn't think he was such a fool! I'll send another phantom-cruiser for you at once. Maintain silence until it arrives, for the Empire fleet mustn't suspect you're in their realm."

"I assume that we will not now be continuing the mission to Earth?" said Durk Undis.

"Of course not!" snapped Shorr Kan. "You'll bring Zarth Arn and the girl back to the Cloud. Above all, he mustn't get away to carry any news to Throon!"

Gordon's heart chilled, as he heard. Lianna looked mutely at him.

Durk Undis and the other Cloud-men were jubilant. Gordon heard the fanatic young captain give his orders.

"We'll maintain sentries around the wreck. We don't know what kind of creatures are in these jungles. Linn Kyle, you command the first watch."

Night swept upon the ocher jungles as the coppery sun sank. The dank breath of the forest became stronger.

The night was like one of wondrously glowing moonlight, for the flaring nebula sky dripped strange radiance upon the brooding jungles and the wreck.

Out of the nebula-illuminated jungle there came a little later the echo of a distant cry. It was a throaty, bestial call, but with a creepy human quality in its tones.

Gordon heard Durk Undis' sharp voice. "That must be a beast of some size! Keep your eyes open."

Lianna shivered slightly. "They tell strange tales of some of these lost worlds in the nebula. Few ships ever dare to enter these dust-whorls."

"Ships are going to enter this one, if I can bring it about," muttered Gordon. "We're not going back to the Cloud!"

He had discovered something that gave him a faint hope. The recoil-chair in which he was fettered had suffered like the rest of the wreck from the shock of the crash-landing. The metal frame of the chair was slightly cracked along the arm to which his wrist was fettered.

The crack was a slight one, not affecting the strength of the chair. But it presented a slightly raised and ragged edge. Against this roughened edge, Gordon began secretly rubbing the plastic fetter on his wrist.

Gordon realized the improbability of this small abrasion severing the plastic. But it was at least a possibility, and he kept it up by imperceptible movements until his muscles ached.

Toward morning, they were awakened from doze by a repetition of the weird, throaty call in the distant forests. The next day, and the next, passed as the Cloud-men waited. But on the third night, horror burst upon them.

Soon after nightfall that night, a yell from one of the Cloud-men sentries was followed by the crash of an atom-pistol.

"What is it?" cried Durk Undis.

"Creatures that looked like men-but they melted when I fired at them!" cried another voice. "They disappeared like magic!"

"There's another! And more of them!" cried a third Cloud-man. "See!"

Guns went off, the explosion of their atomic pellets rocking the night. Durk Undis yelled orders.

Lianna had swung her chair around on its pedestal, toward the porthole. She cried out.

"Zarth! Look!"

Gordon managed to hitch his chair around also. He stared at the unbelievable sight outside the porthole.

Out there, manlike creatures in scores were pouring out of the jungle toward the wreck. They looked like tall, rubbery human men. Their eyes were blazing as they charged.

Durk Undis and his men were using their atom-pistols. The blinding flare of the atomic pellets darkened the soft nebula-glow.

But wherever those pellets blasted the strange invaders, the rubbery men simply melted. Their bodies melted down into viscous jelly that flowed back over the ground in slow retreat.

"They're coming from the other side too!" yelled the warning of Linn Kyle.

Durk Undis' voice rang imperatively. "Pistols won't hold them off long! Linn, take two men and start the ship's generators. Hook a jet-cable to them and we can spray these creatures with pressure-rays!"

Lianna's eyes were distended by horror, as they witnessed the rubbery horde seize two of the Cloud-men and bear them back into the jungles.

"Zarth, they are monsters! Not men, yet not beasts-"

Gordon saw that the fight was going badly. The rubbery horde had pressed Dick Undis' men back close against the wreck.

It seemed that the weird attackers could not be harmed. For those who were hit simply melted to jelly and flowed away.

The generators in the wreck began humming loudly. Then Linn Kyle and his two men emerged dragging a heavy cable. At the end of this they had hastily attached one of the pressure-ray jet projectors that ordinarily propelled the ship.

"Use it, quickly!" shouted Durk Undis. "The brutes are too much for us!"

"Stand clear!" yelled Linn Kyle.

He switched on the heavy ray-projector he held. Blinding beams of force leaped from it and cut through the rubbery horde. The ground instantly became a horrible stream of creeping, flowing jelly.

The monstrous attackers sullenly retreated. And the viscous slime upon the ground retreated also toward the shelter of the jungle.

There came then a raging chorus of unhuman, throaty shouts from out in the ocher forest.

"Quick, rig other jet-projectors!" Durk Ungis ordered. "It's all that will keep them off. We need one on each side of the wreck."

"What in the name of all devils are the things?" cried Linn Kyle, his voice shrill with horror.

"There's no time for speculating on that!" rapped the other. "Get those projectors ready."

Gordon and Lianna witnessed another attack, a half-hour later. But this time, four jets of pressure-rays met the rubbery horde. Then the attacks desisted.

"They've gone!" sweated a Cloud-man. "But they carried off two of us!"

As the generators were turned off, Gordon heard a new sound from the distance.

"Lianna, hear that?"

It was a pulsing, throbbing sound like the deep beat of distant drums. It came from far westward in the nebula-lit jungle.

Then, breaking into the throbbing drumbeat, there came a faint, agonized series of human screams. There swelled up a triumphant chorus of throaty shouts, then silence.

"The two Cloud-men who were captured," Gordon said sickly. "God knows what happened to them out there."

Lianna was pale. "Zarth, this is a world of horror. No wonder the Empire has left it uncolonized."

The menace to themselves seemed doubled, to Gordon. Almost, to assure Lianna's safety from the nightmare terrors of this planet, he would have gone willingly back to the Cloud.

But his determination returned. They'd get away, but not to go back to the hands of Shorr Kan if he could help it!

He forced himself to continue the slow, squirming movements that rubbed his plastic fetter against the rough crack in the chair-frame. Finally in weariness he slept, to awaken hours after dawn.

In the coppery sunlight, the ocher jungles were deceptively peaceful looking. But captives and captors alike knew now what weird horror brooded out in those golden glades.

Gordon, through the long day, continued to squirm and hitch to increase the abrasion on the fetter. He desisted only when the eyes of their guard were upon him.

Lianna whispered hopefully, "Do you think you can get free?"

"By tonight I should be able to wear it through," he murmured.

"But then? What good will it do? We can't flee out there into the jungle!"

"No, but we can call help," Gordon muttered. "I've thought of a way."

Night came, and Durk Undis gave his men sharp orders. "Two men on each of those jet-projectors, ready to repel the creatures if they come! We'll keep the generators running continuously."

That was welcome news, to Gordon. It made more possible the precarious scheme he had evolved.

He felt that by now the tough plastic must be abraded halfway through. But it still felt too strong to break.

The generators had begun humming. And the worried Cloud-men had not long to wait for the attack they dreaded. Once more from the nebula-illumined jungles came the weird, throaty shouts.

"Be ready the minute they appear!" called Durk Undis.

With a chorus of throaty cries, the rubbery horde rolled in a fierce wave out of the jungle. Instantly the jet projectors released beams of the powerful pressure-rays upon them.

"It's holding them back! Keep it up!" Durk Undis cried.

"But they don't die!" cried another man. "They melt down and flow away!"

Gordon realized this was his opportunity. The Cloud-men were all engaged out there in defending the wreck, and the generators were running.

He expanded his muscles in an effort to break his fetter. But he had misjudged its strength. The tough plastic held.

Again he tried, straining wildly. This time the fetter snapped. Hastily, he unfastened the other fetters.

He got to his feet and quickly freed Lianna. Then he hurried across the corridor toward the stereo-room just opposite.

"Watch and warn me if any of the Cloud-men come back in here!" he told the girl. "I'm going to try to start the transmitter."

"But do you know enough about it to send out a call?" asked Lianna.

"No, but if I can start it up, any untuned wave will direct instant attention to this planet," Gordon explained swiftly.

He fumbled in the dimness of the room for the switches he had observed the operator use to start the transmitter.

Gordon closed them. The transmitter remained dead. There was no whine of power, no glow of big tubes. A baffled feeling grew in him as he realized the failure of his plan.

19: World of Horror

Gordon forced himself to remain calm despite the wild din of struggle outside the wreck. He went over the switches he had seen the operator use to start the transmitter.

He had missed one! As he closed it, the motor-generators in the stereo-room broke into loud life, and the big vacuum tubes began glowing.

"The generators must be failing! Our jets are losing power!" came a cry from one of the Cloud-men outside the wreck.

"Zarth, you're drawing so much power from the two generators that it's cutting their ray-jets!" warned Lianna. "They'll be in here to find out what's wrong!"

"I only need a moment!" Gordon sweated, bending tensely over the bank of vernier dials.

It was impossible, he knew, for him to try sending any coherent message. He knew almost nothing about this complicated apparatus of future science.

But if he could send out any kind of untuned signal, the very fact of such a signal coming from a supposedly uninhabited planet would surely arouse the suspicion of the Empire cruisers searching out there.

Gordon spun the verniers at random. The equipment sputtered, hummed and faltered, beneath his ignorant handling.

"The brutes are getting through!" Durk Undis' voice yelled, "Linn, get in there and see what's wrong with the generators!"

The battle outside was closer, fiercer. Lianna uttered a cry of warning.

Gordon whirled around. Linn Kyle stood, wild and disheveled, in the door of the stereo-room.

The Cloud-man uttered an oath and grabbed out his atom-pistol. "By God, I might have known-"

Gordon dived for him, tackled him and brought him to the floor with a crash. They struggled furiously.

Through the increasing din, Gordon heard Lianna's horror-laden scream. And he glimpsed weird figures pouring into the room from astern and seizing the terrified girl.

The rubbery attackers! The spawn of this crazy nebula world had broken through Durk Undis' weakened defenses and were inside the wreck!

"Lianna!" Gordon yelled hoarsely, as he saw the girl borne swiftly from her feet by clutching hands.

The blank faces, the ghastly eyes of the rubbery aliens were close to him as he tore free from Linn Kyle and tried to rise.

He couldn't! The rubbery bodies were piling on him and on the Cloud-man. Arms that felt like tentacles grasped and lifted them. Linn Kyle's wild shot hit one and it melted to crawling jelly, but the others seized the Cloud-man.

Crash of atom-pistols thundered through the corridors of the wreck. Durk Undis' high voice rang over the wild uproar.

"Drive them out of the ship and hold the doors until we can get the ray-jets going again!"

Gordon heard Linn Kyle's yell choked off in his throat as he himself and the Cloud-man were swung swiftly up off their feet. The rubbery horde was retreating out of the shattered stern of the wreck, and were taking the two and Lianna with them.

Gordon fought to free himself of the clutching rubbery arms, and couldn't. He realized with horror that his weakening of the Cloud-men's defense to send his desperate call had exposed Lianna and himself to a more ghastly peril.

"Durk, they have us!" screeched Linn Kyle. Through the crash of guns and yells, Gordon heard the other's startled cry.

But they were out of the wreck now, and their captors were bounding with them through the towering jungle. The whole rubbery horde was retreating into the nebula-lit forest as Durk Undis and his remaining men got their ray-jets in action again.

Gordon's senses swam. These hideous captors hurtled through the jungle with him like preternaturally agile apes. Lianna and Linn Kyle were borne along as swiftly. Down from the flaming nebula sky dripped a glowing radiance that silvered the unearthly forest.

The pace of their strange captors quickened, after some minutes of travel through the jungle. Now rock slopes began to lift from the thick forest.

The weird horde swept with them into a deep stony gorge. It was a place more awesome than the jungle. For its rock cliffs gleamed with a faint light that was no reflection of the nebula sky, but was intrinsic.

"Radioactive, those cliffs," Gordon thought numbly. "Maybe it explains these unholy freaks-"

Speculation was swept from his mind by the hideous clamor that arose. There were hordes of the rubbery creatures here in the gorge. They greeted the captives with throaty, deafening cries.

Gordon found himself held tightly beside Lianna. The girl's face was deathly white.

"Lianna, you're not hurt?"

"Zarth, no! But what are they going to do to us?"

"My God, I don't know!" he husked. "They had some reason for taking us alive."

The quasi-human horde had seized on Linn Kyle! They were stripping all clothing off the Cloud-man's body.

Throaty clamor like the applause of an infernal audience rose loudly as Linn Kyle was now borne forward. Rubbery creatures squatting on the ground beat it with their limbs in a drumming rhythm.

Linn Kyle, struggling wildly, was carried quickly on down the gorge. Then as the horde parted to permit his passage, Gordon glimpsed where they were bearing the Cloud-man.

At the center of the gorge, ringed by faintly glowing radioactive rocks, lay a sunken pool twenty yards across. But it was not a pool of water, but of life!

A great, twitching, crawling mass of jelly-like life, heaving and sucking beneath the light of the flaring nebula-sky.

"What is it?" cried Lianna. "It looks living!"

The final horror assaulted Gordon's reeling mind. For now he saw the things around the edges of the pool.

Little jelly-like things like miniature human bodies budded out of that mass of viscous life! Some were attached to the main mass by mere threads. One broke free in that moment and came walking uncertainly up the bank.

"God in Heaven!" he whispered. "These creatures come from the pool of life. They're born from it!"

Linn Kyle's screams ripped the din of throaty shouts and drumming rhythm. The rubbery creatures who held the Cloud-man tossed his naked body into the viscous pool!

The Cloud-man screamed again, horribly. Gordon turned aside his gaze, retching.

When he looked again, Linn Kyle's body was engulfed by the viscous jelly that swirled hungrily over it. In a few moments the Cloud-man was gone, absorbed into the pool of life.

"Lianna, don't look!" Gordon cried hoarsely.

He made a mad attempt to free himself. He might as well have been a child in the grasp of those rubbery arms.

But his attempt drew attention to himself. The creatures began to tear away his clothing. He heard Lianna's smothered cry.

Crash of atom-pistols thundered through the infernal din of drumming and shouting! Pellets exploded in blinding fire amid the swarming horde. Rubbery creatures staggered, fell, melted into jelly that promptly flowed back toward the pool!

"Durk Undis!" yelled Gordon. He had glimpsed the young Cloud-captain's narrow face and blazing eyes, forcing through the horde at the head of his men.

"Get Zarth Arn and the girl, quick!" yelled Durk Undis to his men. "Then back to the wreck!"

Gordon almost admired the ruthless young fanatic, at that moment. Durk Undis had been ordered by Shorr Kan to bring Gordon back to the Cloud, and he'd carry out that order or die trying.

The monstrous horde swirled in crazy uproar, momentarily stunned by the unexpected attack. Gordon wrenched free from the two creatures who still held him. He reached Lianna's side.

It was a crazy chaos of whirling, quasi-human figures and exploding atom-pellets, of Durk Undis' yells and the throaty uproar of the horde.

As the bewildered horde fell back for a moment, Durk Undis and his men blasted the last creatures still around Lianna and Gordon. Next moment, with Gordon and the half-senseless girl in their midst, the Cloud-men hastily retreated back out of the gorge.

"They're coming after us!" yelled one of the men beside Gordon.

Gordon perceived that the ghastly horde had recovered presence of mind. With a hideous throaty clamor, the unhuman mob crashed into the jungle in pursuit.

They made half the distance back to the wreck of the Dendra before the jungle ahead of them swarmed also with the creatures.

"They're all around us-have cut us off!" Durk Undis exclaimed. "Try to fight through!"

It was hopeless and he knew it, and Gordon knew it. A dozen atom-pistols couldn't hold off that mindless horde for long.

Gordon stood with Lianna behind him, using a clubbed branch he tore from a fallen tree as a bludgeon against the swarming, rubbery attackers. With it, he could at least kill Lianna before they dragged her back to that ghastly pool of life!

The whole nightmare fight was suddenly shadowed by a big black mass dropping down on them from the flaming nebula sky!

"It's a ship!" screamed one of the Cloud-men; "One of our ships!"

A phantom-cruiser with the black, blotlike insignia of the Cloud on its bows thundered down upon them with krypton searchlights flaring to light the whole scene.

The rubbery horde retreated in sudden panic. As the cruiser crushed to a landing in the jungle close by, Cloud-soldiers with atom-guns sprang from it.

Gordon, raising Lianna's half-senseless form from the ground, found Durk Undis covering him with an atom-pistol. The newcomers were hastily approaching.

"Holl Vonn!" Durk Undis greeted the stocky, crop-haired Cloud-captain who was foremost. "You got here just in time!"

"So it seems!" exclaimed Holl Vonn, staring horrifiedly at the viscous living jelly still creeping away from the scene of battle. "What in God's name were those things that were attacking you?"

"They're creatures of this crazy planet," Durk Undis panted. "I think they were human once-human colonists who mutated under radioactive influence. They've got a strange new reproduction-cycle, being born from a pool of life and going back to it when hurt to be born again."

He continued swiftly. "That can be told later. The thing now is to get away from here at once. There must already be Empire squadrons searching the whole area west of the nebula."

Holl Vonn nodded quickly. "Shorr Kan said to bring Zarth Arn and Lianna back to the Cloud at once. We'd better run eastward through the nebula and then beat back southward along the Rim."

Gordon had revived Lianna. She was looking wonderingly at the towering ship and the armed Cloud-men.

"Zarth, what happened? Does this mean-"

"It means that we're going back to the Cloud, to Shorr Kan," he said hoarsely.

Durk Undis motioned curtly to the new Cloud-ship. "Into the Merle, both of you."

Holl Vonn suddenly stiffened. "Listen-by heaven!"

His square face was suddenly livid as he pointed wildly upward.

Four massive shapes were rushing down on them from the nebula-sky! Not phantoms these, but big cruisers with heavy batteries of atom-guns along their sides with the flaring comet-emblem of the Mid-Galactic Empire on their bows.

"An Empire squadron!" yelled Holl Vonn wildly. "We're trapped here! They've already spotted us!"

Gordon felt sudden wild hope. His desperate expedient had succeeded, had brought one of the searching Empire squadrons to this world!

20: Doom Off the Pleiades

Durk Undis uttered a raging exclamation as the Empire cruisers swooped from the sky.

"To the ship! We'll cut our way back through them to space!"

"We've not a chance!" cried Holl Vonn, his face deathly as he started to run toward his ship. "They've caught us flat!"

Durk Undis froze for a second, then whipped out his atom-pistol again. He whirled around toward Gordon and Lianna.

The young fanatic's eyes were flaming. "Then we'll finish Zarth Arn and Lianna right here! Shorr Kan's orders-no matter what happens to us, these two must not get back to Throon!"

Gordon lunged at him as he spoke! In the few seconds since the Empire cruisers had appeared, Gordon had realized that in this desperate emergency the Cloud-man would kill himself and Lianna rather than let them escape.

He had bunched himself an instant before Durk Undis swung around with the weapon. He hit the Cloud-man like a human projectile. Durk Undis was hurled violently backward.

Holl Vonn was running into his ship, shouting orders. As Durk Undis sprawled, Gordon seized Lianna's hand and darted with her into the concealment of the nebula-lit jungle.

"If we can keep out of it for a few moments, we're saved!" he told her. "Those Empire ships will come down here to search."

"Holl Vonn is charging them!" cried Lianna, pointing upward.

Thunderous roar of generators screaming with power broke upon the air as the long, slim mass of Holl Venn's phantom, the Merle, hurtled up into the glowing sky.

Gordon saw then that whatever else the men of the Cloud might be, they were not cowards. Knowing himself trapped, knowing instant destruction was the penalty for being caught here in Empire space after the destruction of an Empire ship, Holl Vonn came out fighting!

Atom-guns of the Merle volleyed exploding shells at the swooping Empire ships. The nebula sky seemed to burst into blinding brilliance with the explosions.

It was magnificent but hopeless, that charge of one phantom against four heavy cruisers. The great batteries of the cruisers seemed literally to smother the Merle in atom-shells.

Blossoming flowers of atomic fire unfolded and momentarily concealed the Cloud ship. Then it was revealed as a fusing, fiery wreck that hurtled headlong across the sky to crash in the distant jungle.

"Zarth, look out!" screamed Lianna at that instant, and pushed Gordon aside.

An atomic pellet flicked close past his face and exploded in a nearby thicket!

Durk Undis, his face deadly, was close by and was raising his weapon to fire again. Lianna had desperately grasped his arm.

Gordon realized then the tenacity of the young Cloud-captain, who had remained and followed to kill Lianna and himself.

"By Heaven, I'll finish it now!" Durk Undis was exclaiming, hurling Lianna violently away from him with a sweep of his arm.

Gordon, charging, reached him at that moment. The Cloud-man uttered a sound of sudden agony as Gordon fiercely twisted his arm. The atom-pistol dropped from his fingers. Eyes blazing, he kneed Gordon in the stomach and smashed hard fists into his face.

Gordon hardly felt the blows, in his overpowering passion. He rocked forward and fell with the Cloud-man as they grappled.

Braced with his back against the trunk of a towering golden tree, Durk Undis got his hands on Gordon's throat and squeezed.

Gordon felt a roaring in his ears, and a sudden blackness swept over him. His groping hands grabbed the Cloud-man's bristling black hair. He hammered Durk Undis' head violently back against the tree.

He was so deep in that roaring blackness that it was only after many minutes that Lianna's voice penetrated his ears.

"Zarth, it's over! He's dead!"

Gordon, gulping air into starved lungs, felt his senses clearing. He found himself still gripping Durk Undis' hair.

The whole back of the Cloud-man's skull was a bloody mess where he had hammered it again and again against the tree-trunk.

He staggered up to his feet, sick, almost retching. Lianna sprang to his side as he swayed.

"Lianna, I didn't see him. If you hadn't cried out and rushed him, he'd have killed me."

A stern new voice rang suddenly from close by. Gordon staggered around to face that direction.

Gray-uniformed Empire soldiers with raised atom-guns were forcing through the soft-lit jungle toward them. One of the Empire cruisers had landed nearby, while the others still hovered overhead.

The man who spoke was a hard-eyed, handsome young Empire captain who stared wonderingly at Gordon's disheveled figure and Lianna.

"You two don't look like Cloud-people! But you were with them-"

He stopped suddenly and took a step forward. His eyes peered at Gordon's bruised, bloody face.

"Prince Zarth Arn!" he cried, stupefied. Then his eyes flamed hatred and passion. "By Heaven, we've caught you! And with Cloud-men! You joined them when you fled from Throon!"

A quiver of passion ran through all the Empire soldiers who had gathered. Gordon saw mortal hatred in their eyes.

The young captain stiffened. "I am Captain Dar Carrul of the Empire navy and I arrest you for the assassination of the late emperor and for treason!"

Gordon, dazed as he was, found his voice at that. "I didn't murder Arn Abbas! And I didn't join the Cloud-I was held prisoner by these Cloud-men and only just escaped before you came!"

He pointed at the corpse of Durk Undis. "He tried to kill me before letting me escape! And what brought you to this planet searching? An untuned signal-wave from here, wasn't it?"

Dar Carrul looked startled. "How did you know that? Yes, it is true that our operators detected such a signal coming from this uninhabited world, when we were searching space west of the nebula."

"Zarth sent that signal!" Lianna told him. "He used that method to attract Empire ships here!"

Dar Carrul looked a little bewildered. "But everyone knows you killed your father! Commander Corbulo saw you do it! And you fled from Throon-"

"I didn't flee, I was carried off," Gordon declared. He cried earnestly, "All I ask is to be taken to Throon to tell my story!" Dar Carrul seemed more and more perplexed by the unexpected turn of the situation.

"You will certainly be taken to Throon for trial," he told Gordon. "But it is not for a mere squadron captain to handle such a grave matter as this one. I will take you under guard to our main squadron and report for instructions."

"Let me talk at once by stereo to my brother, to Jhal Arn!" pleaded Gordon tautly.

Dar Carrul's face tightened. "You are a proclaimed fugitive, charged with the gravest of crimes against the Empire. I cannot allow you to send messages. You must wait until I receive instructions."

He made a gesture, and a dozen soldiers with drawn atom-guns stepped forward around Gordon and Lianna.

"I must ask you to enter our ship at once," the young captain said clippedly.

Ten minutes later, the cruiser took off from the nebula-world of horror. With the other three Empire cruisers, it raced out westward through the vast glow of Orion Nebula.

In the cabin in which they two had been placed under guard, Gordon paced furiously to and fro.

"If they only let me tell Jhal Arn of the danger, of Corbulo's treachery!" he rasped. "If that has to wait till we're taken to Throon, it might be too late!"

Lianna looked worried. "Even when we get to Throon, it may not be easy to convince Jhal Arn of your innocence, Zarth."

Gordon's taut anger was chilled by that. "But they've got to believe me! They surely won't credit Corbulo's lies when I tell them the truth?"

"I hope not," Lianna murmured. She added with a flash of pride, "I will corroborate your story. And I am still princess of Fomalhaut Kingdom!"

Hours seemed to drag as the cruisers hurtled headlong out of Orion Nebula, and on westward through open space.

Lianna slept exhaustedly after a time. But Gordon could not sleep. His very nerve seemed taut as he sensed the approaching climax of the gigantic galactic game in which he had been but a pawn.

He must convince Jhal Arn of the truth of his story! And he must do so quickly, for as soon as Shorr Kan learned that he had escaped to tell the truth, the master of the Cloud would act swiftly.

Gordon's head ached. Where would it all end? Was there any real chance of his clearing up this great tangle and getting to Earth for the re-exchange of bodies with the real Zarth Arn?

Finally the cruisers decelerated. Orion Nebula was now a glow in the starry heavens far behind them. Close ahead lay the shining clusters of suns of the Pleiades. And near the Pleiades' famous beacon-group there stretched a far-flung echelon of tiny sparks.

The sparks were ships! Warships of the Mid-Galactic Empire's great navy cruising here off the Pleiades, one of the many mighty squadrons watching and warding the Empire's boundaries!

Lianna had awakened. She looked out with him as the cruiser slowly moved past gigantic battleships, columns of grim cruisers, slim phantoms and destroyers and scouts.

"This is one of the main battle-fleets of the Empire," she murmured.

"Why are we being kept here, instead of letting us give our warning?" sweated Gordon.

Their cruiser drew up alongside a giant battleship, the hulls grating together. They heard a rattle of machinery.

Then the cabin door opened and young Dar Carrul entered. "I have received orders to transfer you at once to our flagship, the Ethne."

"But let us talk first by stereo to Throon, to the Emperor!" Gordon cried. "Man, what we have to tell may save the whole Empire from disaster!"

Dar Carrul shook his head curtly. "My orders are that you are to send no messages but are to be transferred immediately. I presume that the Ethne will take you at once to Throon."

Gordon stood, sick with disappointment and hope delayed. Lianna plucked his arm.

"It won't take long for that battleship to reach Throon, and then you'll be able to tell," she encouraged.

The two went with guards around them down through the cruiser to a hatchway. From it a short tubular gangway had been run to the battleship.

They went through it under guard of soldiers from the battleship. Once inside the bigger ship, the gangway was cast off and the airlock closed.

Gordon looked around the vestibule chamber at officers and guards. He saw the hatred in their faces as they looked at him. They too thought him assassin of his father, traitor to the Empire!

"I demand to see the captain of this battleship immediately," he rasped, to the lieutenant of guards.

"He is coming now," answered the lieutenant icily, as a tramp of feet came from a corridor.

Gordon swung toward the newcomers, with on his lips a fiery request to be permitted to call Throon. He never uttered it.

For he was looking at a stocky, uniformed figure, a man whose grizzled, square face and bleak eyes he knew only too well.

"Corbulo!" he cried.

Commander Corbulo's bleak eyes did not waver as his harsh voice lashed out at Gordon.

"Yes, traitor, it is I. So you two have been caught at last?"

"You call me traitor!" Gordon choked. "You yourself the greatest traitor in all history-"

Chan Corbulo turned coldly toward the tall, swarthy Arcturian captain who had entered with him and was glaring at Gordon.

"Captain Marlann, there is no need to take this assassin and his accomplice to Throon for trial. I saw them murder Arn Abbas! As Commander of the Empire fleet, I adjudge them guilty by space-law and order them executed immediately!"

21: Mutiny in the Void

Gordon's mind rocked to disastrous realization. As he stared frozenly into Chan Corbulo's grim triumphant face, he understood what had happened.

As Commander of the Empire navy, Corbulo had received the report of the capture of Gordon and Lianna. The arch-traitor had known that he must not let Gordon return to Throon with what he knew. So he had swiftly come here and ordered the two captives brought aboard his own flagship to do away with them before they could tell what they knew.

Gordon looked wildly around the circle of officers. "You've got to believe me! I'm no traitor! It was Corbulo himself who murdered my father and who is betraying the Empire to Shorr Kan!"

He saw hard, cold unbelief and bitter hatred in the officers' faces. Then Gordon recognized one familiar face.

It was the craggy red face of Hull Burrel, the Antarian captain who had saved him from the Cloud-raiders on Earth. He remembered now that for that, Hull Burrel had been promoted aide to the Commander.

"Hull Burrell, you surely believe me!" Gordon appealed. "You know that Shorr Kan tried to have me kidnapped before."

The big Antarian scowled. "I thought then he did. I didn't know then you were secretly in league with him, that all that was just pretense."

"I tell you, it wasn't pretense!" Gordon cried. "You've all let Corbulo pull the wool over your eyes."

Lianna, her gray eyes blazing in her white face, added, "Zarth speaks the truth! Corbulo is the traitor!"

Chan Corbulo made a brusque gesture. "We've had enough of these wild lies. Captain Marlann, see that they are locked out into space at once. It's the most merciful manner of execution."

The guards stepped forward. And then, as Gordon felt the bitterness of despair, he glimpsed the satisfied smirk in Corbulo's eyes and it stung him to a final desperate effort.

"You're letting Corbulo make fools of you all!" he raged. "Why is he so set on executing us instantly, instead of taking us to Throon for trial! Because he wants to silence us! We know too much!"

At last, Gordon perceived that he had made a little impression on the officers. Hull Burrel and others looked a little doubtful.

The Antarian glanced questioningly at Corbulo. "Commander, I beg you will pardon me if I'm overstepping my position. But perhaps it would be more regular to take them to Throon for trial."

Val Marlann, the swarthy Arcturian captain of this battleship, supported Hull Burrel. "Zarth Arn is one of the royal family, after all. And the princess Lianna is a ruler in her own right."

Lianna said swiftly, "This execution means that Fomalhaut Kingdom will break its alliance with the Empire, remember!"

Chan Corbulo's square face stiffened in anger. He had been confident that Gordon and Lianna were on the brink of death, and this slight hitch irritated him.

His irritation made Corbulo do the wrong thing. He tried to ride roughshod over the objections just advanced.

"There is no need to take black traitors and assassins to Throon!" he snapped. "We will execute them at once. Obey my orders!"

Gordon seized on that opportunity to make a flaming appeal to the gathered officers.

"You see? Corbulo will never let us go to Throon to tell what we know! Has he even reported our capture to the Emperor?"

Hull Burrel, with gathering trouble on his craggy face, looked at a young Earth-man officer.

"You are communication-officer, Verlin. Has any report of Zarth Arn's capture been made to the Emperor!"

Corbulo exploded in rage. "Burrel, how dare you question my conduct? By God, I'll break you for this!"

The young Earthman, Verlin, looked uncertainly at the raging Commander. Then he hesitantly answered Hull Burrel's question.

"No report of any kind has been made to Throon. The Commander ordered me to make no mention of the capture yet."

Gordon's voice crackled. "Doesn't that at least make you doubt?" he cried to the frowning officers. "Why should Corbulo keep my capture secret from my brother? It's because he knows Jhal Arn would order us brought to Throon for judgment, and he doesn't want that!"

And Gordon added passionately, "We do not ask for any pardon, for any clemency. If I'm guilty, I deserve execution. All I ask is to be taken to Throon for trial. If Corbulo persists in refusing that, it can only be because he is the traitor I say he is!"

Faces changed expression. And Gordon knew that he had finally awakened deep doubt in their minds.

"You're throwing away the Empire fleet if you let this traitor command it!" he pressed, "He's in league with Shorr Kan. Unless you let me go to Throon to prove that, the fleet and Empire are doomed!"

Hull Burrel looked around his fellow officers, and then at Chan Corbulo. "Commander, we mean no disrespect. But Zarth Arn's demand for a trial is reasonable. He should be taken to Throon."

A low chorus of supporting voices came from the other officers. Deep ingrained as was their discipline, deeper still was the doubt and the fear for the Empire that Gordon had awakened.

Corbulo's face flared dull red with fury. "Burrel, you're under arrest! By God, you'll take the spacewalk with these two for your insubordination! Guards, seize him!"

Tall, swarthy Captain Val Marlann stepped forward and intervened.

"Wait, guards! Commander Corbulo, you are supreme officer of the Empire fleet but I am captain of the Ethne. And I agree with Burrel that we cannot summarily execute these prisoners."

"Marlann, you're captain of the Ethne no longer!" raged Corbulo. "I hereby remove you and take personal command of this ship."

Val Marlann stiffened in open defiance as he rasped an answer.

"Commander, if I'm wrong I'm willing to take the consequences. But by God, something about all this does smell to Heaven! We're going to Throon and find out what it is!"

Gordon heard the mutter of agreement from the other officers. And Chan Corbulo heard it also.

The baffled rage on his grizzled face deepened, and he uttered a curse.

"Very well, then-to Throon! And when I get through with you at the courts-martial there, you'll wish you'd remembered your discipline. Insubordination in high space! Just wait!"

And Corbulo turned angrily and shouldered out of the room, going forward along a corridor.

Burrel and the other officers looked soberly at each other. Then Val Marlann spoke grimly to Gordon.

"Prince Zarth, you'll get the trial at Throon you asked for. And if you've not told the truth, it's our necks."

"It must be the truth!" Hull Burrel declared, "I never could understand why Zarth Arn should murder his own father! And why would Corbulo be so wild to execute them if the commander had nothing to hide?"

At that moment, from the annunciators throughout the ship, broke a loud voice.

"Commander Corbulo, to all hands! Mutiny has broken out on the Ethne! Captain Val Marlann and his chief officers, my aide Hull Burrel, and Prince Zarth and Princess Lianna are the ringleaders! All loyal men arm and seize the mutineers!"

Hull Burrel's blue eyes flashed an arctic light. "He's raising the ship against us! Val, get to the annunciators and call off the men! You can convince them!"

The officers plunged for the corridors leading up into the interior of the mighty battleship.

Gordon cried, "Lianna, wait here! There may be fighting!"

Then, as he ran with Hull Burrel and the others through the corridors, they heard a growing uproar somewhere ahead.

The great battleship was suddenly in chaos, alarm bells ringing, voices yelling from the annunciators, feet pounding through the corridors.

The spacemen who had rushed to obey the supreme commander's order were now bewildered by a clash of authority. Some, who tried to obey and arrest Val Marlann and his officers, were instantly attacked by those of their own comrades who remained loyal to the ship's captain.

In most of the ship, the crew had not had time to arm. Improvised metal clubs and fists took the place of atom-pistols. Battle joined and raged swiftly in crewrooms, in gun-galleries, in corridors.

Gordon and Hull Burrel found themselves with Val Marlann in the midst of a seething, battling mob in the main mid-deck corridor.

"I've got to get through to an annunciator switchboard!" cried Val Marlann. "Help me crash through them!"

Gordon and the big Antarian, with Verlin, the young communication officer, joined him and plunged into the crazy fight.

They got through, but left big Hull Burrel battling a knot of spacemen back in the mob.

Val Marlann yelled into the annunciator switchboard. "Captain Marlann to all hands! Cease fighting! The announcement of mutiny was a fake, a trick! Obey me!"

Verlin grabbed Gordon's arm as a distant whine of power reached their ears over the din.

"That's the stereo-transmitter going!" the young communication officer cried to Gordon. "Corbulo must be calling for help from the other ships of the fleet!"

"We've got to stop that!" Gordon cried. "Lead the way!"

They raced forward along a corridor, then cross-ship and up a companionway to the top deck.

Val Marlann's orders thundering from the annunciators seemed to be rapidly quieting the uproar in the ship. Its crew knew his voice better than any other. Long habit brought them to obey.

Verlin and Gordon plunged into a big, crowded stereo-room whose tubes and motor-generators were humming. Two bewildered-looking technicians were at the control panel.

Chan Corbulo, an atom-pistol gripped in his hand, stood on the transmitter-plate speaking loudly and rapidly.

"I command all nearby battleships to send boarding parties aboard the Ethne at once to restore order! You will arrest-"

Corbulo, from the tail of his eye, saw the two men burst into the room. He swung swiftly around and triggered his pistol.

The pellet that flew from it was aimed at Gordon. But Verlin, plunging ahead, took it full in his breast.

Gordon tripped headlong over the falling body of the young Earthman. That stumble made Corbulo's quick second shot flick just over Gordon's head.

As he fell, Gordon had hurled himself forward. He tackled Corbulo's knees and brought him crashing to the floor.

The two technicians ran forward and hauled Gordon off the Commander. But their grip on him relaxed when they glimpsed his face.

"Good God, it's Prince Zarth Arn!" one of them cried.

Instinctive respect for the ruling house of the Empire confused the two men. Gordon wrenched free from them and grabbed for the pistol in Verlin's holster.

Corbulo had regained his feet, on the other side of the room. He was again raising his weapon.

"You'll never go to Throon!" he roared. "By-"

Gordon shot, from where he crouched on the floor. The atomic pellet, loosed more by guess than by aim, hit Corbulo's neck and exploded. It flung him backwards as though a giant hand had hit him.

Val Marlann and Hull Burrel came bursting into the stereo-room with other officers. The whole great ship seemed suddenly quiet.

Marlann bent over Corbulo's blasted body. "Dead!"

Hull Burrell, panting, his face flaming, told Gordon grimly, "We've killed our Commander. God help us if your story is not true, Prince Zarth!"

"It's true-and Corbulo was only one of a score of traitors in Shorr Kan's hire," Gordon husked, shaken with reaction. "I'll prove it all at Throon."

The image of a dark, towering Centaurian battleship captain suddenly appeared on the receiver-plate of the stereo.

"Vice-Commander Ron Giron calling from the Shaar! What the devil is going on aboard the Ethne? We're coming alongside to board you as Commander Corbulo ordered."

"No one will board this ship!" Val Marlann answered swiftly. "We're going at once to Throon."

"What does this mean?" roared the vice-commander. "Let me speak to Commander Corbulo himself!"

"You can't-he's dead," clipped Hull Burrel. "He was betraying the fleet to the Cloud. At Throon, we'll prove that."

"It is mutiny, then?" cried Ron Giron. "You'll stand by for boarding parties and consider yourselves under arrest, or we'll open fire!"

"If you fire on the Ethne, you'll destroy the Empire's only chance to foil Shorr Kan's plot!" cried Val Marlann. "We've staked our lives on the truth of what Prince Zarth Arn has told us, and we're taking him to Throon."

John Gordon himself stepped forward to make an appeal to the glaring vice-commander.

"Commander Giron, they're telling you the truth! Give us this chance to save the Empire from disaster!"

Giron hesitated. "This is all insane! Corbulo dead and accused of treachery, Zarth Arn returned-"

He seemed to reach decision. "It's beyond me but they can sift it at Throon. To make sure that you go there, four battleships will escort the Ethne. They'll have orders to blast you if you try to go anywhere but Throon!"

"That's all we ask!" Gordon cried. "One more word of warning! A League attack may come at any time now. I know it is coming, and soon."

Commander Giron's towering figure stiffened. "The devil you say! But we've already taken all possible dispositions. I'll call the Emperor and report all this to him."

The image disappeared. Through the portholes, they saw four big battleships move up and take positions on either side of the Ethne.

"We start for Throon at once," Val Marlann said swiftly. "I'll give the orders."

As the officer hurried out, and annunciators and bells started buzzing through the ship, Gordon asked a question.

"Am I to consider myself still a prisoner?"

"Blazes, no!" Hull Burrel exclaimed. "If you've told us the truth, there's no reason to keep you a prisoner. If you haven't told the truth, then we're due for court-martial and execution anyway!"

Gordon found Lianna in the corridor, hurrying in search of him. He told her rapidly what had happened.

"Corbulo dead? One great danger removed!" she exclaimed. "But Zarth, now our lives and the Empire's fate depend on whether we can prove to your brother that our story is true!"

At that moment the mighty Ethne began to move ponderously through the void, as its great turbines roared loud.

In a few minutes, the big battleship and its four grim escorts were hurtling headlong across the starry spaces toward Throon.

22: Galactic Crisis

Huge, glaring white Canopus flared in the star-sown heavens in blinding splendor, as the five great battleships rushed toward it at rapidly decreasing speed.

Once again, John Gordon looked from a ship's bridge at the glorious capital sun of the Empire and its green, lovely world. But how much had happened since first he had come to Throon!

"We dock at Throon City in two hours," Hull Burrel was saying. And he added grimly, "There'll be a reception committee waiting for us. Your brother has been advised of our coming."

"All I ask is a chance to prove my story to Jhal," declared Gordon, "I'm sure I can convince him."

But, inwardly, he had a sickening feeling that he was not entirely sure. It all depended on one man, and on whether Gordon had correctly judged that man's reactions.

All the hours and days of the headlong homeward flight across the Empire, Gordon had been tortured by that haunting doubt. He had slept but little, had scarcely eaten, consumed by growing tension.

He must convince Jhal Arn! Once that was done, once the last traitor was rooted out, then the Empire would be ready to meet the Cloud's attack. His, John Gordon's, duty would be fulfilled and he could return to Earth for his re-exchange of bodies with the real Zarth Arn. And the real Zarth could come back to help defend the Empire.

But Gordon felt an agony of spirit every time he thought of that re-exchange of bodies. For on that day when he returned to his own time, he would be leaving Lianna forever.

Lianna came into the wide bridge as he thought of her. She stood beside him with her slim fingers clasping his hand encouragingly as they looked ahead.

"Your brother will believe you, Zarth-I know he will."

"Not without proof," Gordon muttered. "And only one man can prove my story. Everything hinges on whether or not he has heard of Corbulo's death and my return, and has fled."

That tormenting uncertainty deepened in him as the five big battleships swung down toward Throon City.

It was night in the capital. Under the light of two hurtling moons glimmered the fairylike glass mountains and the silver sea. The shimmering towers of the city rose boldly in the soft glow, a pattern of lacy light.

The ships landed ponderously in docks of the naval spaceport. Gordon and Lianna, with Hull Burrel and Captain Val Marlann, emerged from the Ethne to be met by a solid mass of armed guards.

Two officers walked toward them, and with them came Orth Bodmer, the Chief Councilor Bodmer's thin face was lined with deep worry as he confronted Gordon.

"Highness, this is a sorry homecoming!" he faltered. "God send you can prove your innocence!"

"Jhal Arn has kept our return and what happened out there off the Pleiades, a secret?" Gordon asked quickly.

Orth Bodmer nodded. "His Highness is waiting for you now. We are to go at once to the palace by tubeway. I must warn you that these guards have orders to kill instantly if any of you attempt resistance."

They were swiftly searched for weapons, and then led toward the tubeway. Guards entered the cars with them. They had seen no one else, the whole spaceport having been cleared and barred off.

It seemed a dream to John Gordon as they whirled through the tubeway. Too much had happened to him, in too short a time. The mind couldn't stand it. But Lianna's warm clasp of his hand remained a link with reality, nerving him for this ordeal.

In the great palace of Throon, they went up through emptied corridors to the study in which Gordon had first confronted Arn Abbas.

Jhal Arn sat now behind the desk, his handsome face a worn mask. His eyes were utterly cold and expressionless as they swept over Gordon and Lianna and the two space-captains, "Have the guards remain outside, Bodmer," he ordered the Councilor in a toneless voice.

Orth Bodmer hesitated. "The prisoners have no weapons. Yet perhaps-"

"Do as I order," rasped Jhal Arn. "I have weapons here. There's no fear of my brother being able to murder me."

The nervous Chief Councilor and the guards went out and closed the door.

Gordon was feeling a hot resentment that burned away all that numb feeling of unreality.

He strode a step forward. "Is this the kind of justice you're going to deal the Empire?" he blazed at Jhal Arn. "The kind of justice that condemns a man before he's heard?"

"Heard? Man, you were seen, murdering our father!" cried Jhal Arn, rising. "Corbulo saw you, and now you've killed Corbulo too!"

"Jhal Arn, it is not so!" cried Lianna. "You must listen to Zarth!."

Jhal Arn turned somber eyes on her. "Lianna, I have no blame for you. You love Zarth and let him lead you into this. But as for him, the studious, scholarly brother I once loved, the brother who was plotting all the time for power, who struck our father down-"

"Will you listen?" cried Gordon furiously. "You stand there mouthing accusations without giving me a chance to answer them!"

"I have heard your answers already," rasped Jhal Arn. "Vice-Commander Giron told me when he reported your coming that you were accusing Corbulo of treachery to cover up your own black crimes."

"I can prove that if you'll just give me a chance!" Gordon declared.

"What proof can you advance?" retorted the other. "What proof, that will outweigh the damning evidence of your flight, of Corbulo's testimony, of Shorr Kan's secret messages to you?"

Gordon knew that he had come to the crux of the situation, the crisis upon which he would stand or fall.

He talked hoarsely, telling of Corbulo's treacherous assistance in helping Lianna and him escape, of how that escape had been timed exactly with the assassination of Arn Abbas.

"It was to make it look as though I'd committed the murder and fled!" Gordon emphasized. "Corbulo himself struck down our father and then said he'd seen me do it, knowing I wasn't there to deny the charge!"

He narrated swiftly how the Sirian traitor captain had taken him and Lianna to the Cloud, and briefly summarized the way in which he had induced Shorr Kan, by pretending to join him, to allow him to go to Earth. He did not, could not, tell how his ruse had hinged on the fact that he was really not Zarth Arn at all. He couldn't tell that.

Gordon finished his swift story, and saw that the black cloud of bitter disbelief still rested on Jhal Arn's face.

"The story is too fantastic! And it has nothing to prove it but your word and the word of this girl who's in love with you. You said you could prove your tale!"

"I can prove it, if I'm given a chance," Gordon said earnestly.

He continued swiftly. "Jhal, Corbulo was not the only traitor in high position in the Empire. Shorr Kan himself told me there were a score of such traitors, though he didn't name them.

"But one traitor I know to be such is Them Eldred, the Sirian naval captain who took us to the Cloud! He can prove it all, if I can make him talk!"

Jhal Arn frowned at Gordon for a moment. Then he touched a stud and spoke into a panel on the desk.

"Naval Headquarters? The Emperor speaking. There is a captain in our forces named Them Eldred, a Sirian. Find out if he's on Throon. If he is, send him here immediately under guard."

Gordon grew tense as they waited. If the Sirian were away in space, if he had somehow heard of events and had fled-

Then a sharp voice finally came from the panel. "Them Eldred has been found here. His cruiser has just returned from patrol. He is being sent to you now."

A half-hour later the door opened and Them Eldred stepped inside. The Sirian had a wondering look on his hardbitten greenish face. Then his eyes fell on Gordon and Lianna.

"Zarth Arn!" he exclaimed, startled, recoiling. His hand went to his belt, but he had been disarmed.

"Surprised to see us?" Gordon rasped. "You thought we were still in the Cloud where you left us, didn't you?"

Them Eldred had instantly recovered his self-possession. He looked at Gordon with assumed perplexity.

"I don't understand what you mean, about the Cloud!"

Jhal Arn spoke curtly. "Zarth claims that you took him and Lianna by force to Thallarna. He accuses you of being a traitor to the Empire, of plotting with Shorr Kan."

The Sirian's face stiffened in admirably assumed anger.

"It's a lie! Why, I haven't seen Prince Zarth Arn and the princess since the Feast of Moons!"

Jhal Arn looked harshly at Gordon, "You said you could prove your claim, Zarth. So far, it's only your word against his."

Lianna broke in passionately. "Is my word nothing, then? Is a Princess of Fomalhaut to be believed a liar?"

Again, Jhal Arn looked at her somberly, "Lianna, I know you would lie for Zarth Arn, if for nothing else in the universe."

Gordon had expected the Sirian's denial. And he was counting on his estimate of this man's character to get the truth out of him.

He stepped forward to confront the man. He kept his passionate anger restrained, and spoke deliberately.

"Them Eldred, the game is up. Corbulo is dead, the whole plot with Shorr Kan is about to be exposed. You haven't a chance to keep your guilt hidden, and when it's exposed it'll mean execution for you."

As the Sirian started to protest, Gordon continued swiftly, "I know what you're thinking! You think that if you stick to your denials you can face me down, that that's your only chance now to save your skin. But it won't work, Them Eldred!

"The reason it won't work is because your cruiser, the Markab, had a full crew in it when it took us to the Cloud. I know those officers and men had been bribed to support you, that they'll deny ever going to the Cloud. They'll deny it, at first. But when pressure is put on them, there's bound to be at least one weak one among them who'll confess to save himself!"

Now, for the first time, Gordon saw doubt creep into the Sirian's eyes. Yet Them Eldred angrily shook his head.

"You're still talking nonsense, Prince Zarth! If you want to question my men in the Markab, go ahead. Their testimony will show that you're not telling the truth."

Gordon pressed his attack, his voice ringing now. "Them Eldred, you can't bluff it out! You know one of them will talk! And when he does, it's execution for you.

"There's only one way you can save yourself. That's to turn evidence against the other officials and officers in this plot with you, the others who have been working for Shorr Kan. Give us their names, and you'll be allowed to go scot-free out of the Empire!"

Jhal Arn sternly interrupted. "I'll sanction no such terms! If this man is a traitor, he'll suffer the penalty."

Gordon turned passionately to him. "Jhal, listen! He deserves death for his treachery. But which is most important-that he be punished, or that the Empire be saved from disaster?"

The argument swayed Jhal Arn. He frowned silently for a moment, and then spoke slowly.

"Very well, I'll agree to let him go free if he does make any such confession and names his confederates."

Gordon swung back to the Sirian. "Your last chance, Them Eldred! You can save yourself now, or never!"

He saw the indecision in Them Eldred's eyes. He was staking everything on the fact that this Sirian was a ruthless realist, ambitious, selfish, with no real loyalty to anyone but himself.

And Gordon's gamble won. Confronted by the imminence of discovery, presented with a loophole by which he might save his own skin, Them Eldred's defiant denials broke down.

He spoke huskily. "I have the Emperor's word that I am to go scot-free, remember?"

"Then you were in a plot?" raged Jhal Arn. "But I'll keep my word. You'll go free if you name your confederates, as soon as we have seized them and verified what you tell."

Them Eldred was ghastly pale but tried to smile. "I know when I'm in a trap, and I'm cursed if I'll get myself killed just for loyalty to Shorr Kan. He wouldn't do it for me!"

He went on, to Jhal Arn. "Prince Zarth has told the truth. Chan Corbulo was leader of the little clique of officials who planned to betray the Empire to the Cloud. Corbulo killed Arn Abbas, and had me carry off Zarth and Lianna so they'd be blamed. Everything the prince has said is true."

Gordon felt his eyes blur, his shoulders sag, as those words brought shaky relief from his intolerable strain of many days.

He felt Lianna's warm arms around him, heard her eager voice as big Hall Barrel and Val Mariana excitedly slapped his back.

"Zarth, I knew you'd clear yourself!"

Jhal Arn, face pale as death, came toward Gordon. His voice was hoarse when he spoke, "Zarth, can you ever pardon me? My God, how was I to know? I'll never forgive myself!"

"Jhal, it's all right," Gordon stumbled. "What else were you to think when it was so cunningly planned?"

"The whole Empire shall soon know the truth," Jhal Arn exclaimed. He swung to Them Eldred. "First, the names of the other traitors."

Them Eldred went to the desk and wrote for minutes. He silently handed the sheet to Jhal Arn, who then summoned guards forward.

"You'll be confined until this information is verified," he told the Sirian sternly. "Then I'll keep my promise. You shall go free-but the tale of your treachery will follow you to the remotest stars!"

Jhal Arn turned his eyes to the list of names, when the guards had taken the Sirian out. He cried out, stunned, "Good God, look!"

Gordon saw. The first name on the list was "Orth Bodmer, Chief Councilor of the Empire."

"Bodmer a traitor? It's impossible!" Jhal Arn cried. "Them Eldred has merely accused him because of some grudge."

Gordon frowned. "Perhaps. But Corbulo was as trusted as Orth Bodmer, remember!"

Jhal Arn's lips tightened. He spoke sharply into a panel on the desk. "Tell Councilor Bodmer to come in at once."

The answer was quick. "Councilor Bodmer left the anteroom some time ago. We do not know where he went."

"Find him and bring him here at once!" ordered Jhal Arn.

"He fled when he saw Them Eldred brought in here to be questioned!" cried Gordon. "Jhal, he knew the Sirian would expose him!"

Jhal Arn sank into a chair. "Bodmer a traitor! Yet it must be so. And look at these other names. Byrn Ridim, Korrel Kane, Jon Rollory-all trusted officials."

The guard-captain reported. "Highness, we can't find Orth Bodmer anywhere in the palace! He wasn't seen to leave, but isn't to be found!"

"Send out a general order for his arrest," snapped Jhal Arn. He handed the list of names to the guard-captain. "And arrest all these men instantly. But do so without arousing attention."

He looked haggardly at Gordon and Lianna. "All this treachery has already shaken the Empire! And the southern star-kingdoms are wavering! Their envoys have requested urgent audience with me tonight, and I fear they mean to throw off their alliance with the Empire!"

23: The Secret of the Empire

Gordon suddenly noticed that Lianna's slim figure was sagging with weariness. He uttered an exclamation of self-reproach.

"Lianna, you must be half-dead after all you've been through!"

Lianna tried to smile. "I'll admit that I won't be sorry to rest."

"Captain Burrel will see you to your apartments, Lianna," said Jhal Arn. "I want Zarth to be here with me when the star-kingdom envoys come, to impress on them that our royal house is again united."

He added to Hull Burrel and Val Marlann, "You two and all your men are completely cleared of the mutiny charge, of course. I'm your debtor for life for helping to expose Corbulo and save my brother."

When they had escorted Lianna out, Gordon sank tiredly into a chair. He was still feeling reaction after the long strain.

"Zarth, I'd rather let you rest too but you know how vital it is to hold the star-kingdoms when this crisis is deepening," Jhal said. "Curse that black devil, Shorr Kan!"

A servant brought saqua and the fiery liquor cleared Gordon's numbed mind and brought strength back into his weary body.

Presently a chamberlain opened the door of the room, bowing low.

"The ambassadors of the Kingdoms of Polaris, of Cygnus, of Perseus and of Cassiopeia, and of the Baronies of Hercules Cluster!"

The envoys, in full dress uniforms, stopped in amazement when they saw Gordon standing beside Jhal Arn.

"Prince Zarth!" exclaimed the chubby Hercules envoy. "But we thought-"

"My brother has been completely cleared and the real traitors have been apprehended," Jhal informed them. "It will be publicly announced within the hour."

His eyes ran over their faces. "Gentlemen, for what purpose have you requested this audience?"

The chubby Hercules ambassador looked at the grave, aged envoy from Polaris Kingdom. "Tu Shal, you are our spokesman."

Tu Shal's lined old face was deeply troubled as he stepped forward and spoke.

"Highness, Shorr Kan has secretly just offered all our kingdoms treaty of friendship with the League of Dark Worlds! He declares that if we cling to our alliance with the Empire, we are doomed."

The Hercules ambassador added, "He has made the same offer to us Barons, warning us not to join the Empire."

Jhal Arn looked swiftly at Gordon. "So Shorr Kan is now sending ultimatums? That means he is almost ready to strike."

"We none of us have any love for Shorr Kan's tyranny," Tu Shal was saying. "We prefer to hold to the Empire that stands for peace and union. But it is said that the Cloud has prepared such tremendous armaments and has such revolutionary new weapons that they'll carry all before them if war comes."

Jhal Arn's eyes flashed. "Do you dream he can conquer the Empire when we have the Disrupter to use in case of necessity?"

"That's just it, highness!" said Tu Shal. "It's being said that the Disrupter was never used but once long ago, and that it proved so dangerous then that you would not dare to use it again!"

He added, "I fear that our kingdoms will desert their allegiance to the Empire unless you prove that that is a lie. Unless you prove to us that you do dare to use the Disrupter!"

Jhal Arn looked steadily at the envoys as he answered. And his solemn words seemed to Gordon to bring the whisper of something alien and supernally terrible into the little room.

"Tu Shal, the Disrupter is an awful power. I will not disguise that it is dangerous to unchain that power in the galaxy. But it was done once when the Magellanians invaded, long ago.

"And it will be done again, if necessary! My father is dead, but Zarth and I can unloose that power. And we will unloose it and rive the galaxy before we let Shorr Kan fasten tyranny on the free worlds!"

Tu Shal seemed more deeply troubled than before. "But highness, our kingdoms demand that we see the Disrupter demonstrated before they will believe!"

Jhal's face grew somber. "I had hoped that never would the Disrupter have to be taken from its safekeeping and loosed again. But it may be that it would be best to do as you ask."

His eyes flashed. "Yes, it may be that when Shorr Kan learns that we can still wield that power and hears what it can do, he will think twice before precipitating galactic war!"

"Then you will demonstrate it for us?" asked the Hercules envoy, his round face awed.

"There's a region of deserted dark-stars fifty parsecs west of Argol," Jhal Arn told them. "Two days from now, we'll unchain the power of the Disrupter there for you to see."

Tu Shal's troubled face cleared a little. "If you do that, our kingdoms will utterly reject the overtures of the Cloud!"

"And I can guarantee that the Barons of the Cluster will declare for the Empire!" added the chubby envoy from Hercules.

When they had gone, Jhal Arn looked with haggard face at Gordon. "It was the only way I could hold them, Zarth! If I'd refused, they'd have been panicked into submitting to Shorr Kan."

Gordon asked him wonderingly, "You're really going to unloose the Disrupter to convince them?"

The other was sweating. "I don't want to, God knows! You know Brenn Bir's warning as well as I do! You know what nearly happened when he used it on the Magellanians two thousand years ago!"

He stiffened. "But I'll run even that risk, rather than let the Cloud launch a war to enslave the galaxy!"

Gordon felt a deeper sense of wonder and perplexity, mixed with cold apprehension.

What was it, really, the age-old secret power which even Jhal Arn who was its master could not mention without fear?

Jhal Arn continued urgently. "Zarth, we'll go down now to the Chamber of the Disrupter. It's been long since either of us was there, and we must make sure everything is ready for that demonstration."

Gordon for the moment recoiled. He, a stranger, couldn't pry into this most guarded secret in the galaxy!

Then he suddenly realized that it made little difference if he did see the thing. He wasn't scientist enough to understand it. And in any case, he'd be going back soon to his own time, his own body.

He'd have to find a chance to slip away to Earth in the next day or so, without letting Jhal Arn know. He could order a ship to take him there.

Once again, at that thought, came the heartbreaking realization that he was on the verge of parting forever from Lianna. "Come, Zarth!" Jhal was saying impatiently. "I know you must be tired, but there's little time left."

They went out through the anteroom, Jhal Arn waving back the guards who sprang to accompany them.

Gordon accompanied him down sliding ramps and through corridors and down again, until he knew they must be deeper beneath the great palace of Throon than even the prison where he had been confined.

They entered a spiral stair that dropped downward into a hall hollowed from the solid rock of the planet. From this hall, a long, rock-hewn corridor led away. It was lighted by a throbbing white radiance emitted by luminous plates in its walls. As Gordon walked down this radiant corridor with Jhal Arn, he felt an astonishment he could hardly conceal. He had expected great masses of guards, mighty doors with massive bolts, all kinds of cunning devices to guard the most titanic power in the galaxy.

Instead, there seemed nothing whatever to guard it! Neither on the stair nor in this brilliant corridor was there anyone. And when Jhal Arn opened the door at the corridor end, it was not even locked!

Jhal Arn looked through the open door with Gordon from the threshold.

"There it is, the same as ever," he said with a strong tinge of awe in his voice.

The room was a small, round one hollowed also from solid rock and also lighted by throbbing white radiance from wall-plates.

Gordon perceived at the center of the room the group of objects at which Jhal Arn was gazing with such awe.

The Disrupter! The weapon so terrible that its power had only once been unloosed in two thousand years!

"But what is it?" Gordon wondered dazedly, as he stared.

There were twelve big conical objects of dull gray metal, each a dozen feet long. The apex of each cone was a cluster of tiny crystal spheres. Heavy, vari-colored cables led from the base of the cones.

What complexities of unimaginable science lay inside the cones, he could not even guess. Beside heavy brackets for mounting them, the only other object here was a bulky cubical cabinet on whose face were mounted a bank of luminous gauges and six rheostat switches.

"It draws such tremendous power that it will have to be mounted on a battleship, of course," Jhal Arn was saying thoughtfully. "What about the Ethne you came in? Wouldn't its turbines provide enough power?"

Gordon floundered. "I suppose so. I'm afraid I'll have to leave all that to you."

Jhal Arn looked astounded. "But Zarth, you're the scientist of the family. You know more about the Disruptor than I do."

Gordon hastily denied that. "I'm afraid I don't know. You see, it's been so long that I've forgotten a lot about it."

Jhal Arn looked incredulous. "Forgotten about the Disruptor? You must be joking! That's one thing we don't forget! Why it's drilled into our minds beyond forgetfulness on the day when we're first brought down here to have the Wave tuned to our bodies!"

The Wave? What was that? Gordon felt completely at sea in his ignorance.

He advanced a hasty explanation. "Jhal, I told you that Shorr Kan used a brain-scanning device to try to learn the Disruptor secret from me. He couldn't-but in my deliberate effort to forget it so he couldn't, I seem really to have lost a lot of the details."

Jhal Arn seemed satisfied by the explanation. "So that's it! Mental shock, of course. But of course you still remember the main nature of the secret. Nobody could forget that."

"Of course, I haven't forgotten that," Gordon was forced to prevaricate hastily.

Jhal drew him forward. "Here, it will all come back to you. These brackets are for mounting the force-cones on a ship's prow. The colored cables hook to the similarly colored binding-posts on the control panel, and the transformer leads go right back to drive-generators."

He pointed at the gauges. "They give the exact coordinates in space of the area to be affected. The output of the cones has to balance exactly, of course. The rheostats do that-"

As he went on, John Gordon began dimly to perceive that the cones were designed to project force into a selected area of space.

But what kind of force? What did they do to the area or object on which they acted, that was so awful? He dared not ask that.

Jhal Arn was concluding his explanation. "-so the target area must be at least ten parsecs from the ship you work from, or you'll get the backlash. Don't you remember it all now, Zarth?"

Gordon nodded hurriedly. "Of course. But I'm glad just the same that it will be your job to use it."

Jhal looked more haggard. "God knows I don't want to! It has rested here all these centuries without being used. And the warning of Brenn Bir still is true."

He pointed up, as he spoke, to an inscription on the opposite wall. Gordon read it now for the first time.

"To my descendants who will hold the secret of the Disruptor that I, Brenn Bir, discovered: Heed my warning! Never use the Disruptor for petty personal power! Use it only if the freedom of the galaxy is menaced!

"This power you hold could destroy the galaxy. It is a demon so titanic that once unchained, it might not be chained again. Take not that awful risk unless the life and liberty of all men are at stake!"

Jhal Arn's voice was solemn. "Zarth, when you and I were boys and were first brought down here by our father to have the Wave tuned to us, we little dreamed that a time might come when we would think of using that which has lain here for so long."

His voice rang deeper. "But the life and liberty of all men are at stake, if Shorr Kan seeks to conquer the galaxy! If all else fails, we must take the risk!"

Gordon felt shaken by the implications of that warning. It was like a voice of the dead, speaking heavily in this silent room.

Jhal turned and led the way out of the room. He closed the door and again Gordon wondered. No lock, not bolts, no guard!

They went down the long radiant corridor and emerged from it into the softer yellow light of the well of the spiral stair.

"We'll mount the equipment on the Ethne tomorrow morning," Jhal Arn was saying. "When we show the star-kingdom envoys-"

"You will never show them anything, Jhal Arn!" Out from beneath the spiral stair had sprung a disheveled man who held an atom-pistol leveled on Gordon and Jhal Arn.

"Orth Bodmer!" cried Gordon. "You were hiding in the palace all the time!"

Orth Bodmer's thin face was colorless, deadly, twitching in a pallid smile.

"Yes, Zarth," he grated. "I knew the game was up when I saw Them Eldred brought in. I couldn't get out of the palace without being swiftly traced and apprehended, so I hid in the deeper corridors."

His smile was ghastly now. "I hid, until as I had hoped you came down here to the Chamber of the Disruptor, Jhal Arn! I've been waiting for you!"

Jhal's eyes flashed. "Just what do you expect to gain by this?"

"It is simple," rasped Bodmer. "I know my life is forfeit. Well, so is your life unless you spare mine!"

He stepped closer, and Gordon read the madness of fear in his burning eyes.

"You do not break your word when it is given, highness. Promise me that I shall be pardoned, and I will not kill you now!"

Gordon saw that panic had driven this rabbity, nervous traitor to insane resolve.

"Jhal, do it!" he cried. "He's not worth risking your life for!"

Jhal Arn's face was dull red with fury. "I have let one traitor go free, but no more!"

Instantly, before Gordon could voice the cry of appeal on his lips, Orth Bodmer's atom-pistol crashed.

The pellet tore into Jhal Arn's shoulder and exploded there as Gordon plunged forward at the maddened traitor.

"You murdering lunatic!" cried Gordon fiercely, seizing the other's gun-wrist and grappling with him.

For a moment, the thin Councilor seemed to have superhuman strength. They swayed, stumbled, and then reeled together from the hall into the brilliant white radiance of the long corridor.

Then Orth Bodmer screamed! He screamed like a soul in torment, and Gordon felt the man's body relax horribly in his grasp.

"The Wave!" screeched Bodmer, staggering in the throbbing radiance.

Even as the man screamed, Gordon saw his whole body and face horribly blacken and wither. It was a shriveled, lifeless body that sank to the floor.

So ghastly and mysterious was that sudden death, that for a moment Gordon was dazed. Then he suddenly understood.

The throbbing radiance in the corridor and in the Chamber of the Disruptor was the Wave that Jhal Arn had spoken of! It was not light but a terrible, destroying force-a force so tuned to individual human bodily vibrations that it blasted every human being except the chosen holders of the Disruptor secret.

No wonder that no locks or bolts or guards were needed to protect the Disruptor! No man could approach it without being destroyed, except Jhal Arn and Gordon himself. No, not John Gordon but Zarth Arn-it was Zarth Arn's physical body that the Wave was tuned to spare!

Gordon stumbled out of that terrible radiance back into the hall. He bent over the prone form of Jhal Arn.

"Jhal! For God's sake-"

Jhal Arn had a terrible, blackened wound in his shoulder and side But he was still breathing, still alive.

Gordon sprang to the stair and shouted upward. "Guards! The Emperor has been hurt!"

Guards, officers, officials, came pouring down quickly, Jhal Arn by then was stirring feebly. His eyes opened.

"Bodmer-guilty of this attack on me!" he muttered to them. "Is Zarth all right?"

"I'm here. He didn't hit me, and he's dead now," Gordon husked.

An hour later, he waited in an outer room of the royal apartments high in the palace. Lianna was there, striving to comfort Jhal Arn's weeping wife.

A physician came hurriedly from the inner room to which Jhal Arn had been taken.

"The emperor will live!" he announced. "But he is terribly wounded, and it will take many weeks for him to recover."

He added worriedly, "He insists on Prince Zarth Arn coming in."

Gordon uncertainly entered the big, luxurious bedroom. The two women followed. He stooped over the bed in which Jhal Arn lay.

Jhal Arn whispered an order. "Bring a stereo-transmitting set. And order it switched through for a broadcast to the whole Empire."

"Jhal, you mustn't try it!" Gordon protested. "You can make announcements of my being cleared in another way than that."

"It's not only that that I have to announce," Jhal whispered. "Zarth, don't you realize what it means for me to be stricken down at the very moment when Shorr Kan's plans are reaching their crisis?"

The stereo transmitter was hastily brought in. Its viewer-disk swung to include Jhal Arn's bed, and Gordon and Lianna and Zora.

Jhal Arn painfully raised his head on the pillow, his white face looking into the disk.

"People of the Empire!" he said hoarsely. "The same traitorous assassins who murdered my father have tried to murder me, but have failed. I shall in time be well again.

"Chan Corbulo and Orth Bodmer-they were the ringleaders of the group! My brother Zarth Arn has been proved completely innocent and now resumes his royal rank.

"And since I am thus stricken down, I appoint my brother Zarth Arn as regent to rule in my place until I recover. No matter what events burst upon us, give your allegiance to Zarth Arn as leader of our Empire!"

24: Storm Over Throon

Gordon uttered an involuntary exclamation of dismayed amazement.

"Jhal, no! I can't wield the rule of the Empire, even for a short time!"

Jhal Arn had already made a feeble gesture of dismissal to the technicians. They had quickly switched off the stereo apparatus as he finished speaking, and were now withdrawing.

At Gordon's protest, Jhal Arn turned his deathly-white face and answered in an earnest whisper.

"Zarth, you must act for me. In this moment of crisis when the Cloud darkens across the galaxy, the Empire cannot be left without a leader."

Zora, his wife, seconded the appeal to Gordon. "You're of the royal house. You alone can command allegiance now."

Gordon's mind whirled. What was he to do? Refuse and finally reveal to them the unguessed truth of his identity and his involuntary imposture?

He couldn't do that now! It would leave the Empire without a head, would leave all its people and its allies confused and bewildered, would make them imminent prey for the attack of the Cloud.

But on the other hand, how could he carry out the role when he was still so ignorant of this universe? And how then could he get away to Earth to contact the real Zarth Arn across time?

"You have been proclaimed regent to the Empire and it is impossible to retract that now," said Jhal Arn, in a weak whisper.

Gordon's heart sank. It was impossible to retract that proclamation without throwing the Empire into even deeper confusion.

There was only one course open to him. He would have to occupy the regency until he could slip away to Earth as he'd planned. When they had re-exchanged bodies, the real Zarth could come back to be regent.

"I'll do my best, then," Gordon faltered. "But if I blunder-"

"You won't," Jhal Arn whispered. "I trust everything in your hands, Zarth."

He sank back on his pillow, a spasm of pain crossing his white face. Hastily, Zora called the physicians.

The physicians waved them all from the room. "The emperor must not exert himself further or we will not answer for the consequences."

In the splendid outer rooms, Gordon found Lianna at his side. He looked at her shakenly.

"Lianna, how can I lead the Empire and hold the star kings' allegiance, as Jhal would have done?"

"Why can't you?" she flashed. "Aren't you son of Arn Abbas, of the mightiest line of rulers in the galaxy?"

He wanted to cry to her that he was not, that he was only John Gordon of ancient Earth, utterly unfit for such vast responsibility.

He couldn't. He was still caught in the web that had bound him since first-how long ago it seemed!-he had for adventure's sake entered his pact across time with Zarth Arn. He still had to play out the role until he could regain his own identity.

Lianna imperiously waved aside the chamberlains and officials who already were swarming around him.

"Prince Zarth is exhausted! You will have to wait until morning."

Gordon indeed felt drunk with exhaustion, his feet stumbling as he went with Lianna up through the palace to his own old apartment.

She left him there. "Try to sleep, Zarth. You'll have the whole weight of the Empire on you tomorrow."

Gordon had thought he could not possibly sleep, but he was no sooner in bed than drugged slumber overcame him.

He awoke the next morning to find Hull Burrel beside him. The big Antarian looked at him a little uncertainly.

"Princess Lianna suggested that I act as your aide, highness,"

Gordon felt relieved. He needed someone he could trust, and he had a strong liking for this big, bluff captain.

"Hull, that's the best idea yet. You know I've never been trained for rule. There's so much that I ought to know, and don't."

The Antarian shook his head. "I hate to tell you, but things are piling up fast for you to decide. The envoys of the southern star-kingdoms ask another audience. Vice-Commander Giron has called twice in the last hour from the fleet, to talk to you."

Gordon tried to think, as he quickly dressed. "Hull, is Giron a good officer?"

"One of the best," the Antarian said promptly. "A hard disciplinarian but a fine strategist."

"Then," Gordon said, "we'll leave him in command of the fleet. I'll talk to him shortly."

He had to nerve himself for the ordeal of walking down with his new aide through the palace, of replying to bows, of playing this part of regent-ruler.

He found Tu Shal and the other star-kingdom envoys awaiting him in the little study that was the nerve-center of Empire government.

"Prince Zarth, all our kingdoms regret the dastardly attack on your brother," said the Polarian. "But this will not prevent your demonstrating the Disrupter for us as your brother agreed?"

Gordon was appalled. In the whirl of the night's events, he had almost forgotten that promise.

He tried to evade the question. "My brother is badly stricken, as you know. He is unable to carry out his promise."

The Hercules envoy said quickly, "But you know how to wield the Disrupter, Prince Zarth. You could carry out the demonstration."

That was the devil of it, Gordon thought dismayedly. He didn't know the details of the Disruptor! He had learned something from Jhal Arn of how the apparatus was operated, but he still hadn't any idea of just what that mysterious, terrible force could do, "I have heavy duties as regent of the Empire while my brother is helpless, and I may have to postpone that demonstration for a little while," he told them.

Tu Shal's face grew grave. "Highness, you must not! I tell you that failure to give us this reassurance would strengthen the arguments of those who claim the Disruptor is too dangerous to use. It would turn the wavering parties in our kingdoms toward deserting the Empire!"

Gordon felt trapped. He couldn't let the Empire's vital allies desert. Yet how could he wield the Disrupter?

He might be able to learn more from Jhal Arn about it, he thought desperately. Enough so that he could try to wield the Disruptor in at least this demonstration?

He made his voice stern, determined. "The demonstration will be made at the first possible moment. This is all I can say."

It did not satisfy the worried envoys, he could see. They looked furtively at each other.

"I will report that to the Barons," said the chubby envoy of Hercules Cluster. The others bowed also, and left.

Hull Burrel gave him no time to reflect on the pressure that this new complication put upon him.

"Vice-Commander Giron on the stereo now, highness. Shall I put him through?"

When, a moment later, the image of the Empire naval commander appeared on the stereo-plate, Gordon saw that the towering Centaurian veteran was deeply perturbed.

"Prince Zarth, I wish first to know if I am to remain in command of the fleet or if a new commander is being sent out?"

"You're appointed full Commander, subject only to review by my brother when he resumes his duties," Gordon said promptly.

Giron showed no elation. "I thank you, highness. But if I am to command the fleet, the situation has reached the point where I must have political information on which to base my strategic plans."

"What do you mean? What is the situation to which you refer?" Gordon asked.

"Our long-range radar has detected very heavy fleet-movements inside the Cloud!" was the sharp answer. "At least four powerful armadas have left their bases in there and are cruising just inside the northern borders of the Cloud."

Giron added, "This suggests strongly that the League of Dark Worlds is planning a surprise attack on us in at least two different directions. In view of that possibility, it is imperative that I make my own fleet dispositions quickly."

He flashed on the familiar stereo-map of the galaxy's great swarm of stars, with its zones of colored light that represented the Mid-Galactic Empire and the star-kingdoms.

"I've got my main forces strung in three divisions on a line here between Rigel and Orion Nebula, each division self-sufficient in battleships, cruisers, phantoms and so on. The Fomalhaut contingent is incorporated in our first division.

"This is our prearranged defense plan, but it counts on the Hercules Barons' and the Polaris Kingdom's fleets resisting any attempt to invade through their realms. It also counts on the Lyra, Cygnus and Cassiopeia fleets joining us immediately when we flash the "ready" signal. But are they going to fulfill their engagements? I must know if the allied Kingdoms are going to stand with us, before I make my dispositions."

Gordon realized the tremendous gravity of the problem that faced Commander Giron far away in that southern void.

"Then you have already sent the 'ready' signal to the allied Kingdoms?" he asked.

"I took that responsibility two hours ago, in view of the alarming League fleet movements inside the Cloud," was Giron's curt answer. "So far, I have had no reply from the star-kingdoms."

Gordon sensed the crucial nature of the moment. "Give me twenty-four more hours, Commander," he asked desperately. "I'll try in that time to get positive commitments from the Barons and the Kingdoms."

"In the meantime, our position here is vulnerable," rasped the Commander. "I suggest that until we are certain of the Kingdoms' allegiance, we should shift our main forces westward toward Rigel to be in position to counter any stroke through Hercules and Polaris."

Gordon nodded quickly. "I leave that decision entirely in your hands. I'll contact you the moment that I have positive news."

Hull Burrell looked at him soberly, as the image of the Commander saluted and vanished.

"Prince Zarth, you'll not get the Kingdoms to stand by their alliance unless you prove to them we can wield the Disruptor!"

"I know," Gordon muttered. He came to a decision. "I'm going to see if my brother can talk to me."

He realized now that as the Antarian had said, only a clear demonstration of the Disruptor would hold the wavering Kingdoms.

Could he dare try to wield that mysterious force? He knew something of its operations from what Jhal Arn had explained, but that something was not enough. If he could only learn more!

The physicians were worried and discouraging when he went to Jhal Arn's apartments.

"Prince Zarth, he's under drugs and is not able to talk to anyone! It would strain his strength-"

"I must see him!" Gordon insisted. "The situation demands it."

He finally had his way but they warned him, "A few minutes is all we can allow, or we must reject all responsibility for whatever may happen."

Jhal Arn opened drugged, hazed eyes when Gordon bent over him. It took him moments to realize what Gordon was saying.

"Jhal, you must try to understand and answer me!" Gordon begged. "I've got to know more about the operation of the Disruptor! You know I told you how Shorr Kan's brain-scanner made me forget."

Jhal Arn's voice was a drowsy murmur. "Strange, it made you forget like that. I thought none of us would ever forget, the way every detail was drilled into us when we were boys."

His whisper trailed weakly, sleepily. "You'll remember it all when you have to, Zarth. The force-cones to be mounted on your ship's prow in a fifty-foot circle, the cables to the transformer follow to the binding-posts of the same color, the power-leads to the generators."

His murmur became so faint that Gordon had to bend his head close. "Get an exact radar fix on the center of your target area. Balance the directional thrust of the cones by the gauges. Only switch in the release when all six directional thrusts are balanced-"

His voice dribbled slowly away, weaker and weaker until it was inaudible. Gordon desperately tried to arouse him.

"Jhal, don't go out on me! I've got to know more than that!"

But Jhal Arn had subsided into a drugged slumber from which he could not be awakened.

Gordon ran it all over in his mind. He knew a little more than he had before.

The procedure of operating the Disruptor was clear. But that wasn't enough. It was like giving a savage of his own time a pistol and telling him how to pull the trigger. The savage might hold the pistol's muzzle in his own face as he pulled that trigger!

"But I've got to pretend at least that I'm going to demonstrate the thing," Gordon thought tensely. "That may hold the envoys of the Kingdoms until I can learn more from Jhal Arn."

He went down with Hull Burrel to that deep-buried level of the palace in which lay the Chamber of the Disruptor.

The Antarian could not enter that corridor of deadly force that was tuned to blast every living being but Jhal Arn and himself. Gordon went in alone, and brought back the brackets for mounting the force-cones.

Hull Burrel looked even at these simple brackets in awe, as they took them up through the palace.

By tubeway, he and Hull Burrel sped to the naval spaceport outside Throon. Val Marlann and his men were waiting by the great, grim bulk of the Ethne.

Gordon handed over the brackets. "These are to be mounted on the prow of the Ethne so that they will form a circle exactly fifty feet in diameter. You'll also make provision for a heavy power connection to the main drive-generators."

Val Marlann's swarthy face stiffened. "You're going to use the Disruptor from the Ethne, highness?" he exclaimed excitedly.

Gordon nodded. "Have your technicians start installing these brackets immediately."

He used the ship's stereo to call Tu Shal, the envoy of Polaris Kingdom. "As you can see, Tu Shal, we are preparing to make the demonstration of the Disruptor. It will take place as soon as possible," Gordon told the ambassador, with assumed confidence.

Tu Shal's troubled face did not lighten. "It should be quickly, highness! Every capital in the galaxy is badly disturbed by rumors of the movements of Cloud fleets!"

Gordon felt almost hopeless, as he sped back to the palace. He couldn't stall like this much longer. And with Jhal Arn still comatose, he couldn't learn more about the Disrupter now.

As night fell, thunder grumbled over the great palace of Throon from an electric storm moving in from the sea. When Gordon went wearily up to his apartments, he glimpsed violet flares of lightning outside its windows, eerily illuminating the looming Glass Mountains.

Lianna was waiting for him there. She greeted him anxiously.

"Zarth, terrifying rumors of impending League attack are being whispered through the palace. It is to be war?"

"Shorr Kan may only be bluffing," he said numbly. "If only things hold off, until-"

He had almost said, until he could get to Earth and re-exchange bodies so the real Zarth could return to bear this fearful responsibility.

"Until Jhal recovers?" Lianna said, misunderstanding. Her face softened. "Zarth, I know the terrible strain all this is to you. But you're proving that you're Arn Abbas' son!"

He wanted to take her into his arms, to bury his face against her cheek. Some of that must have showed in his face, for Lianna's eyes widened a little.

"Zarth!" cried an eager feminine voice.

He and Lianna both turned sharply. Gordon immediately recognized the lovely, dark-haired girl who had entered his rooms.

"Murn!" he exclaimed.

He had almost forgotten this girl who was the real Zarth Arn's secret wife, and whom the real Zarth loved.

Amazement, then incredulity, crossed her face as she looked at Lianna. "Princess Lianna here! I did not dream-"

Lianna said quietly, "There need be no pretense between us three, I know quite well that Zarth Arn loves you, Murn."

Murn colored. She said uncertainly, "I would not have come if I had known-"

"You have more right here than I have," Lianna said calmly. "I shall go."

Gordon made a movement to detain her, but she was already leaving the room.

Murn came toward him and looked up at him anxiously with soft, dark eyes.

"Zarth, before you left Throon you said you would be different when you returned, that all would be with us as before."

"Murn, you will only have to wait a little longer," he told her. "Then all will be as before, I promise you."

"I stll cannot understand," she murmured troubledly. "But I'm happy you're cleared of that awful crime, that you've returned."

She looked at him again with that queer shyness as she left. He knew that Murn still sensed a strangeness about him.

Gordon lay in his bed, and in his mind Lianna, Murn, Jhal Arn and the Disruptor all spun chaotically before he finally slept.

He had slept but two hours when an excited voice awoke him. The storm had broken in full fury upon Throon. Blinding lightning danced continuously over the city, and thunder was bellowing deafeningly.

Hull Burrel was shaking him, and the Antarian's craggy face was dark and taut with excitement.

"The devil's to pay, highness!" he cried. "The Cloud's fleets have come out and crossed our frontier! There's already hard cruiser-fighting beyond Rigel, ships are snuffing out by the scores, and Giron reports that two League fleets are heading toward Hercules!"

25: The Star Kings Decide

Galactic war! The war the galaxy had dreaded, the long-feared struggle to the death between the Empire and the Cloud!

And it had come at this disastrous moment when he, John Gordon of ancient Earth, bore the responsibility of leading the Empire's defense!

Gordon sprang from bed. "League fleets heading toward Hercules? Are the Barons ready to resist?"

"They may not resist at all!" cried Hull Burrel. "Shorr Kan is stereo-casting to them and to all the Kingdoms, warning them that resistance would be useless because the Empire is going to fail!"

"He's telling them that Jhal Arn is too near death to wield the Disruptor, and that you can't use it because you don't know its secret!"

As though the words were a flash illumining an abyss, Gordon suddenly realized that that was why Shorr Kan had finally struck.

Shorr Kan knew that he, John Gordon, was a masquerader inside Zarth Arn's physical body. He knew that Gordon had no knowledge of the Disruptor such as the real Zarth had.

Knowing that, the moment he had heard of Jhal Arn being stricken down, Shorr Kan had launched the League's long-planned attack. He counted on the fact that there was no one now to use the Disruptor against him. He should have realized that was what Shorr Kan would do!

Hull Burrel was shouting on, as Gordon dressed with frantic haste. "That devil is talking by stereo to the star kings right now! You've got to hold them to the Empire!"

Officials, naval officers, excited messengers were already crowding into the room and clamoring wildly for Gordon's attention.

Hull Burrel roughly cleared them from the way as he and Gordon hastened out and raced down through the palace to the study that was the nerve-center of the Mid-Galactic Empire.

All the palace, all Throon, was waking this fateful night! Voices shouted, lights were flashing on, great warships taking off for space could be heard rushing across the storm-swept sky.

In the study, Gordon was momentarily stunned by the many telestereos that blazed with light and movement. Two of them gave view from the bridges of cruisers in the thick of the frontier fighting, shaking to thundering guns and rushing through space ablaze with atom-shells.

But then Gordon's eyes flew toward the stereo on which the dark, dominating image of Shorr Kan stood speaking. His black head bare, his eyes flashing confidently, the Cloud-man was broadcasting.

"-so I repeat, Barons and rulers of the star-kingdoms, that the Cloud's war is not directed against you! Our quarrel is only with the Empire, which has too long sought to dominate the whole galaxy under the guise of working for peaceful federation. We in the League of Dark Worlds have finally struck out against that selfish aggrandizement.

"Our League offers friendship to your Kingdoms! You need not join this struggle and be dragged down to destruction with the Empire. All we ask is that you let our fleets pass through your realms without resistance. And you shall be full, equal members in the real democratic federation of the galaxy which we shall establish when we have conquered.

"For we shall conquer! The Empire will fall. Its forces cannot stand against our mighty new fleets and weapons. Nor can their long-vaunted Disruptor save them now, for they have no one to use it. Jhal Arn, who knows it, lies stricken down-and Zarth Arn does not know how to use it!"

Shorr Kan's voice rang loud with supreme confidence as he emphasized his final declaration.

"Zarth Arn does not know that because he is not really Zarth Arn at all-he is an impostor masquerading as Zarth Arn! I have absolute proof of that! Would I have challenged the Disrupter's menace if I had not? The Empire cannot use that secret, and thus the Empire is doomed. Star kings and Barons, do not join a doomed cause and wreck your own realms!"

Shorr Kan's image faded from the stereo as he concluded that ringing declaration.

"Good God, he must have gone crazy!" gasped Hull Burrel to Gordon. "To claim that you're not really yourself!"

"Prince Zarth!" rang an officer's excited call across the room. "Commander Giron calling-urgent!"

Still stunned by Shorr Kan's audacious stroke to neutralize the Kingdoms, Gordon stumbled hastily to that other stereo.

In its view, Commander Ron Giron and his officers stood on a battleship's bridge, bent over their radar screens. The towering Centaurian veteran turned toward Gordon.

"Highness, what about the star-kingdoms?" he rasped. "We've radar reports that two of the big League fleets that came out of the Cloud are now speeding west toward Hercules and Polaris. Are the Barons and the Kingdoms going to submit to them or resist? We must know that!"

"We'll know that for certain just as soon as I can contact the Kingdoms' envoys," Gordon said desperately. "What is your situation?"

Giron made a curt gesture. "Only our cruiser-screens are fighting so far. Some Cloud phantoms slipped through them and are sniping at our main fleet here back of Rigel, but that's not serious yet.

"What is serious is that I daren't commit my main forces on this southern front if the League is going to flank me through Hercules! If the Barons and the Kingdoms are not going to join us, I'll have to fall far back westward to cover Canopus from that flank thrust."

Gordon, staggered by the moment of awful responsibility, tried to steady his whirling thoughts.

"Avoid commitment of your main forces as long as possible, Giron," he begged. "I'm still hoping to hold the Kingdoms to us."

"If they fail us now, we're in a bad fix!" Giron said grimly. "The League has twice as many ships as we figured! They'll cut around in short order to attack Canopus."

Gordon swung back to Hull Burrel. "Get the ambassadors of the star kings, at once! Bring them here!"

Burrel raced out of the room. But almost at once, he returned.

"The ambassadors are already here! They just arrived!"

Tu Shal and the other envoys of the star-kingdoms crowded into the room a moment later, pale, excited and tense.

Gordon wasted no time on protocol. "You've heard that two of Shorr Kan's fleets are heading for Hercules and Polaris?"

Tu Shal, pallid to the lips, nodded. "The news was brought to us instantly We have heard Shorr Kan's broadcast-"

Gordon interrupted harshly "I demand to know if the Barons are going to resist his invasion or allow him free passage! And I demand to know if the Kingdoms are going to honor their engagements of alliance with the Empire, or surrender to Shorr Kan's threats!"

The deathly-white Lyra ambassador answered. "Our Kingdoms will honor their engagements if the Empire will honor its pledge! When we pledged alliance, it was because the Empire promised to use the Disruptor if necessary to protect us."

"Have I not told you that the Disruptor will be used?" flashed Gordon.

"You promised that but you evaded demonstrating it!" cried the Polaris envoy. "Why should you do that if you know the secret? Suppose that Shorr Kan is right and that you are an impostor-then we'd be throwing our realms away in a useless fight!"

Hull Burrel, carried away by anger, uttered a roar. "Do you believe for a moment Shorr Kan's fantastic lie that Prince Zarth is an impostor?"

"Is it a lie?" demanded Tu Shal, gazing fixedly at Gordon's face. "Shorr Kan must know something to assure him the Disruptor won't be used, or he'd never have risked this attack!"

"Curse it, you can see for yourself that he's Zarth Arn, can't you?" raged the Antarian captain.

"Scientific cunning can enable one man to masquerade in the disguise of another!" snapped the Hercules envoy.

Gordon, desperate in the face of this final terrible stumbling-block, seized upon an idea that crossed his mind.

"Hull, be still!" he ordered. "Tu Shal and you others, listen to me. If I prove to you that I am Zarth Arn and that I can and will use the Disruptor, will your Kingdoms stand by the Empire?"

"Polaris Kingdom will!" exclaimed that envoy instantly. "Prove that and I'll flash instant word to our capital."

Others chimed in swiftly, with the same assurance. And the Hercules ambassador added, "We Barons of the Cluster want to resist the Cloud, if it's not hopeless. Prove that it isn't, and we'll fight!"

"I can prove in five minutes that I am the real Zarth Arn!" rasped Gordon, "Follow me! Hull, you come too!"

Bewilderedly, they hastened after Gordon as he went out of the room and down through the corridors and ramps of the palace.

They came thus down the spiral stair to the hall from which extended that corridor of throbbing deadly white radiance that led to the Chamber of the Disruptor.

Gordon turned to the bewildered envoys. "You all must know what that corridor is?"

Tu Shal answered. "All the galaxy has heard of it. It leads to the Chamber of the Disrupter."

"Can any man go through that corridor to the Disruptor unless he is one of the royal family entrusted with it?" Gordon pressed.

The envoys began to understand now. "No!" exclaimed the Polarian. "Everyone knows that only the heirs of the Empire's rulers can enter the Wave that is tuned to destroy anyone except them."

"Then watch!" Gordon cried, and stepped into the radiant corridor.

He strode down it into the Chamber of the Disruptor. He grasped one of the big gray metal forcecones. Upon the wheeled platform on which it rested, he wheeled that cone back out of the chamber and the corridor.

"Now do you believe that I'm an impostor?" he demanded.

"By Heaven, no!" cried Tu Shal. "No one but the real Zarth Arn could have entered that corridor and lived!"

"Then you are Zarth Arn, and you do know how to use the Disruptor!" another cried.

Gordon saw that he had convinced them. They had thought it possible that he might be another man disguised as Zarth Arn. And they knew now that that could not be so.

What they had not even dreamed, what even Shorr Kan had not told lest it meet utter disbelief, was that he was Zarth Arn in physical body but another man in mind!

Gordon pointed to the big force-cone. "That is part of the Disruptor apparatus. The rest of it I'll bring out, to be mounted at once on the battleship Ethne. And then that ship goes with me out to use the Disruptor's awful power and crush the League's attack!"

Gordon had decided, had in these minutes of strain made his fateful choice.

He would try to use the Disruptor! He knew its operation from Jhal Arn's explanations, even if its purpose and power were still a dread mystery to him. He would risk catastrophe to use it.

For it was his own strange imposture, involuntary though it had been, that had brought the Empire to this brink of disaster. It was his responsibility, his duty to the real Zarth Arn, to attempt this.

Tu Shal's aging face flamed. "Prince Zarth, if you intend thus to keep the Empire's pledge, we will keep our pledge! Polaris Kingdom will fight with the Empire against the Cloud!"

"And Lyra! And we Barons!" rang the eager, excited voices. "We'll flash word to our capitals that you're going out with the Disruptor to join the struggle!"

"Send that word at once, then!" Gordon told them. "Have your Kingdoms place their fleets under Commander Giron's orders!"

And as the excited ambassadors hurried back up the stairs to send their messages, Gordon turned to Hull Burrel.

"Call the Ethne's technicians here with a squad of guards, Hull. I'll bring out the apparatus of the Disruptor and it can be taken at once to the Ethne."

Back and forth into the silent, radiant Chamber, Gordon now hastened, bringing out one by one the big, mysterious cones. He had to do this himself-no one else except Jhal Arn could enter there.

By the time he wheeled out the bulky cubical transformer, Hull Burrel was back with Captain Val Marlann and his technicians.

Working hastily, but handling the apparatus with a gingerliness that betrayed their dread, the men loaded the equipment into tubeway cars.

A half-hour later they stood in the naval spaceport beneath the shadow of the mighty Ethne. It and two other battleships were the only major units left here, the others already on their way to join the epochal struggle.

Under the flare of lightning and crash of thunder and rain, the technicians labored to bolt the big force-cones to the brackets already in place around the prow of the battleship. The tips of the cones pointed forward, and their cables were brought back through the hull into the navigation-room behind the bridge.

Gordon had had the cubical transformer with its control-panel set up here. He directed the hooking of the colored cables to the panel as Jhal Arn had explained. The massive power-leads were hastily run back and attached to the mighty drive-generators of the ship.

"Ready for take-off in ten minutes!" Val Marlann reported, his face gleaming with sweat.

Gordon was shaking with strain. "One last check of the cones. There's time for it."

He raced out into the storm, peering up at the huge, overhanging prow of the warship. The twelve cones fastened up there seemed tiny, puny.

Impossible to think that this little apparatus could produce any such vast effect as men expected! And yet-

"Take-off, two minutes!" yelled Hull Burrel from the gangway, over the din of alarm bells and shouts of hurrying men. Gordon turned. And as he did so, through the confusion a slim figure ran toward him.

"Lianna!" he cried. "Good God, why-" She came into his arms. Her face was white, tear-wet, as she raised it to him.

"Zarth, I had to come before you left! If you didn't come back, I wanted you to know-I still love you! I always will, even though I know it's Murn you love!"

Gordon groaned, as he held her in his arms with his cheek against her tear-wet face.

"Lianna! Lianna! I can't promise for the future, you may find all things changed between us in the future, but I tell you now that it is you I love!"

A wave of final, bitter heartbreak seemed to surge up in him at this last moment of wild farewell.

For it was farewell forever, Gordon knew! Even if he survived the battle, it must not be he but the real Zarth Arn who would come back to Throon. And if he didn't survive-"Prince Zarth!" yelled Hull Burrel's hoarse voice in his ear. "It is time!"

Gordon, as he tore away, had a swift vision of Lianna's white face and shining eyes that he would never forget. For he knew that it was his last.

And then Hull Burrel was dragging him bodily up the gangway, doors were grinding shut, great turbines thundering, bells ringing sharp signals down the corridors.

"Take off" warned the annunciators shrilly, and with a crash of splitting air the Ethne zoomed for the storm-swept heavens.

Upward it roared, and with it raced the other two battleships, bolting like metal things of thought up across the star-sown sky.

"Giron's calling!" Hull Burrel was shouting in his ear as they stumbled forward along the corridors. "Heavy fighting now near Rigel! And the League's eastern fleets are forcing through!"

In the navigation-room where Gordon had set up the Disruptor apparatus, Commander Giron's grim image flashed from a telestereo.

Over the Commander's shoulder Gordon glimpsed a bridge-room window that looked out on a space literally alive with an inferno of bursting atom-shells, of exploding ships.

Giron's voice was cool but swift. "We've joined fleet action with the League's two eastern forces. And we're suffering prohibitive losses. The enemy has some new weapon that seems to strike down our ships from within-we can't understand it."

Gordon started. "The new weapon that Shorr Kan boasted to me about! How does it operate?"

"We don't know!" was the answer. "Ships suddenly drift out of action all around us, and don't answer our calls."

Giron added, "The Barons report their fleet is moving out east of the Cluster to oppose the Cloud's two fleets coming toward them. The fleets of Lyra, Polaris and the other allied Kingdoms are already coming down full speed from the northwest to join my command."

The Commander concluded grimly, "But this new weapon of the League, whatever it is, is decimating us! I'm withdrawing west but they're hammering us hard, and their phantoms keep getting through. I feel it my duty to warn that we can't fight long in the face of such losses."

Gordon told him, "We're coming out with the Disrupter and we're going to use it! But it'll take many hours for us to reach the scene."

He tried to think, before he gave orders. He remembered what Jhal Arn had said, that the target area of the Disruptor's force must be as limited as possible.

"Giron, to utilize the Disrupter it is imperative that the League's fleets be maneuvered together. Can you somehow do that?"

Giron rasped answer. "The only chance I have of doing that is to retreat slightly southwestward from this branch of the attack, as though I meant to go to the aid of the Barons. That might draw the Cloud's two attacking forces together."

"hen try it!" Gordon urged. "Fall back southwestward and give me an approximate position for rendezvous with you."

"Just west of Deneb should be the approximate position by the time you get here," Giron answered. "God knows how much of our fleet will be left then if this new Cloud weapon keeps striking us down!"

Giron switched off, but in other telestereos unfolded the battle that was going on all along the line near distant Rigel.

Beside the ships that perished in the inferno of atom-shells and the stabbing attack of stealthy phantom-cruisers, the radar screen showed many Empire ships suddenly drifting out of action.

"What in the devil's name has the Cloud got that can disable our warships like that?" sweated Hull Burrel.

"Whatever it is, it's smashing in Giron's wings fast," muttered Val Marlann tensely. "His withdrawal may become a rout!"

Gordon turned from the dazing, bewildering stereos that showed the battle, and glanced haggardly through the bridge windows.

The Ethne was already hurtling at increasing velocity past the smaller Argo suns, speeding southward toward the Armageddon of the galaxy.

Gordon felt overwhelmed by dread, a panicky reaction. He had no place in this titanic conflict of future ages! He had been mad to make the impulsive decision to try to use the Disrupter!

He use the Disrupter? How could he, when he knew so little of it? How dared he unchain the ghastly power which its own discoverer had warned could rive and destroy the galaxy itself?

26: Battle Between the Stars

Throbbing, droning, quivering in every girder to the thrust of its mighty drive-jet, the Ethne and its two companion ships raced southward across the starry spaces of the galaxy.

For hour on hour, the three great battleships had rushed at their highest speed toward the fateful rendezvous near the distant spark of Deneb, toward which the Empire forces were retreating.

"The Barons are fighting!" Hull Burrel cried to Gordon from the telestereo into which he was peering with flaming eyes. "God, look at the battle off the Cluster!"

"They should be drawing back by now toward the Deneb region as Giron's forces are doing!" Gordon exclaimed.

He was stunned by the telestereo scene. Transmitted from one of the Cluster ships in the thick of that great battle, it presented an almost incomprehensible vista of mad conflict.

To the eye, there was little design or purpose in the struggle. The star-decked vault of space near the gigantic ball of suns of Hercules Cluster seemed pricked with tiny flares. Tiny flares, shining forth swiftly and as swiftly vanishing! And each of those flares was the bursting of an atomic broadside far in space!

Gordon could not completely visualize that awful battle. This warfare of the far future was too strange for him to supply from experience the whole meaning of that dance of brilliant death-flares between the stars. This warfare, in which ships far, far apart groped for each other with radar beams and fired their mighty atom-guns by instant mechanical computation, seemed alien and unearthly to him.

The pattern of the battle he witnessed began slowly to emerge. The will-o'-the-wisp dance of flares was moving slowly back toward the titanic sun-swarm of the Cluster. The battle-line was crackling and sparkling north and northwest of the great sun-cluster now.

"They're pulling back, as Giron ordered!" Hull Burrel exclaimed. "Good God, half the Barons' fleet must be destroyed by now."

Val Marlann, captain of the Ethne, was like a caged tiger as he paced back and forth between the stereos.

"Look at what's happening to Giron's main fleet retreating from Rigel!" he said hoarsely. "They're hammering it like mad now. Our losses must be tremendous!"

The stereo at which he glared showed Gordon the similar, bigger whirl of death-flares withdrawing westward from Rigel.

He thought numbly that it was as well he couldn't visualize this awful Armageddon of the galaxy as the others could. It might well shake his nerve disastrously, and he had to keep cool now.

"How long before we'll rendezvous with Giron's fleet and the Barons'?" he cried to Val Marlann.

"Twelve hours, at least," said the other tautly. "And God knows if there'll be any of the Barons' ships left to join up."

"Curse Shorr Kan and his fanatics!" swore Hull, his craggy face crimson with passion. "All these years, they've been building ships and devising new weapons for this war of conquest!"

Gordon went back across the room, to the control-board of the Disrupter apparatus. For the hundredth time since leaving Throon, he rehearsed the method of releasing the mysterious force.

"But what does that force do when I release it?" he wondered again, tensely. "Does it act as a giant beam of lethal waves, or a zone of annihilation for solid matter?"

Vain speculation! It could hardly be those things. Brenn Bir would not have left solemn warning that it could destroy the galaxy, if it were!

Hours of awful strain passed as the Ethne's little squadron drew nearer the scene of the titan struggle. Every hour had seen the position of the Empire's forces growing worse.

Giron, retreating southwestward to join the battered Hercules fleet still fighting off the Cluster, had been Joined finally by the Lyra, Polaris and Cygnus fleets near the Ursa Nebula.

The Empire commander had turned on the pursuing League armada and had fought savagely there for two hours, a staggering rearguard action that had involved both forces in the glowing Nebula.

Then Gordon heard Giron ordering the action broken off. The order, in secret scrambler-code like all naval messages, came from their own stereos.

"Captain Sandrell, Lyra Division-pull out of the Nebula! The enemy is forcing a column between you and the Cygnus Division!"

The Lyra commander's desperate answer flashed. "Their phantoms have piled up the head of our column. But I'll-"

The message was abruptly interrupted, the stereo going dark. Gordon heard Giron vainly calling Sandrell, with no response.

"It's what happens over and over!" raged Hull Burrel. "An Empire ship reports phantoms near, and then suddenly its report breaks off and the ship drifts silent and disabled!"

"Shorr Kan's new weapon!" gritted Val Marlann: "If we only had an idea what it is!"

Gordon suddenly remembered what Shorr Kan had told him, when he had boasted of that weapon in Thallarna.

"-it's a weapon that can strike down enemy warships from inside them!"

Gordon repeated that to the others and cried, "Maybe I'm crazy but it seems to me the only way they could strike down a ship from inside is by getting a force-beam of some kind in on the ship's own stereo beams! Every ship that has been stricken has been stereoing at the time!"

"Hull, it could be!" cried Val Marlann. "If they can tap onto our stereos and use them as carrier-beams right into our own ships-"

He sprang to the stereo and hastily called Giron and told him their suspicion.

"If you use squirt transmission on our scrambler code it may baffle their new weapon!" Val Marlann concluded. "They won't be able to get a tap on our beams in time. And keep damper-equipment in your stereo-rooms in case they do get through."

Giron nodded understandingly. "We'll try it. I'll order all our ships to use only momentary transmission, and assemble messages from the squirts on recorders."

Val Marlann ordered men with "dampers," the generators of blanketing electric fields that could smother dangerous radiation, to stand by near their own stereos.

Already, the Empire ships were obeying the order and were "squirting" their messages in bursts of a few seconds each.

"It's helping-far fewer of our ships are being disabled now!" Giron reported. "But we've been badly battered and the Baron's fleet is just a remnant. Shall we fall back south into the Cluster?"

"No!" Gordon cried. "We daren't use the Disrupter inside the Cluster. You must hold them near Deneb."

"We'll try," Giron said grimly. "But unless you get here in the next four hours, there'll not be many of us left to hold."

"Four hours?" sweated Val Marlann. "I don't know if we can! The Ethne's turbines are running on overload now!"

As the Ethne's small squadron rushed on southward toward the white beacon of Deneb, the great battle east of the star was reeling back toward it.

Death-dance of flaring, falling star-ships moved steadily westward through the galaxy spaces! Up from the south, the battered remnants of the Barons' valiant fleet was coming to join with the Empire and Kingdoms' fleets for the final struggle.

Armageddon of the galaxy, in truth! For now the triumphant two main forces of the Cloud were joining together in the east and rushing forward in their final overwhelming attack.

Gordon saw in the telestereo and radar screens this climactic struggle which the Ethne had almost reached.

"A half hour more-we might make it, we might!" muttered Val Marlann through stiff lips.

The watch officer at the main radar screen suddenly yelled. "Phantoms on our port side!"

Things happened then with rapidity that bewildered John Gordon. Even as he glimpsed the Cloud phantom-cruisers suddenly unmasking in the radar screen, there was a titan flare in space to their left.

"One of our escort gone!" cried Hull Burrel. "Ah!"

The guns of the Ethne, triggered by mechanical computers swifter than any human mind could be, were going off thunderously.

Space around them flashed blinding bright with the explosion of heavy atom-shells which barely missed them. Two distant flares burgeoned up and died, an instant later.

"We got two of them!" Hull cried. "The rest have darked out and they won't dare come out of dark-out again."

Giron's voice came from the stereo, the "squirt" transmission being pieced together by recorders to make a normal message.

"Prince Zarth, the League armada is flanking us and within the hour they'll cut us to pieces!"

Gordon cried answer. "You've got to hold on a little longer, until-"

At that instant, in the stereo-image, Giron vanished and was replaced by pallid, black-uniformed men who raised heavy rod-shaped weapons in quick aim.

"Cloud-men! Those League phantoms have tapped our beam and are using Shorr Kan's new weapon!" screeched Burrel.

A bolt of ragged blue lightning shot from the rod-like weapon of the foremost Cloud-man in the stereo. That flash of force shot over Gordon's head and tore through the metal wall.

Invasion of the ship by stereo-images! Images that could destroy them, by that blue bolt that used the stereo-beam as carrier!

It lasted but a few seconds, then the "squirt" switch functioned and the Cloud-men images and their weapons disappeared.

"So that's how they do it!" cried Burrel. "No wonder they got half our ships with it before we found out about it!"

"Turn on those dampers, quick!" ordered Val Marlann. "We're likely to get another burst from the stereo any moment!"

Gordon felt the hair on his neck bristling as the Ethne rushed now into the zone of battle itself. An awful moment was approaching.

Giron had the Empire and Kingdom ships massed in a short defensive line with its left flank pinned on Deneb's great, glaring white mass. The heavier columns of the League fleets were pressing it in a crackling fire of flaring ships, seeking to roll up the right flank.

Space seemed an inferno of dying ships, of flames dancing between the stars, as the Ethne fought forward to the front of the battle. Its own guns were thundering at the Cloud phantoms that were hanging to it steadily, repeatedly emerging from dark-out to attack.

"Giron, we're here!" Gordon called. "Now spread your line out thinner and withdraw at full speed."

"If we do that, the League fleets will bunch together and tear through our thinner line like paper!" protested Giron.

"That's just what I want, to bunch the League ships as much as possible!" Gordon replied. "Quick, we'll-"

Again, the stereo-image of Giron suddenly was replaced by a Cloud-man with the rod-shaped weapon.

The weapon loosed a blue bolt-but the bolt died, smothered by the fields of the "dampers." Then the "squirt" switch functioned again to cut the stereo.

"The way they've cut our communications would be enough alone to decide the battle!" groaned Hull Burrel.

In the radar screen, Gordon tensely watched the maneuver that was now rapidly taking place in space before them.

Giron's columns were falling back westward swiftly, turning to run and spreading out thinly as they did so.

"Here comes the League fleet!" cried Val Marlann. Gordon too saw them in the screen, the massed specks that were thousands of League warships less than twelve parsecs away.

They were coming on in pursuit but they were not bunching as he had hoped. They merely held a somewhat shorter and thicker line than before.

He knew that he'd have to act anyway. He couldn't let them get closer before unloosing the Disruptor, remembering Jhal Arn's caution.

"Hold the Ethne here and point it exactly at the center of the League battle-line," Gordon ordered hoarsely.

Giron's fleet was now behind them, as the Ethne remained facing the oncoming League armada.

Gordon was at the control-panel of the Disruptor transformer. He threw in the six switches of the bank, turning each rheostat four notches.

The gauge-needles began to creep across the dials. The generators of the mighty battleship roared louder and louder as the mysterious apparatus sucked unimaginable amperage from them.

Was that power being stored somehow in the force-cones on the prow? And what had Jhal Arn told him? Gordon tried to remember.

"-the six directional gauges must exactly balance if the thrust is not to create disaster!"

The gauges did not balance. He frantically touched this rheostat, then that one. The needles were creeping up toward the red critical marks, but some were too fast, too fast!

Gordon felt beads of sweat on his face, felt stiff with superhuman strain as the others watched him. He couldn't do this! He dared not loose this thing in blind ignorance!

"Their columns are coming fast-eight parsecs away now!" Val Marlann warned tightly.

Three, then four of the needles, were on the red. But the others were short. Gordon hastily notched up their rheostats.

They were all above the red mark now but did not exactly match. The Ethne was shaking wildly from the thunder of its straining turbines. The air seemed electric with an awful tension.

The needles matched! Each was in the red zone on the gauge, each at the same figure-

"Now!" cried Gordon hoarsely, and threw shut the main release-switch.

27: The Disruptor

Pale, ghostly beams stabbed out from the prow of the Ethne toward the dim region of space ahead. Those pallid rays seemed almost to creep slowly forward, fanning out as they did so.

Gordon, Hull Burrel and Val Marlann crouched at the window frozen and incapable of movement as they looked ahead. And there seemed no change.

Then the massed specks in the radar screen that marked the position of the Cloud fleet's advancing line seemed to waver slightly. A flicker seemed to run through that area.

"Nothing's happening!" Burrel groaned. "Nothing! The thing must be-"

A point of blackness had appeared far ahead. It grew and grew, pulsing and throbbing.

And swiftly it was a great, growing blot of blackness, not the blackness of mere absence of light but such living, quivering blackness as no living man had ever seen.

On the radar screen, the area that included half the Cloud fleet's advancing battle-line had been swallowed by darkness! For there was a black blot on the screen too, a blot from which radar-rays recoiled.

"God in Heaven!" cried Val Marlann, shaking. "The Disruptor is destroying space itself in that area!"

The awful, the unimaginable answer to the riddle of the Disruptor's dread power flashed through Gordon's quaking mind at last!

He still did not understand, he would never understand, the scientific method of it. But the effect of it burst upon him. The Disrupter was a force that annihilated, not matter, but space!

The space-time continuum of our cosmos was four-dimensional, a four-dimensioned globe floating in the extra-dimensional abyss. The thrust of the Disruptor's awful beams destroyed a growing section of that sphere by thrusting it out of the cosmos!

It flashed across Gordon's appalled mind in a second. He was suddenly afraid! He convulsively ripped open the release-switch of the thing. Then as the next second ticked, the universe seemed to go mad.

Titan hands seemed to bat the Ethne through space with raving power. They glimpsed stars and space gone crazy, the huge glaring white mass of Deneb heaving-wildly through the void, comets and dark-stars and meteor-drift of the void streaming insanely in the sky.

Gordon, hurled against a wall, quaked in his soul as the universe seemed to rise in mad vengeance against the puny men who had dared to lay desecrating hands on the warp and woof of eternal space.

Gordon came back to dull awareness many minutes later. The Ethne was whirling and tossing on furious etheric storms, but the starry vault of space seemed to have quieted from its insane convulsion.

Val Marlann, blood streaming from a great bruise on his temple, was clinging to a stanchion and shouting orders into the annunciator.

He turned a ghastly white face. "The turbines are holding and the disturbances are quieting. That convulsion nearly threw our ships into Deneb, and quaked the stars in this whole part of the galaxy!"

"The back-lash reaction!" Gordon choked. "It was that-the surrounding space collapsing upon the hole in space the Disrupter made."

Hull Burrel hung over the radar screen.

"Only half the Cloud ships were destroyed in the convulsion!"

Gordon shuddered. "I can't use the Disrupter again! I won't!"

"You won't have to!" Burrel said eagerly. "The remainder of their fleet is fleeing back in panic toward the Cloud!"

They were not to be blamed, Gordon thought sickly. To have space itself go mad and collapse around one-he would never have dared unloose that force if he had known.

"I know now why Brenn Bir warned never to use the Disruptor lightly!" he said hoarsely. "Pray God it never will be used at all again."

Calls came from the stereo thick and fast, stunned inquiries from Giron's ships.

"What happened?" cried the shaken Commander over and over.

Hull Burrel had not lost sight of their goal, of what they must do.

"The League fleet's in full flight toward the Cloud, or what's left of them are!" he told the Commander exultantly. "If we follow we can smash them once and for all!"

Giron too fired at the opportunity. "I'll order the pursuit at once."

Back across the galactic spaces toward the shelter of the Cloud, the remnants of the League fleet were streaming. And after them, hour by hour, sped the Ethne and the Empire's battered fleet.

"They're finished, if we can smash Shorr Kan's rule and destroy their remaining ships!" Burrel exulted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

28: Star-Rover's Return

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Gordon! John Gordon!"

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

"Lianna!"

"Yes, John Gordon, it is I!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

QUEEN OF THE MARTIAN CATACOMBS

For hours the hard-pressed beast had fled across the Martian desert with its dark rider. Now it was spent. It faltered and broke stride, and when the rider cursed and dug his heels into the scaly sides, the brute only turned its head and hissed at him. It stumbled on a few more paces into the lee of a sandhill, and there it stopped, crouching down in the dust.

The man dismounted. The creature's eyes burned like green lamps in the light of the little moons, and he knew that it was no use trying to urge it on. He looked back, the way he had come.

In the distance there were four black shadows grouped together in the barren emptiness. They were running fast. In a few minutes they would be upon him.

He stood still, thinking what he should do next. Ahead, far ahead, was a low ridge, and beyond the ridge lay Valkis and safety, but he could never make it now. Off to his right, a lonely tor stood up out of the blowing sand. There were tumbled rocks at its foot.

'They tried to run me down in the open,' he thought. Tut here, by the Nine Hells, they'll have to work for it!'

He moved then, running toward the tor with a lightness and speed incredible in anything but an animal or a savage. He was of Earth stock, built tall, and more massive than he looked by reason of his leanness. The desert wind was bitter cold, but he did not seem to notice it, though he wore only a ragged shirt of Venusian spider silk, open to the waist. His skin was almost as dark as his black hair, burned indelibly by years of exposure to some terrible sun. His eyes were startlingly light in colour, reflecting back the pale glow of the moons.

With the practised ease of a lizard he slid in among the loose and treacherous rocks. Finding a vantage point, where his back was protected by the tor itself, he crouched down.

After that he did not move, except to draw his gun. There was something eerie about his utter stillness, a quality of patience as unhuman as the patience of the rock that sheltered him.

The four black shadows came closer, resolved themselves into mounted men.

They found the beast, where it lay panting, and stopped. The line of the man's footprints, already blurred by the wind but still plain enough, showed where he had gone.

The leader motioned. The others dismounted. Working with the swift precision of soldiers, they removed equipment from their saddle-packs and began to assemble it.

The man crouching under the tor saw the thing that took shape. It was a Banning shocker, and he knew that he was not going to fight his way out of this trap. His pursuers were out of range of his own weapon. They would remain so. The Banning, with its powerful electric beam, would take him – dead or senseless, as they wished.

He thrust the useless gun back into his belt. He knew who these men were, and what they wanted with him. They were officers of the Earth Police Control, bringing him a gift – twenty years in the Luna cell-blocks.

Twenty years in the grey catacombs, buried in the silence and the eternal dark.

He recognised the inevitable. He was used to inevitables – hunger, pain, loneliness, the emptiness of dreams. He had accepted a lot of them in his time. Yet he made no move to surrender. He looked out at the desert and the night sky, and his eyes blazed, the desperate, strangely beautiful eyes of a creature very close to the roots of life, something less and more than man. His hands found a shard of rock and broke it.

The leader of the four men rode slowly toward the tor, his right arm raised.

His voice carried clearly on the wind. 'Eric John Stark!' he called, and the dark man tensed in the shadows.

The rider stopped. He spoke again, but this time in a different tongue. It was no dialect of Earth, Mars or Venus, but a strange speech, as harsh and vital as the blazing Mercurian valleys that bred it.

'Oh N'Chaka, oh Man-without-a-tribe, I call you!'

There was a long silence. The rider and his mount were motionless under the low moons, waiting.

Eric John Stark stepped slowly out from the pool of blackness under the tor.

'Who calls me N'Chaka?'

The rider relaxed somewhat. He answered in English, 'You know perfectly well who I am, Eric. May we meet in peace?' Stark shrugged. 'Of course.'

He walked on to meet the rider, who had dismounted, leaving his beast behind. He was a slight, wiry man, this EP C officer, with the rawhide look of the frontiers still on him. His hair was grizzled and his sun-blackened skin was deeply lined, but there was nothing in the least aged about his hard good-humoured face nor his remarkably keen dark eyes.

'It's been a long time, Eric,' he said.

Stark nodded. 'Sixteen years.' The two men studied each other for a moment, and then Stark said, 'I thought you were still on Mercury, Ashton.'

'They've called all us experienced hands in to Mars.' He held out cigarettes. 'Smoke?'

Stark took one. They bent over Ashton's lighter, and then stood there smoking while the wind blew red dust over their feet and the three men of the patrol waited quietly beside the Banning. Ashton was taking no chances. The electro-beam could stun without injury.

Presently Ashton said, 'I'm going to be crude, Eric. I'm going to remind you of some things.'

'Save it,' Stark retorted. 'You've got me. There's no need to talk about it.'

'Yes,' said Ashton, 'I've got you, and a damned hard time I've had doing it. That's why I'm going to talk about it.'

His dark eyes met Stark's cold stare and held it.

'Remember who I am – Simon Ashton. Remember who came along when the miners in that valley on Mercury had a wild boy in a cage, and were going to finish him off like they had the tribe that raised him. Remember all the years after that, when I brought that boy up to be a civilised human being.'

Stark laughed, not without a certain humour. 'You should have left me in the cage. I was caught a little old for civilising.'

'Maybe. I don't think so. Anyway, I'm reminding you,' Ashton said.

Stark said, with no particular bitterness, 'You don't have to get sentimental. I know it's your job to take me in.'

Ashton said deliberately, 'I won't take you in, Eric, unless you make me.' He went on then, rapidly, before Stark could answer. 'You've got a twenty-year sentence hanging over you, for running guns to the Middle-Swamp tribes when they revolted against Terro-Venusian Metals, and a couple of similar jobs.

'All right. So I know why you did it, and I won't say I don't agree with you. But you put yourself outside the law, and that's that. Now you're on your way to Valkis. You're headed into a mess that'll put you on Luna for life, the next time you're caught.'

'And this time you don't agree with me.'

'No. Why do you think I near broke my neck to catch you before you got there?' Ashton bent closer, his face very intent. 'Have you made any deal with Delgaun of Valkis? Did he send for you?'

'He sent for me, but there's no deal yet. I'm on the beach. Broke. I got a message from this Delgaun, whoever he is, that there was going to be a private war back in the Drylands, and he'd pay me to help fight it. After all, that's my business.'

Ashton shook his head.

'This isn't a private war, Eric. It's something a lot bigger and nastier than that. The Martian Council of City-States and the Earth Commission are both in a cold sweat, and no one can find out exactly what's going on. You know what the Low-Canal towns are – Valkis, Jekkara, Barakesh. No law-abiding Martian, let alone an Earthman, can last five minutes in them. And the back-blocks are absolutely verboten. So all we get is rumours.

'Fantastic rumours about a barbarian chief named Kynon, who seems to be promising heaven and earth to the tribes of Kesh and Shun – some wild stuff about the ancient cult of the Ramas thateverybody thought was dead a thousand years ago. We know that Kynon is tied up somehow with Delgaun, who is a most efficient bandit, and we know that some of the top criminals of the whole System are filtering in to join up. Knighton and Walsh of Terra, Themis of Mercury, Arrod of Callisto Colony – and, I believe, your old comrade in arms, Luthar the Venusian.'

Stark gave a slight start, and Ashton smiled briefly.

'Oh, yes,' he said. 'I heard about that.' Then he sobered. 'You can figure that set-up for yourself, Eric. The barbarians are going to go out and fight some kind of a holy war, to suit the entirely unholy purposes of men like Delgaun and the others.

'Half a world is going to be raped, blood is going to run deep in the Drylands – and it will all be barbarian blood spilled for a lying promise, and the carrion crows of Valkis will get fat on it. Unless, somehow, we can stop it.'

He paused, then said flatly, 'I want you to go on to Valkis, Eric – but as my agent. I won't put it on the grounds that you'd be doing civilisation a service. You don't owe anything to civilisation, Lord knows. But you might save a lot of your own kind of people from getting slaughtered to say nothing of the border-state Martians who'll be the first to get Kynon's axe.

'Also, you could wipe that twenty-year hitch on Luna off the slate, maybe even work up a desire to make a man of yourself, instead of a sort of tiger wandering from one kill to the next.' He added, 'If you live.'

Stark said slowly, 'You're clever, Ashton. You know I've got a feeling for all planetary primitives like those who raised me, and you appeal to that.'

'Yes,' said Ashton, 'I'm clever. But I'm not a liar. What I've told you is true.'

Stark carefully ground out the cigarette beneath his heel. Then he looked up. 'Suppose I agree to become your agent in this, and go off to Valkis. What's to prevent me from forgetting all about you, then?'

Ashton said softly, 'Your word, Eric. You get to know a man pretty well when you know him from boyhood on up. Your word is enough.'

There was a silence, and then Stark held out his hand. 'All right, Simon – but only for this one deal. After that, no promises.' 'Fair enough.' They shook hands.

'I can't give you any suggestions,' Ashton said. 'You're on your own, completely. You can get in touch with me through the Earth Commission office in Tarak. You know where that is?'

Stark nodded. 'On the Dryland Border.'

'Good luck to you, Eric.'

He turned, and they walked back together to where the three men waited. Ashton nodded, and they began to dismantle the Banning. Neither they nor Ashton looked back, as they rode away.

Stark watched them go. He filled his lungs with the cold air, and stretched. Then he roused the beast out of the sand. It had rested, and was willing to carry him again as long as he did not press it. He set off again, across the desert.

The ridge grew as he approached it, looming into a low mountain chain much worn by the ages. A pass opened before him, twisting between the hills of barren rock.

He traversed it, coming out at the farther end above the basin of a dead sea. The lifeless land stretched away into darkness, a vast waste of desolation more lonely even than the desert. And between the sea-bottom and the foothills, Stark saw the lights of Valkis.

There were many lights, far below. Tiny pinpricks of flame where torches burned in the streets beside the Low-Canal – the thread of black water that was all that remained of a forgotten ocean.

Stark had never been here before. Now he looked at the city that sprawled down the slope under the low moons, and shivered, the primitive twitching of the nerves that an animal feels in the presence of death.

For the streets where the torches flared were only a tiny part of Valkis. The life of the city had flowed downward from the cliff-tops, following the dropping level of the sea. Five cities, the oldest scarcely recognisable as a place of human habitation. Five harbours, the docks and quays still standing, half buried in the dust.

Five ages of Martian history, crowned on the topmost level with the ruined palace of the old pirate kings of Valkis. The towers still stood, broken but indomitable, and in the moonlight they had a sleeping look, as though they dreamed of blue water and the sound of waves, and of tall ships coming in heavy with treasure.

Stark picked his way slowly down the steep descent. There was something fascinating to him in the stone houses, roofless and silent in the night. The paving blocks still showed the rutting of wheels where carters had driven to the marketplace, and princes had gone by in gilded chariots. The quays were scarred where ships had lain against them, rising and falling with the tides.

Stark's senses had developed in a strange school, and the thin veneer of civilisation he affected had not dulled them. Now it seemed to him that the wind had the echoes of voices in it, and the smell of spices and fresh-spilled blood.

He was not surprised when, in the last level above the living town, armed men came out of the shadows and stopped him.

They were lean, dark men, very wiry and light of foot, and their faces were the faces of wolves – not primitive wolves at all, but beasts of prey that had been civilised for so many thousands of years that they could afford to forget it.

They were most courteous, and Stark would not have cared to disobey their request.

He gave his name. 'Delgaun sent for me.'

The leader of the Valkisians nodded his narrow head. 'You're expected.' His sharp eyes had taken in every feature of the Earthman, and Stark knew that his description had been memorised down to the last detail. Valkis guarded its doors with care.

'Ask in the city,' said the sentry. 'Anyone can direct you to the palace.'

Stark nodded and went on, down through the long-dead streets in the moonlight and the silence.

With shocking suddenness, he was plunged into the streets of the living.

It was very late now, but Valkis was awake and stirring. Seething, rather. The narrow twisting ways were crowded. The laughter of women came down from the flat roofs. Torchlight flared, gold and scarlet, lighting the wineshops, making blacker the shadows of the alley-mouths.

Stark left his beast at a serai on the edge of the canal. The paddocks were already jammed. Stark recognized the long-legged brutes of the Dryland breed, and as he left a caravan passed him, coming in, with a jangling of bronze bangles and a great hissing and stamping in the dust.

The riders were tall barbarians – Keshi, Stark thought, from the way they braided their tawny hair. They wore plain leather, and their blue-eyed women rode like queens.

Valkis was full of them. For days, it seemed, they must have poured in across the dead sea bottom, from the distant oases and the barren deserts of the back-blocks. Brawny warriors of Kesh and Shun, making holiday beside the Low-Canal, where there was more water than any of them had seen in their lives.

They were in Valkis, these barbarians, but they were not part of it. Shouldering his way through the streets, Stark got the peculiar flavour of the town, that he guessed could never be touched or changed by anything.

In a square, a girl danced to the music of harp and drum. The air was heavy with the smell of wine and burning pitch and incense. A lithe, swart Valkisian in his bright kilt and jewelled girdle leaped out and danced with the girl, his teeth flashing as he whirled and postured. In the end he bore her off, laughing, her black hair hanging down his back.

Women looked at Stark. Women graceful as cats, bare to the waist, their skirts slit at the sides above the thigh, wearing no ornaments but the tiny golden bells that are the peculiar property of the Low-Canal towns, so that the air is always filled with their delicate, wanton chiming.

Valkis had a laughing, wicked soul. Stark had been in many places in his life, but never one before that beat with such a pulse of evil, incredibly ancient, but strong and gay.

He found the palace at last – a great rambling structure of quarried stone, with doors and shutters of beaten bronze closed against the dust and the incessant wind. He gave his name to the guard and was taken inside, through halls hung with antique tapestries, the flagged floors worn hollow by countless generations of sandalled feet.

Again, Stark's half-wild senses told him that life within these walls had not been placid. The very stones whispered of age-old violence, the shadows were heavy with the lingering ghosts of passion.

He was brought before Delgaun, the lord of Valkis, in the big central room that served as his headquarters.

Delgaun was lean and catlike, after the fashion of his race. His black hair showed a stippling of silver, and the hard beauty of his face was strongly marked, the lined drawn deep and all the softness of youth long gone away. He wore a magnificent harness, and his eyes, under fine dark brows, were like drops of hot gold.

He looked up as the Earthman came in, one swift penetrating glance. Then he said, 'You're Stark.'

There was something odd about those yellow eyes, bright and keen as a killer hawk's yet somehow secret, as though the true thoughts behind them would never show through. Instinctively, Stark disliked the man.

But he nodded and came up to the council table, turning his attention to the others in the room. A handful of Martians – Low-Canallers, chiefs and fighting men from their ornaments and their proud looks – and several outlanders, their conventional garments incongruous in this place.

Stark knew them all. Knighton and Walsh of Terra, Themis of Mercury, Arrod of Callisto Colony – and Luhar of Venus. Pirates, thieves, renegades, and each one an expert in his line.

Ashton was right. There was something big, something very big and very ugly, shaping between Valkis and the Drylands.

But that was only a quick, passing thought in Stark's mind.

It was on Luhar that his attention centred. Bitter memory and hatred had come to savage life within him as soon as he saw the Venusian.

The man was handsome. A cashiered officer of the crack Venusian Guards, very slim, very elegant, his pale hair cropped short and curling, his dark tunic fitting him like a second skin.

He said, 'The aborigine! I thought we had enough barbarians here without sending for more.'

Stark said nothing. He began to walk toward Luhar.

Luhar said sharply, 'There's no use in getting nasty, Stark. Past scores are past. We're on the same side now.'

The Earthman spoke, then, with a peculiar gentleness.

'We were on the same side once before. Against Terror-Venus Metals. Remember?'

'I remember very well!' Luhar was speaking now not to Stark alone, but to everyone in the room. 'I remember that your innocent barbarian friends had me tied to the block there in the swamps, and that you were watching the whole thing with honest pleasure. If the Company men hadn't come along, I'd be screaming there yet.'

'You sold us out,' Stark said. 'You had it coming.'

He continued to walk toward Luhar.

Delgaun spoke. He did not raise his voice, yet Stark felt the impact of his command.

'There will be no fighting here,' Delgaun said. 'You are both hired mercenaries, and while you take my pay you will forget your private quarrels. Do you understand?'

Luhar nodded and sat down, smiling out of the corner of his mouth at Stark, who stood looking with narrowed eyes at Delgaun.

He was still half blind with his anger against Luhar. His hands ached for the kill. But even so, he recognised the power in Delgaun.

A sound shockingly akin to the growl of a beast echoed in his throat. Then, gradually, he relaxed. The man Delgaun he would have challenged. But to do so would wreck the mission that he had promised to carry out here for Ashton.

He shrugged, and joined the others at the table.Walsh of Terra rose abruptly and began to prowl back and forth.

'How much longer do we have to wait?' he demanded. Delgaun poured wine into a bronze goblet. 'Don't expect me to know,' he snapped. He shoved the flagon along the table toward Stark.

Stark helped himself. The wine was warm and sweet on his tongue. He drank slowly, sitting relaxed and patient while the others smoked nervously or rose to pace up and down. Stark wondered what, or who, they were waiting for. But he did not ask.

Time went by.

Stark raised his head, listening. 'What's that?'

Their duller ears had heard nothing, but Delgaun rose and flung open the shutters of the window near him.

The Martian dawn, brilliant and clear, flooded the dead sea bottom with harsh light. Beyond the black line of the canal a caravan was coming toward Valkis through the blowing dust. It was no ordinary caravan. Warriors rode before and behind, their spearheads blazing in the sunrise. Jewelled trappings on the beasts, a litter with curtains of crimson silk, barbaric splendour. Clear and thin on the air came the wild music of pipes and the deep-throated throbbing of drums.

Stark guessed without being told who it was that rode out of the desert like a king.

Delgaun made a harsh sound in his throat. 'It's Kynon, at last!' he said, and swung around from the window. His eyes sparkled with some private amusement. 'Let us go and welcome the Giver of Life!'

Stark went with them, out into the crowded streets. A silence had fallen on the town. Valkisian and barbarian alike were caught now in a breathless excitement, pressing through the narrow ways, flowing toward the canal.

Stark found himself beside Delgaun in the great square of the slave market, standing on the auction block, above the heads of the throng. The stillness, the expectancy of the crowd were uncanny ...

To the measured thunder of drums and the wild skirling of desert pipes, Kynon of Shun came into Valkis.

Straight into the square of the slave market the caravan came, and the people pressed back against the walls to make way for them. Stamping of padded hooves on the stones, ring and clash of harness, brave glitter of spears and the great two-handed broadswords of the Drylands, with drumbeats to shake the heart and the savage cry of the pipes to set the blood leaping. Stark could not restrain an appreciative thrill in himself.

The advance guard reached the slave block. Then, with deafening abruptness, the drummers crossed their sticks and the pipers ceased, and there was utter silence in the square.

It lasted for almost a minute, and then from every barbarian throat the name of Kynon roared out until the stones of the city echoed with it.

A man leaped from the back of his mount to the block, standing at its outer edge where all could see, his hands flung up. 'I greet you, my brothers!'

And the cheering went on.

Stark studied Kynon, surprised that he was so young. He had expected a grey-bearded prophet, and instead, here was a brawny-shouldered man of war standing as tall as himself.

Kynon's eyes were a bright, compelling blue, and his face was the face of a young eagle. His voice had deep music in it – the kind of voice that can sway crowds to madness.

Stark looked from him to the rapt faces of the people – even the Valkisians had caught the mood – and thought that Kynon was the most dangerous man he had ever seen. This tawny-haired barbarian in his kilt of bronze-bossed leather was already half a god.

Kynon shouted to the captain of his warriors, 'Bring the captive and the old man!' Then he turned again to the crowd,urging them to silence. When at last the square was still, his voice rang challengingly across it.

'There are still those who doubt me. Therefore I have come to Valkis, and this day – now! – I will show proof that I have not lied!'

A roar and a mutter from the crowd. Kynon's men were lifting to the block a tottering ancient so bowed with years that he could barely stand, and a youth of Terran stock. The boy was in chains. The old man's eyes burned, and he looked at the boy beside him with a terrible joy.

Stark settled down to watch. The litter with the curtains of crimson silk was now beside the block. A girl, a Valkisian, stood beside it, looking up. It seemed to Stark that her green eyes rested on Kynon with a smouldering anger.

He glanced away from the serving girl, and saw that the curtains were partly open. A woman lay on the cushions within. He could not see much of her, except that her hair was like dark flame and she was smiling, looking at the old man and the naked boy. Then her glance, very dark in the shadows of the litter, shifted away and Stark followed it and saw Delgaun. Every muscle of Delgaun's body was drawn taut, and he seemed unable to look away from the woman in the litter.

Stark smiled very slightly. The outlanders were cynically absorbed in what was going on. The crowd had settled again to that silent, breathless tension. The sun blazed down out of the empty sky. The dust blew, and the wind was sharp with the smell of living flesh.

The old man reached out and touched the boy's smooth shoulder, and his gums showed bluish as he laughed.

Kynon was speaking again.

'There are still those who doubt me, I say! Those who scoffed when I said that I possessed the ancient secret of the Ramas of long ago – the secret by which one man's mind may be transferred into another's body. But none of you after today will doubt that I hold that secret!

'I, myself, am not a Rama.' He glanced down along his powerful frame, half-consciously flexing his muscles, and laughed.

'Why should I be a Rama? I have no need, as yet, for the Sending-on of Minds!'

Answering laughter, half ribald, from the crowd.

'No,' said Kynon, 'I am not a Rama. I am a man like you. Like you, I have no wish to grow old, and in the end, to die.' He swung abruptly to the old man.

'You, Grandfather! Would you not wish to be young again – to ride out to battle, to take the woman of your choice?'

The old man wailed, 'Yes! Yes!' and his gaze dwelt hungrily upon the boy.

'And you shall be!' The strength of a god rang in Kynon's voice. He turned again to the crowd and cried out.

Tor years I suffered in the desert alone, searching for the lost secret of the Ramas. And I found it, my brothers! I hold their ancient power. I alone – in these two hands I hold it, and with it I shall begin a new era for our Dryland races!

'There will be fighting, yes. There will be bloodshed. But when that is over and the men of Kesh and Shun are free from their ancient bondage of thirst and the men of the Low-Canals have regained their own – then I shall give new life, unending life, to all who have followed me. The aged and lamed and wounded can choose new bodies from among the captives. There will be no more age, no more sickness, no more death!'

A rippling, shivering sigh from the crowd. Eyeballs gleaming in the bitter light, mouths open on the hunger that is nearest to the human soul.

'Lest anyone still doubt my promise,' said Kynon, 'watch. Watch – and I will show you!'

They watched. Not stirring, hardly breathing, they watched.

The drums struck up a slow and solemn beat. The captain of the warriors, with an escort of six men, marched to the litter and took from the woman's hands a bundle wrapped in silks. Bearing it as though it were precious beyond belief, he came to the block and lifted it up, and Kynon took it from him.

The silken wrappings fluttered loose, fell away. And in Kynon's hands gleamed two crystal crowns and a shining rod.

He held them high, the sunlight glancing in cold fire from he crystal.

Behold!' he said. 'The Crowns of the Ramas!'

The crowd drew breath then, one long rasping Ah!

The solemn drumbeat never faltered. It was as though the pulse of the whole world throbbed within it. Kynon turned. The old man began to tremble. Kynon placed one crown on his wrinkled scalp, and the tottering creature winced as though in pain, but his face was ecstatic.

Relentlessly, Kynon crowned with the second circlet the head of the frightened boy.

'Kneel,' he said.

They knelt. Standing tall above them, Kynon held the rod in his two hands, between the crystal crowns.

Light was born in the rod. It was no reflection of the sun. Blue and brilliant, it flashed along the rod and leaped from it to wake an answering brilliance in the crowns, so that the old man and the youth were haloed with a chill, supernal fire.

The drumbeat ceased. The old man cried out. His hands plucked feebly at his head, then went to his breast and clenched there. Quite suddenly he fell forward over his knees. A convulsive tremor shook him. Then he lay still.

The boy swayed and then fell forward also, with a clashing of chains.

The light died out of the crowns. Kynon stood a moment longer, rigid as a statue, holding the rod which still flickered with blue lightning. Then that also died.

Kynon lowered the rod. In a ringing voice he cried, 'Arise, Grandfather!'

The boy stirred. Slowly, very slowly, he rose to his feet. Holding out his hands, he stared at them, and then touched his thighs, and his flat belly, and the deep curve of his chest.

Up the firm young throat the wondering fingers went, to the smooth cheeks, to the thick fair hair above the crown. A cry broke from him.

With the perfect accent of the Drylands, the Earth boy cried in Martian, 'I am in the youth's body! I am young again!'

A scream, a wail of ecstasy, burst from the crowd. It swayed like a great beast, white faces turned upward. The boy fell down and embraced Kynon's knees.

Eric John Stark found that he himself was trembling slightly. The Valkisian wore a look of intense satisfaction under his mask of awe. The others were almost as rapt and open-mouthed as the crowd.

Stark turned his head slightly and looked down at the litter. One white hand was already drawing the curtains, so that the scarlet silk appeared to shake with silent laughter.

The serving girl beside it had not moved. Still she looked up at Kynon, and there was nothing in her eyes but hate.

After that there was bedlam, the rush and trample of the crowd, the beating of drums, the screaming of pipes, deafening uproar. The crowns and the crystal rod were wrapped again and taken away. Kynon raised up the boy and struck off the chains of captivity. He mounted, with the boy beside him. Delgaun walked before him through the streets, and so did the outlanders.

The body of the old man was disregarded, except by some of Kynon's barbarians who wrapped it in a white cloth and took it away.

Kynon of Shun came in triumph to Delgaun's palace. Standing beside the litter, he gave his hand to the woman, who stepped out and walked beside him through the bronze door.

The women of Shun are tall and strong, bred to stand beside their men in war as well as love, and this red-haired daughter of the Drylands was enough to stop a man's heart with her proud step and her white shoulders, and her eyes that were the colour of smoke. Stark's gaze followed her from a distance.

Presently in the council room were gathered Delgaun and the outlanders, Kynon and his bright-haired queen – and no other Martians but those three.

Kynon sprawled out in the high seat at the head of the table. His face was beaming. He wiped the sweat off it, and then filled a goblet with wine, looking around the room with his bright blue eyes.

'Fill up, gentlemen. I'll give you a toast.' He lifted the goblet. 'Here's to the secret of the Ramas, and the gift of life!'

Stark put down his goblet, still empty. He stared directly at Kynon.

'You have no secret,' said Stark deliberately.

Kynon sat perfectly still, except that, very slowly, he put his own goblet down. Nobody else moved.

Stark's voice sounded loud in the stillness.

'Furthermore,' he said, 'that demonstration in the square was a lie from beginning to end.'

Stark's words had the effect of an electric shock on the listeners. Delgaun's black brows went up, and the woman came forward a little to stare at the Earthman with profound interest.

Kynon asked a question, of nobody in particular. 'Who,' he demanded, 'is this great black ape?'

Delgaun told him.

'Ah, yes,' said Kynon. 'Eric John Stark, the wild man from Mercury.' He scowled threateningly. 'Very well – explain how I lied in the square!'

'Certainly. First of all, the Earth boy was a prisoner. He was told what he had to do to save his neck, and then was carefully coached in his part. Secondly, the crystal rod and the crowns are a fake. You used a simple Purcell unit in the rod to produce an electronic brush discharge. That made the blue light. Thirdly, you gave the old man poison, probably by means of a sharp point on the crown. I saw him wince when you put it on him.'

Stark paused. 'The old man died. The boy went through his sham. And that was that.'

Again there was a flat silence. Luhar crouched over the table, his face avid with hope. The woman's eyes dwelt on Stark and did not turn away.

Then, suddenly, Kynon laughed. He roared with it until the tears ran.

'It was a good show, though,' he said at last. 'Damned good. You'll have to admit that. The crowd swallowed it, horns, hoof and hide.'

He got up and came round to Stark, clapping him on the shoulder, a blow that would have laid a lesser man flat.

'I like you, wild man. Nobody else here had the guts to speak out, but I'll give you odds they were all thinking the same thing.'

Stark said, 'Just where were you, Kynon, during those years you were supposed to be suffering alone in the desert?'

'Curious, aren't you? Well, I'll let you in on a secret.' Kynon lapsed abruptly into perfectly good colloquial English. 'I was on Terra, learning about things like the Purcell electronic discharge.'

Reaching over, he poured wine for Stark and held it out to him. 'Now you know. Now we all know. So let's wash the dust out of our throats and get down to business.'

Stark said, 'No.'

Kynon looked at him. 'What now?'

'You're lying to your people,' Stark said flatly. 'You're making false promises, to lead them into war.'

Kynon was genuinely puzzled by Stark's anger. 'But of course!' he said. 'Is there anything new or strange in that?'

Luhar spoke up, his voice acid with hate. 'Watch out for him, Kynon. He'll sell you out, he'll cut your throat, if he thinks it best for the barbarians.'

Delgaun said, 'Stark's reputation is known all over the system. There's no need to tell us that again.'

'No.' Kynon shook his head, looking very candidly at Stark. 'We sent for you, didn't we, knowing that? All right.'

He stepped back a little, so that the others were included in what he was going to say.

'My people have a just cause for war. They go hungry and thirsty, while the City-States along the Dryland Border hog all the water sources and grow fat. Do you know what it means to watch your children die crying for water on a long march, to come at last to the oasis and find the well sanded in by a storm, and go on again, trying to save your people and your herd? Well, I do! I was born and bred in the Drylands, and many a time I've cursed the border states with a tongue like a dry stick.

'Stark, you should know the workings of the barbarian mind as well as I do. The men of Kesh and Shun are traditional enemies. Raiding and thieving, open warfare over water and grass. I had to give them a rallying point – a faith strong enough to unite them. hem. Resurrecting the Rama legend was the only hope I had.

'And it has worked. The tribes are one people now. They can go on and take what belongs to them – the right to live. I'm not really so far out in my promises, at all. Now do you understand?'

Stark studied him, with his cold cat-eyes. 'Where do the men of Valkis come in – the men of Jekkara and Barakesh? Where do we come in, the hired bravoes?'

Kynon smiled. It was a perfectly sincere smile, and it had no humour in it, only a great pride and a cheerful cruelty.

'We're going to build an empire,' he said softly. 'The City-States are disorganised, too starved or too fat to fight. And Earth is taking us over. Before long, Mars will be hardly more than another Luna.

'We're going to fight that. Drylander and Low-Canaller together, we're going to build a power out of dust and blood – and there will be loot in plenty to go round.'

'That's where my men come in,' said Delgaun, and laughed. 'We low-Canallers live by rapine.'

'And you,' said Kynon, "the hired bravoes", are in it to help. I need you and the Venusian, Stark, to train my men, to plan campaigns, to give me all you know of guerrilla fighting. Knighton has a fast cruiser. He'll bring us supplies from outside. Walsh is a genius, they tell me, at fashioning weapons. Themis is a mechanic, and also the cleverest thief this side of hell – saving your presence, Delgaun! Arrod organised and bossed the Brotherhood of the Little Worlds, which had the Space Patrol going mad for years. He can do the same for us. So there you have it. Now, Stark, what do you say?'

The Earthman answered slowly, 'I'll go along with you – as long as no harm comes to the tribes.'

Kynon laughed. 'No need to worry about that.'

'Just one more question,' Stark said. 'What's going to happen when the people find out that this Rama stuff is just a myth?'

'They won't,' said Kynon. 'The crowns will be destroyed in battle, and it will be very tragic, but very final. No one knows how to make more of them. Oh, I can handle the people! They'll be happy enough, with good land and water.'

He looked around then and said plaintively, 'And now can we sit down and drink like civilised men?'

They sat. The wine went round, and the vultures of Valkis drank to each other's luck and loot, and Stark learned that the woman's name was Berild.

Kynon was happy. He had made his point with the people, and he was celebrating. But Stark noticed that though his tongue grew thick, it did not loosen.

Luhar grew steadily more morose and silent, glancing covertly across the table at Stark. Delgaun toyed with his goblet, and his yellow gaze which gave nothing away moved restlessly between Berild and Stark.

Berild drank not at all. She sat a little apart, with her face in shadow, and her red mouth smiled. Her thoughts, too, were her own secret. But Stark knew that she was still watching him, and he knew that Delgaun was aware of it.

Presently Kynon said, 'Delgaun and I have some talking to do, so I'll bid you gentlemen farewell for the present. You, Stark, and Luhar – I'm going back into the desert at midnight, and you're going with me, so you'd better get some sleep.'

Stark nodded. He rose and went out, with the others.

An attendant showed him to his quarters, in the north wing. Stark had not rested for twenty-four hours, and he was glad of the chance to sleep.

He lay down. The wine spun in his head, and Berild's smile mocked him. Then his thoughts turned to Ashton, and his promise. Presently he slept, and dreamed.

He was a boy on Mercury again, running down a path that led from a cave mouth to the floor of a valley. Above him the mountains rose into the sky and were lost beyond the shallow atmosphere. The rocks danced in the terrible heat, but the soles of his feet were like iron, and trod them lightly. He was quite naked.

The blaze of the sun between the valley walls was like the shining heart of Hell. It did not seem to the boy N'Chaka that it could ever be cold again, yet he knew that when darkness came there would be ice on the shallows of the river. The gods were constantly at war.

He passed a place, ruined by earthquake. It was a mine, and N'Chaka remembered dimly that he had once lived there, with several white-skinned creatures shaped like himself. He went on without a second glance.

He was searching for Tika. When he was old enough, he would mate with her. He wanted to hunt with her now, for she was fleet and as keen as he at scenting out the great lizards.

He heard her voice calling his name. There was terror in it, and N'Chaka began to run. He saw her, crouched between two huge boulders, her light fur stained with blood.

A vast black-winged shadow swooped down upon him. It glared at him with its yellow eyes, and its long beak tore at him. He thrust his spear at it, but talons hooked into his shoulder, and the golden eyes were close to him, bright and full of death.

He knew those eyes. Tika screamed, but the sound faded, everything faded but those eyes. He sprang up, grappling with the thing ...

A man's voice yelling, a man's hands thrusting him away. The dream receded. Stark came back to reality, dropping the scared attendant who had come to waken him.

The man cringed away from him. Delgaun sent me. He wants you – in the council room.' Then he turned and fled.

Stark shook himself. The dream had been terribly real. He went down to the council room. It was dusk now, and the torches were lighted.

Delgaun was waiting, and Berild sat beside him at the table. They were alone there. Delgaun looked up, with his golden eyes.

'I have a job for you, Stark,' he said. 'You remember the captain of Kynon's men, in the square today?'

'I do.'

'His name is Freka, and he's a good man, but he's addicted to a certain vice. He'll be up to his ears in it by now, and somebody has to get him back by the time Kynon leaves. Will you see to it?'

Stark glanced at Berild. It seemed to him that she was amused, whether at him or at Delgaun he could not tell. He asked,

'Where will I find him?'

'There's only one place where he can get his particular poison – Kala's, out on the edge of Valkis. It's in the old city, beyond the lower quays.' Delgaun smiled. 'You may have to be ready with your fists, Stark. Freka may not want to come.'

Stark hesitated. Then, 'I'll do my best,' he said, and went out into the dusky streets of Valkis.

He crossed a square, heading away from the palace. A twisting lane swallowed him up. And quite suddenly, someone took his arm and said rapidly.

'Smile at me, and then turn aside into the alley.'

The hand on his arm was small and brown, the voice very pretty with its accompaniment of little chiming bells. He smiled, as she had bade him, and turned aside into the alley, which was barely more than a crack between two rows of houses.

Swiftly, he put his hands against the wall, so that the girl was prisoned between them. A green-eyed girl, with golden bells braided in her black hair, and impudent breasts bare above a jewelled girdle. A handsome girl, with a proud look to her.

The serving girl who had stood beside the litter in the square, and had watched Kynon with such bleak hatred.

'Well,' said Stark. 'And what do you want with me, little one?'

She answered, 'My name is Fianna. And I do not intend to kill you, neither will I run away.'

Stark let his hands drop. 'Did you follow me, Fianna?'

'I did. Delgaun's palace is full of hidden ways, and I know them all. I was listening behind the panel in the council room. I heard you speak out against Kynon, and I heard Delgaun's order, just now.'

'So?'

'So, if you meant what you said about the tribes, you had better get away now, while you have the chance. Kynon lied to you. He will use you, and then kill you, as he will use and then destroy his own people.' Her voice was hot with bitter fury.

Stark gave her a slow smile that might have meant anything, or nothing.

'You're a Valkisian, Fianna. What do you care what happens to the barbarians?'

Her slightly tilted green eyes looked scornfully into his.

'I'm not trying to trap you, Earthman. I hate Kynon. And my mother was a woman of the desert.'

She paused, then went on sombrely, 'Also, I serve the lady Berild, and I have learned many things. There is trouble coming, greater trouble than Kynon knows.' She asked, suddenly, 'What do you know of the Ramas?'

'Nothing,' he answered, 'except that they don't exist now, if they ever did.'

Fianna gave him an odd look. 'Perhaps they don't. Will you listen to me, Earthman from Mercury? Will you get away, now that you know you're marked for death?'

Stark said, 'No.'

'Even if I tell you that Delgaun has set a trap for you at Kala's?'

'No. But I will thank you for your warning, Fianna.'

He bent and kissed her, because she was very young and honest. Then he turned and went on his way.

Night came swiftly. Stark left behind him the torches and the laughter and the sounding harps, coming into the streets of the old city where there was nothing but silence and the light of the low moons.

He saw the lower quays, great looming shapes of marble rounded and worn by time, and went toward them. Presently he found that he was following a faint but definite path, threaded between the ancient houses. It was very still, so that the dry whisper of the drifting dust was audible.

He passed under the shadow of the quays, and turned into a broad way that had once led up from the harbour. A little way ahead, on the other side, he saw a tall building, half fallen in ruin. Its windows were shattered, barred with light, and from it came the sound of voices and a thin thread of music, very reedy and evil.

Stark approached it, slipping through the ragged shadows as though he had no more weight to him than a drift of smoke. Once a door banged and a man came out of Kala's and passed by, going down to Valkis. Stark saw his face in the moonlight. It was the face of a beast, rather than a man. He muttered to himself as he went, and once he laughed, and Stark felt a loathing in him.

He waited until the sound of footsteps had died away. The ruined houses gave no sign of danger. A lizard rustled between the stones, and that was all. The moonlight lay bright and still on Kala's door.

Stark found a little shard of rock and tossed it, so that it make a sharp snicking sound against the shadowed wall beyond him. Then he held his breath, listening.

No one, nothing, stirred. Only the dry wind sighed in the empty houses.

Stark went out, across the open space, and nothing happened. He flung open the door of Kala's dive.

Yellow light spilled out, and a choking wave of hot and stuffy air. Inside, there were tall lamps with quartz lenses, each of which poured down a beam of throbbing, gold-orange light. And in the little pools of radiance, on filthy furs and cushions on the floor, lay men and women whose faces were slack and bestial.

Stark realized now what secret vice Kala sold here. Shanga – the going back – the radiation that caused temporary artificial atavism and let men wallow for a time in beasthood. It was supposed to have been stamped out when the Lady Fand's dark Shanga ring had been destroyed. But it still persisted, in places like this outside the law.

He looked for Freka, and recognized the tall barbarian. He was sprawled under one of the Shanga lamps, eyes closed, face brutish, growling and twitching in sleep like the beast he had temporarily become.

A voice spoke from behind Stark's shoulder. 'I am Kala. What do you wish, Outlander?'

He turned. Kala might have been beautiful once, a thousand years ago as you reckon sin. She wore still the sweet chiming bells in her hair, and Stark thought of Fianna. The woman's ravaged face turned him sick. It was like the reedy, piping music, woven out of the very heart of evil.

Yet her eyes were shrewd, and he knew that she had not missed his searching look around the room, nor his interest in Freka. There was a note of warning in her voice.

He did not want trouble, yet. Not until he found some hint of the trap Fianna had told him of.

He said, 'Bring me wine.'

Will you try the lamp of Going-back, Outlander? It brings much joy.'

'Perhaps later. Now, I wish wine.'

She went away, clapping her hands for a slatternly wench who came between the sprawled figures with an earthern mug. Stark sat down beside a table, where his back was to the wall and he could see both the door and the whole room.

Kala had returned to her own heap of furs by the door, but her basilisk eyes were alert.

Stark made a pretence of drinking, but his mind was very busy, very cold.

Perhaps this, in itself, was the trap. Freka was temporarily a beast. He would fight, and Kala would shriek, and the other dull-eyed brutes would rise and fight also.

But he would have needed no warning about that – and Delgaun himself had said there would be trouble.

No. There was something more.

He let his gaze wander over the room. It was large, and there were other rooms off it, the openings hung with ragged curtains. Through the rents, Stark could see others of Kala's customers sprawled under Shanga-lamps, and some of these had gone so far back from humanity that they were hideous to behold. But still there was no sign of danger to himself.

There was only one odd thing. The room nearest to where Freka sat was empty, and its curtains were only partly drawn.

Stark began to brood on the emptiness of that room.

He beckoned Kala to him. 'I will try the lamp,' he said. 'But I wish privacy. Have it brought to that room, there.'

Kala said, 'That room is taken.'

'But I see no one!'

'It is taken, it is paid for, and no one may enter. I will have your lamp brought here.'

'No,' said Stark. 'The hell with it. I'm going.'

He flung down a coin and went out. Moving swiftly outside, he placed his eye to a crack in the nearest shutter, and waited.

Luhar of Venus came out of the empty room. His face was worried, and Stark smiled. He went back and stood flat against the wall beside the door.

In a moment it opened and the Venusian came out, drawing his gun as he did so.

Stark jumped him.

Luhar let out one angry cry. His gun went off a vicious streak of flame across the moonlight, and then Stark's great hand crushed the bones of his wrist together so that he dropped it clashing on the stones. He whirled around, raking Stark's face with his nails as he clawed for the Earthman's eyes, and Stark hit him. Luhar fell, rolling over, and before he could scramble up again Stark had picked up the gun and thrown it away into the ruins across the street.

Luhar came up from the pavement in one catlike spring. Stark fell with him, back through Kala's door, and they rolled together among the foul furs and cushions. Luhar was built of spring steel, with no softness in him anywhere, and his long fingers were locked around Stark's throat.

Kala screamed with fury. She caught a whip from among her cushions – a traditional weapon along the Low Canals – and began to lash the two men impartially, her hair flying in tangledlocks across her face. The bestial figures under the lamps shambled to their feet, and growled.

The long lash ripped Stark's shirt and the flesh of his back beneath it. He snarled and staggered to his feet, with Luhar still clinging to the death grip on his throat. He pushed Luhar's face way from him with both hands and threw himself forward, over a table, so that Luhar was crushed beneath him.

The Venusian's breath left him with a whistling grunt. His lingers relaxed. Stark struck his hands away. He rose and bent over Luhar and picked him up, gripping him cruelly so that he turned white with the pain, and raised him high and flung him bodily into the growling, beast-faced men who were shambling toward him.

Kala leaped at Stark, cursing, striking him with the coiling lash. He turned. The thin veneer of civilisation was gone from Stark now, erased in a second by the first hint of battle. His eyes blazed with a cold light. He took the whip out of Kala's hand and laid his palm across her evil face, and she fell and lay still.

He faced the ring of bestial, Shanga-sodden men who walled him off from what he had been sent to do. There was a reddish tinge to his vision, partly blood, partly sheer rage. He could see Freka standing erect in the corner, his head weaving from side to side brutishly.

Stark raised the whip and strode into the ring of men who were no longer quite men.

Hands struck and clawed him. Bodies reeled and fell away. Blank eyes glittered, and red mouths squealed, and there was a mingling of snarls and bestial laughter in his ears. The blood-lust had spread to these creatures now. They swarmed upon Stark and bore him down with the weight of their writhing bodies.

They bit him and savaged him in a blind way, and he fought his way up again, shaking them off with his great shoulders, trampling them under his boots. The lash hissed and sang, and the smell of blood rose on the choking air.

Freka's dazed, brutish face swam before Stark. The Martian growled and flung himself forward. Stark swung the loaded butt of the whip. It cracked solidly on the Shunni's temple, and he sagged into Stark's arms.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Stark saw Luhar. He had risen and crept around the edge of the fight. He was behind Stark now, and there was a knife in his hand.

Hampered by Freka's weight, Stark could not leap aside. As Luhar rushed in, he crouched and went backward, his head and shoulders taking the Venusian low in the belly. He felt the hot kiss of the blade in his flesh, but the wound was glancing, and before Luhar could strike again, Stark twisted like a great cat and struck down. Luhar's skull rang on the flagging. The Earthman's fist rose and fell twice. After that, Luhar did not move.

Stark got to his feet. He stood with his knees bent and his shoulders flexed, looking from side to side, and the sound that came out of his throat was one of pure savagery.

He moved forward a step or two, half naked, bleeding, towering like a dark colossus over the lean Martians, and the brutish throng gave back from him. They had taken more mauling than they liked, and there was something about the Outlander's simple desire to rend them apart that penetrated even their Shanga-clouded minds.

Kala sat up on the floor, and snarled, 'Get out.'

Stark stood a moment or two longer, looking at them. Then he lifted Freka to his feet and laid him over his shoulder like a sack of meal and went out, moving neither fast nor slow, but in a straight line, and way was made for him.

He carried the Shunni down through the silent streets, and into the twisting, crowded ways of Valkis. There, too, the people stared at him and drew back, out of his path. He came to Delgaun's palace. The guards closed in behind him, but they did not ask that he stop.

Delgaun was in the council room, and Berild was still with him. It seemed that they had been waiting, over their wine and their private talk. Delgaun rose to his feet as Stark came in, so sharply that his goblet fell and spilled a red pool of wine at his feet.

Stark let the Shunni drop to the floor.

'I have brought Freka,' he said. 'Luhar is still at Kala's.'

He looked into Delgaun's eyes, golden and cruel, the eyes of her, dream. It was hard not to kill.

Suddenly the woman laughed, very clear and ringing, and her laughter was all for Delgaun.

'Well done, wild man,' she said to Stark. 'Kynon is lucky to have such a captain. One word for the future, though – watch out for Freka. He won't forgive you this.'

Stark said thickly, looking at Delgaun, 'This hasn't been a night for forgiveness.' Then he added, 'I can handle Freka.'

Berild said, 'I like you, wild man.' Her eyes dwelt on Stark's face, curious, compelling. 'Ride beside me when we go. I would know more about you.'

And she smiled.

A dark flush crept over Delgaun's face. In a voice tight with I fury he said, 'Perhaps you've forgotten something, Berild. There is nothing for you in this barbarian, this creature of an hour!'

He would have said more in his anger, but Berild said sharply,

'We will not speak of time. Go now, Stark. Be ready at midnight.'

Stark went. And as he went, his brow was furrowed deep by a strange doubt.

At midnight, in the great square of the slave market, Kynon's caravan formed again and went out of Valkis with thundering drums and skirling pipes. Delgaun was there to see them go, and the cheering of the people rang after them on the desert wind.

Stark rode alone. He was in a brooding mood and wanted no company, least of all that of the Lady Berild. She was beautiful, she was dangerous, and she belonged to Kynon, or to Delgaun, or perhaps to both of them. In Stark's experience, women like that were sudden death, and he wanted no part of her. At any rate, not yet.

Luhar rode ahead with Kynon. He had come dragging into the square at the mounting, his face battered and swollen, an ugly look in his eyes. Kynon gave one quick look from him to Stark, who had his own scars, and said harshly,

'Delgaun tells me there's a blood feud between you two. I want no more of it, understand? After you're paid off you can kill each other and welcome, but not until then. Is that clear?'

Stark nodded, keeping his mouth shut. Luhar muttered assent, and they had not looked at each other since.

Freka rode in his customary place by Kynon, which put him near to Luhar. It seemed to Stark that their beasts swung close together more often than was necessary from the roughness of the track.

The big barbarian captain sat rigidly erect in his saddle, but Stark had seen his face in the torchlight, sick and sweating, with the brute look still clouding his eyes. There was a purple mark on his temple, but Stark was quite sure that Berild had spoken the truth – Freka would not forgive him either the indignity or the hangover of his unfinished wallow under the lamps of Shanga.

The dead sea bottom widened away under the black sky. As they left the lights of Valkis behind, winding their way over the sand and the ribs of coral, dropping lower with every mile into the vast basin, it was hard to believe that there could be life anywhere on a world that could produce such cosmic desolation.

The little moons fled away, trailing their eerie shadows over rock formations tortured into impossible shapes by wind and water, peering into clefts that seemed to have no bottom, turning the sand white as bone. The iron stars blazed, so close that the wind seemed edged with their frosty light. And in all that endless space nothing moved, and the silence was so deep that the coughing howl of a sand-cat far away to the east made Stark jump with its loudness.

Yet Stark was not oppressed by the wilderness. Born and bred to the wild and barren places, this desert was more kin to him than the cities of men.

After a while there was a jangling of brazen bangles behind and Fianna came up. He smiled at her, and she said rather sullenl, 'The Lady Berild sent me, to remind you of her wish.'

Stark glanced to where the scarlet-curtained litter rocked mg, and his eyes glinted.

'She's not one to let go of a thing, is she?'

'No.' Fianna saw that no one was within earshot, and then said quietly, 'Was it as I said, at Kala's?'

Stark nodded. 'I think, little one, that I owe you my life. Luhar would have killed me as soon as I tackled Freka.'

He reached over and touched her hand where it lay on the bridle. She smiled, a young girl's smile that seemed very sweet in the moonlight, honest and comradely.

It was odd to be talking of death with a pretty girl in the moonlight.

Stark said, 'Why does Delgaun want to kill me?'

'He gave no reason, when he spoke to the man from Venus. But perhaps I can guess. He knows that you're as strong as he is, and so he fears you. Also, the Lady Berild looked at you in a certain way.'

'I thought Berild was Kynon's woman.'

'Perhaps she is – for the time,' answered Fianna enigmatically. Then she shook her head, glancing around with what was almost fear. 'I have risked much already. Please – don't let it be known that I've spoken to you, beyond what I was sent to say.'

Her eyes pleaded with him, and Stark realised with a shock that Fianna, too, stood on the edge of a quicksand.

'Don't be afraid,' he said, and meant it. 'We'd better go.'

She swung her beast around, and as she did so she whispered, 'Be careful, Eric John Stark!'

Stark nodded. He rode behind her, thinking that he liked the sound of his name on her lips.

The Lady Berild lay among her furs and cushions, and even then there was no indolence about her. She was relaxed as a cat is, perfectly at ease and yet vibrant with life. In the shadows of the litter her skin showed silver-white and her loosened hair was a sweet darkness.

'Are you stubborn, wild man?' she asked. 'Or do you find me distasteful?'

He had not realised before how rich and soft her voice was. He looked down at the magnificent supple length of her, and said,

'I find you most damnably attractive – and that's why I'm stubborn.'

'Afraid?'

'I'm taking Kynon's pay. Should I take his woman also?'

She laughed, half scornfully. 'Kynon's ambitions leave no room for me. We have an agreement, because a king must have a queen – and he finds my counsel useful. You see, I am ambitious, too! Apart from that, there is nothing.'

Stark looked at her, trying to read her smoke-grey eyes in the gloom. 'And Delgaun?'

'He wants me, but ...' She hesitated, and then went on, in a tone quite different from before, her voice low and throbbing with a secret pleasure as vast and elemental as the star-shot sky.

'I belong to no one,' she said. 'I am my own.'

Stark knew that for the moment she had forgotten him.

He rode for a time in silence, and then he said slowly, repeating Delgaun's words,

'Perhaps you have forgotten something, Berild. There is nothing for you in me, the creature of an hour.'

He saw her start, and for a moment her eyes blazed and her breath was sharply drawn. Then she laughed, and said,

'The wild man is also a parrot. And an hour can be a long time – as long as eternity, if one wills it so.'

'Yes,' said Stark, 'I have often thought so, waiting for death to come at me out of a crevice in the rocks. The great lizard stings, and his bite is fatal.'

He leaned over in the saddle, his shoulders looming above hers, naked in the biting wind.

'My hours with women are short ones,' he said. 'They come after the battle, when there is time for such things. Perhaps then I'll come and see you.'

He spurred away and left her without a backward look, and the skin of his back tingled with the expectancy of a flying knife.

But the only thing that followed him was a disturbing echo of laughter down the wind.

Dawn came. Kynon beckoned Stark to his side, and pointed out at the cruel waste of sand, with here and there a reef of bassalt black against the burning white.

'This is the country you will lead your men over. Learn it.' He was speaking to Luhar as well. 'Learn every water hole, every vantage point, every trail that leads toward the Border. There are no better fighters than the Dryland men when they're well led, and you must prove to them that you can lead. You'll work with their own chieftains – Freka, and the others you'll meet when we reach Sinharat.'

Luhar said, 'Sinharat?'

'My headquarters. It's about seven days' march – an island city, old as the moons. The Rama cult was strong there, legend has it, and it's a sort of holy place to the tribesmen. That's why I picked it.'

He took a deep breath and smiled, looking out over the dead sea bottom toward the Border, and his eyes held the same pitiless light as the sun that baked the desert.

'Very soon, now,' he said, more to himself than the others. 'Only a handful of days before we drown the Border states in their own blood. And after that ...'

He laughed, very softly, and said no more. Stark could believe that what Berild said of him was true. There was a flame of ambition in Kynon that would let nothing stand in its way.

He measured the size and the strength of the tall barbarian, the eagle look of his face and the iron that lay beneath his joviality. Then Stark, too, stared off toward the Border and wondered if he would ever see Tarak or hear Simon Ashton's voice again.

For three days they marched without incident. At noon they made a dry camp and slept away the blazing hours, and then went on again under a darkening sky, a long line of tall men and rangy beasts, with the scarlet litter blooming like a strange flower in the midst of it. Jingling bridles and dust, and padded hoofs trampling the bones of the sea, toward the island city of Sinharat.

Stark did not speak again to Berild, nor did she send for him.

Fianna would pass him in the camp, and smile sidelong, and go on. For her sake, he did not stop her.

Neither Luhar nor Freka came near him. They avoided him pointedly, except when Kynon called them all together to discuss some point of strategy. But the two seemed to have become friends, and drank together from the same bottle of wine.

Stark slept always beside his mount, his back guarded and his gun loose. The hard lessons learned in his childhood had stayed with him, and if there was a footfall near him in the dust he woke often before the beast did.

Toward morning of the fourth night the wind, that never seemed to falter from its steady blowing, began to drop. At dawn it was dead still, and the rising sun had a tinge of blood. The dust rose under the feet of the beasts and fell again where it had risen.

Stark began to sniff the air. More and more often he looked toward the north, where there was a long slope as flat as his palm that stretched away farther than he could see.

A restless unease grew within him. Presently he spurred ahead to join Kynon.

'There is a storm coming,' he said, and turned his head northward again.

Kynon looked at him curiously.

'You even have the right direction,' he said. 'One might think you were a native.' He, too, gazed with brooding anger at the long sweep of emptiness.

'I wish we were closer to the city. But one place is as bad as another when the khamsin blows, and the only thing to do is keep moving. You're a dead dog if you stop – dead and buried.'

He swore, with a curious admixture of blunt Anglo-Saxon in his Martian profanity, as though the storm were a personal enemy.

'Pass the word along to force it – dump whatever they have to to lighten the loads. And get Berild out of that damned litter. Stick by her, will you, Stark? I've got to stay here, at the head of the line. And don't get separated. Above all, don't get separated!'

Stark nodded and dropped back. He got Berild mounted, and they left the litter there, a bright patch of crimson on the sand, its curtains limp in the utter stillness.

Nobody talked much. The beasts were urged on to the top of heir speed. They were nervous and fidgety, inclined to break nit of line and run for it. The sun rose higher.

One hour.

The windless air shimmered. The silence lay upon the caravan with a crushing hand. Stark went up and down the line, lending a hand to the sweating drovers with the pack animals that now carried only water skins and a bare supply of food. Fianna rode close beside Berild.

Two hours.

For the first time that day there was a sound in the desert.

It came from far off, a moaning wail like the cry of a giantess in travail. It rushed closer, rising as it did so to a dry and bitter shriek that filled the whole sky, shook it, and tore it open, letting in all the winds of hell.

It struck swiftly. One moment the air was clear and motionless. The next, it was blind with dust and screaming as it fled, tearing with demoniac fury at everything in its path.

Stark spurred toward the women, who were only a few feet away but already hidden by the veil of mingled dust and sand. Someone blundered into him in the murk. Long hair whipped across his face and he reached out, crying 'Fianna! Fianna!' A woman's hand caught his, and a voice answered, but he could not hear the words.

Then, suddenly, his beast was crowded by other scaly bodies. The woman's grip had broken. Hard masculine hands clawed at him. He could make out, dimly, the features of two men, close to his.

Luhar, and Freka.

His beast gave a great lurch, and sprang forward. Stark was dragged from the saddle, to fall backward into the raging sand.

He lay half-stunned for a moment, his breath knocked out of him. There was a terrible reptilian screaming sounding thin through the roar of the wind. Vague shapes bolted past him, and twice he was nearly crushed by their trampling hooves.

Luhar and Freka must have waited their chance. It was so beautifully easy. Leave Stark alone and afoot, and the storm and the desert between them would do the work, with no blame attaching to any man.

Stark got to his feet, and a human body struck him at the knees so that he went down again. He grappled with it, snarling, before he realised that the flesh between his hands was soft and draped in silken cloth. Then he saw that he was holding Berild.

'It was I,' she gasped, 'and not Fianna.'

Her words reached him very faintly, though he knew she was yelling at the top of her lungs. She must have been knocked from her own mount when Luhar thrust between them.

Gripping her tightly, so that she should not be blown away, Stark struggled up again. With all his strength, it was almost impossible to stand.

Blinded, deafened, half strangled, he fought his way forward a few paces, and suddenly one of the pack beasts loomed shadow-like beside him, going by with a rush and a squeal.

By the grace of Providence and his own swift reflexes, he caught its pack lashings, clinging with the tenacity of a man determined not to die. It floundered about, dragging them, until Berild managed to grasp its trailing halter rope. Between them, they fought the creature down.

Stark clung to its head while the woman clambered to its back, twisting her arm through the straps of the pad. A silken scarf whipped toward him. He took it and tied it over the head of the beast so it could breathe, and after that it was quieter.

There was no direction, no sight of anything, in that howling inferno. The caravan seemed to have been scattered like a drift of autumn leaves. Already, in the few brief moments he had stood still, Stark's legs were buried to the knees in a substratum of sand that rolled like water. He pulled himself free and started on, going nowhere, remembering Kynon's words.

Berild ripped her thin robe apart and gave him another strip of silk for himself. He bound it over his nose and eyes, and some of the choking and the blindness abated.

Stumbling, staggering, beaten by the wind as a child is beaten by a strong man, Stark went on, hoping desperately to find the main body of the caravan, and knowing somehow that the hope was futile.

The hours that followed were nightmare. He shut his mind to them, in a way that a civilised man would have found impossible. In his childhood there had been days, and nights, and the problems had been simple ones – how to survive one span of light that one might then struggle to survive the span of darkness that came after. One thing, one danger, at a time.

Now there was a single necessity. Keep moving. Forget tomorrow, or what happened to the caravan, or where the little Fianna with her bright eyes may be. Forget thirst, and the pain of breathing, and the fiery lash of sand on naked skin. Only don't stand still.

It was growing dark when the beast fell against a half-buried boulder and snapped its foreleg. Stark gave it a quick and merciful death. They took the straps from the pad and linked themselves together. Each took as much food as they could carry, and Stark shouldered the single skin of water that fortune had vouchsafed them.

They staggered on, and Berild did not whimper.

Night came, and still the khamsin blew. Stark wondered at the woman's strength, for he had to help her only when she fell. He had lost all feeling himself. His body was merely a thing that continued to move only because it had been ordered not to stop.

The haze in his own mind had grown as thick as the black obscurity of the night. Berild had ridden all day, but he had walked, and there was an end even to his strength. He was approaching it now, and was too weary even to be afraid.

He became aware at some indeterminate time that Berild had fallen and was dragging her weight against the straps. He turned blindly to help her up. She was saying something, crying his name, striking at him so that he should hear her words and understand.

At last he did. He pulled the wrappings from his face and breathed clean air. The wind had fallen. The sky was growing clear.

He dropped in his tracks and slept, with the exhausted woman half dead beside him.

Thirst brought them both awake in the early dawn. They drank from the skin, and then sat for a time looking at the desert, and at each other, thinking of what lay ahead.

'Do you know where we are?' Stark asked.

'Not exactly.' Berild's face was shadowed with weariness. It had changed, and somehow, to Stark, it had grown more beautiful, because there was no weakness in it.

She thought a minute, looking at the sun. 'The wind blew from the north,' she said. 'Therefore we have come south from the track. Sinharat lies that way, across the waste they call the Belly of Stones.' She pointed to the north and east.

'How far?'

'Seven, eight days, afoot.'

Stark measured their supply of water and shook his head. 'It'll be dry walking.'

He rose and took up the skin, and Berild came beside him without a word. Her red hair hung loose over her shoulders. The rags of her silken robe had been torn away by the wind, leaving her only the loose skirt of the desert women, and her belt and collar of jewels.

She walked erect with a steady, swinging stride, and it was almost impossible for Stark to remember her as she had been, riding like a lazy queen in her scarlet litter.

There was no way to shelter themselves from the midday sun. The sun of Mars at its worst, however, was only a pale candle beside the sun of Mercury, and it did not bother Stark. He made Berild lie in the shadow of his own body, and he watched her face, relaxed and unfamiliar in sleep.

For the first time, then, he was conscious of a strangeness in her. He had seen so little of her before, in Valkis, and almost nothing on the trail. Now, there was little of her mind or heart that she could conceal from him.

Or was there? There were moments, while she slept, when hr shadows of strange dreams crossed her face. Sometimes, in t he unguarded moment of waking, he would see in her eyes a Iook he could not read, and his primitive senses quivered with a vague ripple of warning.

Yet all through those blazing days and frosty nights, tortured with thirst and weary to exhaustion, Berild was magnificent. Her white skin was darkened by the sun and her hair became a wild red mane, but she smiled and set her feet resolutely by his, and Stark thought she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen.

On the fourth day they climbed a scarp of limestone worn in ages past by the sea, and looked out over the place called the Belly of Stones.

The sea-bottom curved downward below them into a sort of gigantic basin, the farther rim of which was lost in shimmering waves of heat. Stark thought that never, even on Mercury, had he seen a place more cruel and utterly forsaken of gods or men.

It seemed as though some primal glacier must have met its death here in the dim dawn of Mars, hollowing out its own grave. The body of the glacier had melted away, but its bones were left.

Bones of basalt, of granite and marble and porphyry, of every conceivable colour and shape and size, picked up by the ice as it marched southward from the pole and dropped here as a cairn to mark its passing.

The Belly of Stones. Stark thought that its other name was Death.

For the first time, Berild faltered. She sat down and bent her head over her hands.

'I am tired,' she said. 'Also, I am afraid.'

Stark asked, 'Has it ever been crossed?'

'Once. But they were a war party, mounted and well supplied.'

Stark looked out across the stones. 'We will cross it,' he said.

Berild raised her head. 'Somehow I believe you.' She rose slowly and put her hands on his breast, over the strong beating of his heart.

'Give me your strength, wild man,' she whispered. 'I shall need it.'

He drew her to him and kissed her, and it was a strange and painful kiss, for their lips were cracked and bleeding from their terrible thirst. Then they went down together into the place called the Belly of Stones.

The desert had been a pleasant and kindly place. Stark looked back upon it with longing. And yet this inferno of blazing rock was so like the valleys of his boyhood that it did not occur to him to lie down and die.

They rested for a time in the sheltered crevice under a great leaning slab of blood-red stone, moistening their swollen tongues with a few drops of stinking water from the skin. At nightfall they drank the last of it, but Berild would not let him throw the skin away.

Darkness, and a lunar silence. The chill air sucked the day's heat out of the rocks and the iron frost came down, so that Stark and the red-haired woman must keep moving or freeze.

Stark's mind grew clouded. He spoke from time to time, in a croaking whisper, dropping back into the harsh mother-tongue of the Twilight Belt. It seemed to him that he was hunting, as he had so many times before, in the waterless places – for the blood of the great lizard would save him from thirst.

But nothing lived in the Belly of Stones. Nothing, but the two who crept and staggered across it under the low moons.

Berild fell, and could not rise again. Stark crouched beside her. Her face stared up at him, while in the moonlight, her eyes burning and strange.

I will not die!' she whispered, not to him, but to the gods. 'I will not

die!'

And she clawed the sand and the bitter rocks, dragging herself onward It was uncanny, the madness that she had for life.

Stark raised her up and carried her. His breath came in deep

sobbing gasps. After a while he, too, fell. He went on like a beast

fours, dragging the woman.

I He knew dimly that he was climbing. There was a glimmering of dawn in the sky. His hands slipped on a lip of sand and he went rolling down a smooth slope. At length he stopped and lay in his back like a dead thing.

The sun was high when consciousness returned to him. He saw Berild lying near him and crawled to her, shaking her until her eyes opened. Her hands moved feebly and her lips formed the same four words. I will not die.

Stark strained his eyes to the horizon, praying for a glimpse of Sinharat, but there was nothing, only emptiness and sand. With great difficulty he got the woman to her feet, supporting her.

He tried to tell her that they must go on, but he could no longer form the words. He could only gesture and urge her forward, in the direction of the city.

But she refused to go. 'Too far ... die ... without water ...' He knew that she was right, but still he was not ready to give up.

She began to move away from him, toward the south, and he thought that she had gone mad and was wandering. Then he saw that she was peering with awful intensity at the line of the scarp that formed this wall of the Belly of Stones. It rose into a great ridge, serrated like the backbone of a whale, and some three miles away a long dorsal fin of reddish rock curved out into the desert.

Berild made a little sobbing noise in her throat. She began to plod toward the distant promontory.

Stark caught up with her. He tried to stop her, but she would not be stopped, turning a feral glare upon him.

She croaked, 'Water!' and pointed.

He was sure now that she was mad. He told her so, forcing the painful words out of his throat, reminding her of Sinharat and that she was going away from any possible help.

She said again, quite sanely, 'Too far. Two – three days without water,' She pointed. 'Monastery – old well – a chance ...'

Stark decided that he had little to lose by trusting her. He nodded and went with her toward the curve of rock.

The three miles might have been three hundred. At last they came up under the ragged cliffs – and there was nothing there but sand.

Stark looked at the woman. A great rage and a deep sense of futility came over him. They were indeed lost.

But Berild had gone a few steps farther. With a hoarse cry, she bent over what had seemed merely a slab of stone fallen from the cliff, and Stark saw that it was a carven pillar, half buried. Now he was able to make out the mounded shape of a ruin, of which only the foundations and a few broken columns were left.

For a long while Berild stood by the pillar, her eyes closed. Stark got the uncanny feeling that she was visualising the place as it had been, though the wall must have been dust a thousand years ago. Presently she moved. He followed her, and it was strange to see her, on the naked sand, treading the arbitrary patterns of vanished corridors.

She came to a halt, in a broad flat space that might once have been a central courtyard. There she fell on her knees and began to dig.

Stark got down beside her. They scrabbled like a pair of dogs in the yielding sand. Stark's nails slipped across something hard, and there was a yellow glint through the dusty ochre. Within a few minutes they had bared a golden cover six feet across, very massive and wonderfully carved with the symbols of some lost god of the sea.

Stark struggled to lift the thing away. He could not move it. Then Berild pressed a hidden spring and the cover slid back of itself. Beneath it, sweet and cold, protected through all these ages, water stirred gently against mossy stones.

An hour later, Stark and Berild lay sleeping soaked to the skin, their very hair dripping with the blessed dampness.

That night, when the low moons roved over the desert, by the well, drowsy with an animal sense of rest and repletion. And Stark looked at the woman and said,

'I know you now.'

'What do you know, wild man?'

Stark said quietly, 'You are a Rama.'

She did not answer at once. Then she said, 'I was bred in these these deserts. Is it so strange that I should know of this well?'

'Strange that you didn't mention it before. You were afraid, weren't you, that if you led me here your secret would come out? But it was that, or die.'

He leaned forward, studying her.'If you had led me straight to the well, I might not have wondered. But you had to stop and remember, how the halls wcre built and where the doorways were that led to the inner court. You lived in this place when it was whole. And no one, not even Kynon himself, knows of it but you.'

'You dream, wild man. The moon is in your eyes.'

Stark shook his head slowly. 'I know.'

She laughed, and stretched her arms wide on the sand.

'But I am young,' she said. 'And men have told me I am beautiful. It is good to be young, for youth has nothing to do with ashes and empty skulls.'

She touched his arm, and little darts of fire went through his flesh, warm from his fingertips.

'Forget your dreams, wild man. They're madness, gone with the morning.'

He looked down at her in the clear pale light, and she was young, and beautifully made, and her lips were smiling.

He bent his head. Her arms went round him. Her hair blew soft against his cheek. Then, suddenly, she set her teeth cruelly into his lip. He cried out and thrust her away, and she sat back on her heels, mocking him.

'That,' she said, 'is because you called Fianna's name instead of mine, when the storm broke.'

Stark cursed her. There was a taste of blood in his mouth. He reached out and caught her, and again she laughed, a peculiarly sweet, wicked sound.

The wind blew over them, sighing, and the desert was very still.

For two days they remained among the ruins. At evening of the second day Stark filled the water skin, and Berild replaced the golden cover on the well. They began the last long march toward Sinharat.

Stark saw it rising against the morning sky – a city of gold and marble, high on an island of rose-red coral laid bare by the vanished sea. Sinharat, the Ever Living.

Yet it had died. As he came closer to it, plodding slowly through the sand, he saw that the place was no more than a beautiful corpse, the lovely towers broken, the roofless palaces open to the sky. Whatever life Kynon and his armies might have foisted upon Sinharat was no more than the fleeting passage of ants across the perfect bones of the dead.

'What was it like before?' he asked, 'with the blue water around it, and the banners flying?'

Berild turned a dark, calculating look upon him.

'I told you before to forget that madness. If you talk it, no one will believe you.'

'No one?'

'You had best not anger me, wild man,' she said quietly. 'I may be your only hope of life, before this is over.'

They did not speak again, going with slow weary steps toward the city.

In the desert below the coral cliffs the armies of Kynon were encamped. The tall warriors of Kesh and Shun waiting, with their women and their beasts and their shining spears, for the pipers to cry them over the Border. The skin tents and the long picket lines were too many to count. In the distance, a convertible Kallman spacer that Stark recognised as Knighton's made an ugly, jarring incongruity.

Lookouts sighted the two toiling figures in the distance. Men and women and children began to stream out across the sand, and presently a great cheering arose. Where he had looked on emptiness for days, Stark was smothered now by the press of thousands. Berild was picked up and carried on the shoulders of two chiefs, and men would have carried Stark also, but he fought diem off.

Broad flights of steps were cut in the coral. The throng flowed upward along them. Ahead of them all went Eric John Stark, and Hie was smiling. From time to time he asked a question, and men drew back from that question, and his smile.

Up the steps and into the streets of Sinharat he went, with a slow, restless stride, asking,

'Where is Luhar of Venus?'

Every man there read death in his face, but they did not try to stop him.

People came out of the graceful ruins, drawn by the clamour, and the tide rolled down the broad ways, the rose-red streets of coral, until it spread out in the square before a great palace of gold and ivory and white marble blinding in the sun.

Luhar of Venus came down the terraced steps, fresh from sleep, his pale hair tumbled, his eyes still drowsy.

Others came through the door behind him. Stark did not see them. They did not matter. Berild didn't matter, calling his name from where she sat on the shoulders of the chiefs. Nothing, no one mattered, but himself and Luhar.

He crossed the square, not hurrying, a dark ravaged giant in rags. He saw Luhar pause on the bottom step. He saw the sleep and the vagueness go out of the Venusian's eyes as they rested first on the red-haired woman, then on himself. He saw the fear come into them, and the undying hate.

Someone got between him and Luhar. Stark lifted the man and flung him aside without breaking his stride, and went on. Luhar half turned. He would have run away, back into the palace, but there were too many now between him and the door. He crouched and drew his gun.

Stark sprang.

He came like a great black panther leaping, and he struck low. Luhar's shot went over his back. After that there was no more shooting. There was a moment, terribly short and silent, in which the two men lay entangled, straining against each other in a sort of stasis. Then Luhar screamed.

Stark knew dimly that there were hands, many of them, trying to drag him away. He clung growling to the Venusian until he was torn loose by main force. He struggled against his captors, and through a red haze he saw Kynon's face, close to his and very angry. Luhar was not yet dead.

'I warned you, Stark!' said Kynon furiously. 'I warned you.'

Men were bending over Luhar. Knighton, Walsh, Themis, Arrod. Stark saw that Delgaun was among them. He did not question at the time how word had gone back to Valkis and sent Delgaun racing across the dead sea bottom with his hired bravos to search for the red-haired woman. It was right that Delgaun should be there.

In short ragged sentences, Stark told how Luhar and Freka had tried to kill him, and how Berild had been lost with him.

Kynon turned to the Venusian. Death was already glazing the cloud-grey eyes, but it had not quenched the hatred and venom.

'He lies,' whispered Luhar. 'I saw him – he tried to run away and take the woman with him.'

Luhar of Venus, taking vengeance with his last breath.

Freka pushed forward, transparently eager to pick up his cue. 'It is so,' he said. 'I was with Luhar. I saw it also.'

Delgaun laughed. Cruel, silent laughter. He stood up, and looked at Berild.

Berild's eyes were blazing. She ignored Delgaun and spoke to Kynon.

'You fool. Can't you see that they hate him? What Stark says is true. And I would have died in the desert because of them, if Stark hadn't been a better man than all of you.'

'Strange words,' said Delgaun, 'coming from a man's own mate. Perhaps Luhar did lie, after all. Perhaps it was not Stark who tried to run away, but you.'

She cursed him, with an ancient curse, and Kynon looked at her, sullenly. He said to the men who held Stark, 'Chain him below, in the dungeons.' Then he took Berild's arm and went with her into the palace.

Stark fought until someone behind him knocked him on the head with the butt of a spear. The last thing he saw was the face of Fianna, standing out from the crowd, wide-eyed with pity and love.

He came to in a place of cold, dry stone. There was an iron collar around his neck, and a five-foot chain ran from it to a ring in the wall. The cell was small. A gate of iron bars closed the entrance. Beyond was an open well, with other cell doors around it, and above were thick stone gratings open to the sky. He guessed that the place was built beneath some inner court of he palace.

There were no other prisoners. But there was a guard, a thick-shouldered barbarian who sat on the execution block in the centre of the well, with a sword and a jug of wine. A guard who watched the captive Stark, and smiled.

Freka.

When he saw that Stark was awake, Freka lifted up the jug and laughed. 'Here's to Death,' he said. For no one else comes here!'

He drank, and after that he did not speak, only sat and smiled.

Stark said nothing either. He waited, with the same unhuman patience he had shown when he waited for his captors under the tor.

The dim daylight faded from the gratings. Darkness came, and the pale glimmer of the moons. Freka became a silvered statue of a man, sitting on the block. Stark's eyes glowed.

The empty jug dropped and broke. Freka rose. He took the naked sword in his hand and crossed the open space to the cell. He lifted the outer bar away. It fell with a great echoing clang, and Freka entered.

'Stand up, Outlander,' he said. 'Stand up and face the steel. After that you'll sleep in a coral pit, and not even the worms will find you.'

'Beast of Shanga!' Stark said contemptuously, and set his back against the wall, to give himself all the slack of the chain.

He saw the bright steel glimmer in the air, up and down again, but when the blow fell he had leaped aside, and the point struck ringing against the stone. Stark darted in to grapple.

His fingers slipped on hard muscle, and Freka wrenched away. He was a fighting man, and no weakling. The iron collar dug painfully into the Earthman's throat and the heavy chain threw him backward. Freka laughed, deep in his chest. The sword glinted hungrily.

Then, as though she had taken shape suddenly from the shadows, Fianna was in the doorway. The little gun in her hand made a hissing spurt of flame. Freka screamed once, and fell. He did not move again.

'The swine,' Fianna said, without emotion. 'Delgaun ordered him to wait, until it was sure that Kynon would not come down to talk to you. Then the story was to be that you had escaped somehow, with Berild's aid.'

She stepped over the body and unlocked the iron collar with a key she took from her girdle.

Stark took her slender shoulders gently between his hands. 'Are you a witch-girl, that you know all things and always come when I need you?'

She gave him a deep, strange look. In the dusk, her proud young face was unfamiliar, touched with something fey and sad. He wished that he could see her eyes more clearly.

'I know all things because I must,' she told him wearily. 'And I think that you are my only hope – perhaps the only hope of Mars.'

He drew her to him, and kissed her, and stroked her dark head. 'You're too young to concern yourself with the destinies of worlds.'

He felt her tremble. 'The youth of the body is only illusion, when the mind is old.'

'And is yours old, little one?'

'Old,' she whispered. 'As old as Berild's.'

He felt sher tears warm against his skin, and she was like a child in her arms.

'Then you know about her,' said Stark.

He paused. 'And Delgaun?'

'Delgaun also.'

'I thought so,' Stark said. He nodded, scowling at the barred moonlight in the well. 'There are things I must know, myself but we'd best get out of here. Did Berild send you?'

'Yes – as soon as she could get the key from Kynon. She is waiting for you.' She stirred Freka's body with her foot. 'Bring that. hat. We'll hide it in the pit he meant for you.'

Stark heaved the body over his shoulder and followed the girl through a twisting maze of corridors, some pitch dark, some feebly lighted by the moons. Fianna moved as surely as though she were in the main square at high noon. There was the silence of death in these cold tunnels, and the dry faint smell of eternity.

At length Fianna whispered. 'Here. Be careful.'

She put out a hand to guide him, but Stark's eyes were like a cat's in the dark. He made out a space where the rock with which the ancient builders had faced these subterranean ways gave place to the original coral.

Ragged black mouths opened in the coral, entrances to some unguessed catacombs beneath. Stark consigned Freka to the nearest pit, and then reluctantly threw his sword in after him.

'You won't need it,' Fianna told him, 'and besides, it would be recognised. This will be a bitter night enough, without rousing the men of Shun over Freka's death.'

Stark listened to the distant sliding echoes from the pit, and shivered. He had so nearly finished there himself. He was glad to follow Fianna away from that place of darkness and silent death.

He stopped her in a place where a bar of moonlight came splashing through a great crack in the tunnel roof.

'Now,' he said, 'we will talk.'

She nodded. 'Yes. The time has come for that.'

'There are lies everywhere,' said Stark. 'I am tangled up in lies. You know the truth that is behind this war of Kynon's. Tell me.'

'Kynon's truth is simple,' she answered, speaking slowly, choosing her words. 'He wants land and power, conquest. He will pour out the blood of his people for that, and after that he plans to use the men of the Low-Canals under Delgaun to keep the tribesmen in line. It may be true, as he said, that they would be satisfied with grazing land and water – but they would lose their freedom, and their pride, and I think he has judged them wrongly. I think they would revolt.'

She looked up at Stark. 'He planned to use your knowledge, and then destroy you if you became troublesome.'

'I guessed that. What about the others?'

'The outlanders? Use them, keep them as subordinates, or pay them off. Kill them, if necessary.'

Now,' said Stark. 'What of Delgaun and Berild?'

Fianna said softly. 'Their truth, too, is simple. They took Kynon's idea of empire, and stretched it further. It was Delgaun's idea to bring the strangers in. They would use Kynon and the tribes until the victory was won. Then they would do away with Kynon and rule themselves – with the outlanders and their ships and their powerful weapons to oppress Low-Canaler and Drylander alike.

'That way, they could rape a world. More outland vultures would come, drawn by the smell of loot. The Martian men would fight as long as there was the hope of plunder – after that, they would be slaves to hold the empire. Their masters would grow fat on tribute from the City-States and from the men of Earth who have built here, or who wish to build. An evil plan – but profitable.'

Stark thought about Knighton and Walsh of Terra, Themis of Mercury, Arrod of Callisto Colony. He thought of others like them, and what they would do, with their talons hooked in the heart of Mars. He thought of Delgaun's yellow eyes.

He thought of Berild, and he was sick with loathing.

Fianna came close to him, speaking in a different tone that had care and anxiety only for him.

'I have told you this, because I know what Berild plans. Tonight - oh, tonight is a black and evil time, and death waits in Sinharat! It is very close to me, I know. And you must follow own heart, Eric John Stark. I cannot tell you more.'

He kissed her again, because she was sweet and very brave. Then she led him on through the dark labyrinth, to where Berild was waiting, with her dangerous beauty and all the evil of the ages in her soul.

They came out of the darkness so suddenly that Stark blinked in the unaccustomed light of torches set in great silver sconces on the walls.

The floor had been artificially smoothed, but otherwise the crypt was as the eroding action of the sea had shaped it out of the coral reef. It was not large, and it was like a cavern in a fairy tale, walled and roofed with the fantastic wreathing shapes of the rose-red coral. At one end there was a golden coffer set with naming jewels.

Berild was there. Her wonderful hair was dressed and shining, and her body was clothed all in white, her arms and shoulders warm bronze from the kiss of the desert sun.

Kynon was there, also. He stood motionless and silent, and he did not so much as turn his head when Fianna and Stark came in. His eyes were wide open and blank as a blind man's.

'I have been waiting,' said Berild, 'and the time is short.'

She seemed angry and impatient, and Stark said, Freka is dead. It was necessary to hide his body.'

She nodded and turned to the girl. 'Go now, Fianna.'

Fianna bent her head and went away. She did not look at Stark. It was as though she had no interest in anything that happened.

Stark looked at Kynon, who had not moved or spoken.

'He is safe enough,' said Berild, answering Stark's unspoken question. 'I drugged his wine so that his mind was opened to mine, and he is my creature as long as I will it.'

Hypnosis, Stark thought. His nerves were beginning to do strange things. He wished desperately that he were back in the cell facing Freka's sword, which at least would deal with him openly and without guile or subterfuge.

Berild set her hands on Stark's shoulders, and smiled as she had done that night by the ancient well.

'I offer you three things tonight, wild man,' she said. Her eyes challenged him, and the scent of her hair was sweet and maddening.

'Your life – and power – and myself.'

Stark let his hands slip lightly down from her shoulders to her waist. 'And how will you do this thing?' he asked.

'Easily,' she said, and laughed. She was very proud, and sure of her strength, and glad to be alive. 'Oh, very easily. You guessed the truth about me – I am of the Twice Born, the Ramas. I hold the secret of the Sending-on of Minds, which this great ox Kynon pretended to have. I can give you life now – and forever. Remember, wild man – forever!'

He bent his dark face to hers, so that their lips touched, and murmured, 'Would I have you forever, Berild?'

'Until you tire of me – or I of you.' She kissed him, and then added mockingly, 'Delgaun has had me for a thousand years, and I am weary of him. So very weary!'

'A thousand years is a long time,' said Stark, 'and I am not Delgaun.'

'No. You're a beast, a savage, a most magnificent cold-eyed animal, and that is why I love you.' She touched the muscle of his breast, and then his throat, and added, 'It's a pity there will never be another body like this one. We must keep it as long as we can.'

'What is your plan?' Stark asked her.

'Simply this. I will place your mind in Kynon's body. You will be Kynon, with all his power. You will be able then to keep Delgaun in check – later, you can destroy him, but not until after the battle is won, for we need the men of Valkis and Jekkara. You can keep your own body safe from him, and at the worst, if by some chance he should succeed in slaying the man he believes to be you, you will still be alive.'

'And after the battle,' said Stark softly. 'What then, Berild?'

'We will rule together.' She held his palms against hers. 'You have strong hands, wild man. Would you not like to hold a world between them – and me?'

She looked up at him, her eyes suddenly shrewd and probing. Or do you still believe the nonsense you talked to Kynon, about the tribes?'

Stark smiled. 'It's easy to have principles when there's no gain involved. No. I am as my name says – a man without a tribe. I have no loyalties. And if I had, would I remember them now?'

He held her, as she had said, between his hands, and they were very strong.

But even then, Berild could warn him.

'Keep faith with me, then! My wisdom is greater than yours, and I have powers you don't dream of. What I give, I can take away.'

For answer, Stark silenced her mouth with his own.

When she drew away, she said rather breathlessly, 'Let us hurry. The tribes are gathered, and Kynon was to have given the signal for war at dawn. There is much I must teach you between now and then.'

She paused with her hand on the lid of the golden coffer. 'This is a secret place,' she said quietly. 'Since before the ocean died, it has been secret. Not even Kynon knew of it. I think only Delgaun and I, the last of the Twice-Born, knew – and now you.'

'What about Fianna?'

Berild shrugged. 'She is only my servant. To her, this is only a little cavern where I keep my private wealth.'

She pressed a series of patterned bosses in intricate sequence, and there was the sharp click of an opening lock. A shiver ran up along Stark's spine. The beast in him longed to run, to be away from this whole business that smelled of evil. But the man in him knelt at Berild's wish, and waited, and did not flinch when the blank-eyed Kynon came like a moving corpse beside him.

Berild raised the golden lid. And there was a great silence.

On the slave block of Valkis, Kynon had brought forth two crowns of shining crystal and a rod of flame. As glass is to diamond, as the pallid moon to the light of the sun, were those things to the reality.

In her two hands Berild held the ancient crowns of the Ramas, the givers of life. Twin circlets of glorious fire, dimming the shallow glare of the torches, putting a nimbus of light around the white-clad woman so that she was like a goddess walking in a cloud of stars. Stark's whole being contracted to a point of icy pain at the beauty and the wonder and the terror of them.

She set one crown on Kynon's head, and even the drugged automaton shivered and sighed at its touch.

Stark's mind veered away from the incredible thing that was about to happen. It spoke words to him, hurried desperate words of sanity, about the electrical patterns of the mind, and the sensitivity of crystals, and conductors, and electro-magnetic impulses. But that was only the top of his brain. At base it was still the brain of N'Chaka that believed in gods and demons and all the sorceries of darkness. Only pride kept him from cowering abjectly at Berild's feet.

She stood above him, a creature of dreams in the unearthly light. She smiled and whispered, 'Do not fear,' – and she placed the second crown upon his head.

A strange, shuddering fire swept through him. It was as though some chip of the primal heart of all creation had been set by an unguessed magic into the cells of the crystal. The force that shaped the universe and scattered forth the stars, and set the great suns to spinning. There was something awesome about it, something almost holy.

And yet he was afraid. Most shockingly afraid.

His brain was set free, in some strange fashion. The walls of his skull vanished. His mind floated in a dim vastness. It was like a tiny sun, glowing, spinning, swelling ...

Berild lifted a crystal rod from the coffer, a wand of sorcerous fire. And now Stark's thoughts had lost all track of science. A cloud of misty darkness flowed around him, thickened ...

A great leaping flare of light, a distant echo of a cry that he did not recognise as his own, and then ...

Nothing.

He was lying on his face, his cheek pressed against the cool coral. He opened his eyes, his mind groping for the shreds of some remembered terror. He saw, vaguely at first and then with terrible clarity as his vision became clear, a man lying close beside him.

A tall man, very strongly built, with skin burned almost toblackness

by exposure. A man who looked at him with eyes that were startlingly light in his dark face ...

His own eyes. His own face.

He cried out and struggled to his feet, trembling, staggering, and his body felt strange to him. He looked down upon the strangeness of another man's limbs, the alien shaping of flesh and sinew upon alien bones.

The face of the dark giant who lay upon the coral mocked him. It watched, but did not see. The eyes were blank, empty, without soul or intelligence.

The mind of Eric John Stark fought, in its alien prison, for sanity.

Berild's voice spoke to him. Her hand was on his shoulder

Kynon's shoulder ...

'All is well, wild man. Do not fear. Kynon's mind is in your body, still sleeping at my command. And you are Kynon now.' It was not an easy thing to accept, but he knew that it was so, and he knew that he had wished it to be so. It was easier to be calm after he turned his back on the other.

Berild took him in her arms and held him until he had stopped shuddering, oddly like a mother with a frightened child. Then she kissed him, smiling, and said,

The first time is hard. I can remember – and that was very long ago.' She shook him gently. 'Now come. We'll take your body to a place of safety. And then I must tell you all of Kynon's plans for those outside.'

She spoke to the thing that lay upon the coral, saying, 'Get up,' and it rose obediently and followed where Berild led, to a tiny barred niche in a side passage. It made no protest when ii was left, locked safely in.

'Only I can give it back to you,' said Berild softly. 'Remember that.'

Stark said, 'I will remember.'

He went with Berild to Kynon's quarters in the palace. He sat among Kynon's possessions, clothed in Kynon's flesh, and learned how Kynon's mind had planned to loose a red tide upon the peaceful cities of the Border.

Only a small part of his mind was attentive to this. The rest of it was concerned with the redness of Berild's hair and the warmth of her lips, and with the heady knowledge that it was possible to be alive and young forever.

Never to lose the pride of strength, never to know the dimming sight and failing mind of age. To go on, like a child in an endless playground, with no fear of tomorrow.

It was nearly dawn.

Berild rose. She had told him much, but not the things Fianna had told him, of the secret treachery she had planned with Delgaun. She helped Stark to clothe Kynon's body in the harness of war, with the Iongsword and the shield and the shining spear. Then she set her lips to his so that his borrowed heart threatened to choke him with its pounding, and her eyes were wondrously bright and beautiful.

'It is time,' she whispered.

She walked beside him, as he had seen her beside Kynon in Valkis, stepping like a queen.

They came out of the palace, onto the steps where Luhar had died. There were beasts waiting, trapped for war, and an escort of tall chiefs, with pipers and drummers and link-boys to light the way.

Stark mounted Kynon's beast. It sensed the wrongness in him, hissing and rearing, but he held it down, and imperiously raised his hand.

Throbbing drums and skirling pipes, tossing flames where the link-boys ran with the torches, a clash of metal and a cheer, and Kynon of Shun rode down through the streets of Sinharat to the coral cliffs, with the red-haired woman at his side.

They were waiting.

The men of Kesh and the men of Shun were gathered below cliffs, waiting. Stark led the way, as Berild had told him to, a ledge of coral above them. Delgaun was there, with the outlanders and a handful of Valkisians. He looked tired and

tempered. Stark knew that he had been busy for hours with last-minute preparations.

The first pale rays of dawn broke across the desert. A vast ringing cry went up from the gathered armies. After that there was, silence, a taunt expectant hush.

I here was no fear in Stark now. He was past that. Fear was too small an emotion for what was about to be.

He saw Delgaun's golden eyes, hot with a cruel excitement. He saw Berild's secret triumph in her smile. He looked down upon the warriors, and let the magnificent voice of Kynon ring out across the soundless air.

'There will be no war,' he said. 'You have been betrayed.'

In the moment that was left to him, he confessed the lie of the Rama crowns. And then Berild, who was behind him now, had moved like a red-haired fury to drive her dagger into his heart.

In his own body, Stark might have escaped the blow. But the reflexes of Kynon were not as his. They were swift enough to postpone death – the blade bit deep, but not where Berild had wished it. He turned and caught her by the wrists, and said to Delgaun, 'She has betrayed you, too. Freka lies in a coral pit – and I am not Kynon.'

Berild tore away from him. She spurred her beast toward the Valkisian. She would have broken past him, through the escort, and up the cliffs to safety in the tunnels under Sinharat. But Delgaun was too quick.

One hand caught in the masses of her hair. She was dragged screaming from the saddle, and even then her screams were not of fear, but of fury. She clawed at Delgaun, and he fell with her to the ground.

The tall chieftains of the escort came forward, but they were dazed, and confused by the anger that was rising in them.

Delgaun's wiry body arched. He flung the woman over the ledge, and what happened to her after that Stark did not see, nor wish to see.

He was shouting again to the barbarians, the tale of Delgaun's treachery.

Behind him on the ledge there was turmoil where Delgaun ran on foot between the beasts, and the outlanders made their try for safety. Below him in the desert, where there had been silence, a great deep muttering was growing, like the first growling of a storm, and the ranks of spears rippled like wheat before the wind.

And Stark felt the slow running out of Kynon's blood inside him, where Berild's dagger stood out from his back.

They had headed Delgaun away from the path up the cliff. The two loose mounts had been caught and held. They had tried to catch Delgaun, but he was light and fast and slipped away from them. Now he broke back, toward Kynon's great beast.

Knock the dying man from the saddle, charge through the milling chieftains, who were hampered by their own numbers in that narrow space ...

He leaped. And the arms of Kynon, driven by the will of Eric John Stark, encircled him and held him and would not let him go.

The two men crashed to the ledge. Stark let out one harsh cry of agony, and then was still, his hands locked around the Valkisian's throat, his eyes intent and strange.

Men came up, and he gasped, 'He is mine,' and they let him be.

Delgaun did not die easily. He managed to get his dagger out, and gashed the other's side until the naked ribs showed through. But once again Stark's mind was free in some dark immensity of its own. He was living again the dream he had in Valkis, and this was the end of the dream. N'Chaka had a grip at last on the demon with yellow eyes that hungered for his life, and he would not let go.

The yellow eyes widened. They blazed, and then they slowly dimmed until the last flicker of life was gone. The strength went out of N'Chaka's hands. He fell forward, over his prey.

Below, on the sand, Berild lay, and her outspread hair was as red as blood in the fiery dawn.

The men of Kesh and the men of Shun flowed, in a resistless tide up over the coral cliffs. The chieftains and the pipers and the link-boys joined them, hunting the outlanders and the wolves of Valkis through the streets of Sinharat.

Unnoticed, a dark-haired girl ran down the path to the ledge.

She bent over the body of Kynon, pressing her hand to its heart. Tears ran down and mingled with the blood.

A low, faint moan came from the man's lips. Weeping like a bulH, Fianna drew a tiny vial from her girdle and poured three drops of pale liquid on the unresponsive tongue.

He had come a long way. He had been down in the deep black valleys of the Place of Darkness, and the iron frost was in his bones. He had climbed the bitter mountains where no creature of the Twilight Belt might go and live.

There was light, now. He had been lost and wandering, but he had won back to the light. His tribe, his people would be waiting for him. But he knew that he would never see them.

He remembered, then, with the old terrible loneliness, that they were not truly his people. They had raised him, but they were not of his blood.

And he remembered also that they were dead, slain by the miners who had needed all the water of the valley for themselves. Slain by the miners who had taken N'Chaka and put him in a cage.

With a start of terror, he thought he was again in that cage, with the leering bearded faces peering in at him. But in the blinding dazzle of light he could see no bars.

There was only one face. The anxious, pitying face of a girl.

Fianna.

His brain began to clear. Memory returned bit by bit, the fragments fitting themselves gradually into place.

Kynon. Delgaun. Berild. Sinharat, the Ever-Living.

He remembered now with perfect clarity that he was dying, and it seemed a terrible thing to die in the body of another man. For the first time, fully, he felt the separation from his own flesh. It seemed a blasphemous thing, more terrible than death.

Fianna was weeping. She stroked his hair, and whispered, 'I am so glad. I was afraid – afraid you would never wake.'

He was touched, because he knew that she loved him and would be sad. He lifted his hand to touch her face, to comfort her.

He saw the fingers of that hand, dark against her cheek. Dark... His own fingers. His own hand.

He was not on the ledge. He was back in the coral crypt beneath the palace. The light that had dazzled his eyes was not the sun, but only the flare of torches.

He sat up, his heart pounding wildly.

Kynon of Shun lay beside him on the coral. He was quite dead, his head encircled by a crown of fire, his side open to the white bone where Delgaun's blade had struck.

The wound that Kynon himself had never felt.

The golden coffer was open. The second crown lay near Fianna, with the rod beside it.

Stark looked at her, deep into her eyes. Very softly he said, 'I would not have dreamed it.'

'You will understand, now – many things,' she said. 'And I was glad of my power today, because I could truly give you life!' She rose, and he saw that she was very tired. Her voicemwas dull, as though it counted over old things that no longer mattered.

'You see why I was afraid. If they had ever suspected that I, too, was of the Twice-Born ... Berild or Delgaun, each alone, I might have destroyed, but I could not destroy both of them. And if I had, there was still Kynon. You did what I could not, Eric John Stark.'

'Why were you against them, Fianna? How were you proof against the poison that made them what they were?'

She answered angrily, 'Because I am weary of evil, of scheming for power and shedding the blood of men as though they were sheep! I am not better than Berild was. I, too, have lived a long time, line, and my hands are not clean. But perhaps, by what you helped me do, I have made up a little for my sins.'

She paused, her thoughts turned darkly inward, and it was strange to see the shadow of age touching her sweet young face. Then she said, very slowly, like an old, old woman speaking, 'I am weary of living. No matter where I go, I am a stranger. You can understand that, though not so well as I. There is an end pleasure, and after that only loneliness is left.

'I have remembered that I was human once. That is why I set myself against their plan of empire. After all these ages I have come round full circle to the starting point, and things seem to me now as they seemed then, before I was tempted by the Sending-on of Minds.

'Ist is a wicked thing!' she cried suddenly. 'Against nature and the gods, and it has never brought anything but evil!' She caught up the rod and held it in her hands.

'This is the last,' she said. 'Cities die, and nations perish, and material things, even such as these, are destroyed. One by one the Twice-Born have perished also, through accident or swift disease or murder, as Berild would have slain Delgaun. Now only this, and I, are left.'

Quite suddenly, she flung the rod against the coral, and it broke iemp a cloudy flame and a tinkling of crystal shards. Then, one by one, she broke the crowns.

She stood still for a long moment. Then she whispered, 'Now only I am left.'

Again there was silence, and Stark was shaken by the magnitude of the thing that she had done. Her slim girl's body somehow took on the stature of a goddess.

After a while he went to her and said awkwardly, 'I have not thanked you, Fianna. You brought me here, you saved me ...' 'Kiss me once , then,' she answered, and raised her lips to his.

'For I love you, Eric John Stark – and that is the pity of it. Because I am not for you, nor for any man.'

He kissed her, very tenderly, and there was the bitter taste of tears on her soft lips.

'Now come,' she whispered, and took his hand.

She led him back through the labyrinth, into the palace, and then out again into the streets of Sinharat. Stark saw that it was sunset, and that the city was deserted. The tribes of Kesh and Shun had broken camp and gone.

There was a beast ready for him, supplied with food and water. Fianna asked him where he wished to go, and pointed the way to Tarak.

'And you?' he asked. 'Where will you go, little one?'

'I have not thought.' She lifted her head, and the wind played with her dark hair. She did not smile, and yet suddenly Stark knew that she was happy.

'I am free of a great burden,' she whispered. 'I shall stay here for a while, and think, and after that I shall know what to do. But whatever it is there will be no evil in it, and in the end I shall rest.'

He mounted, and she looked up at him, with a look that wrung his heart although it was not sad.

'Go now,' she said, 'and the gods go with you.'

'And with you.' He bent and kissed her once again, and then rode away, down to the coral cliffs.

Far out on the desert he turned and looked back, once, at the white towers of Sinharat rising against the larger moon.

ENCHANTRESS OF VENUS

The ship moved slowly across the Red Sea, through the shrouding veils of mist, her sail barely filled by the languid thrust of the wind. Her hull, of a thin light metal, floated without sound, the surface of the strange ocean parting before her prow in silent rippling streamers of flame.

Night deepened toward the ship, a river of indigo flowing out of the west. The man known as Stark stood alone by the after rail and watched its coming. He was full of impatience and a gathering sense of danger, so that it seemed to him that even the hot wind smelled of it.

The steersman lay drowsily over his sweep. He was a big man, with skin and hair the color of milk. He did not speak, but Stark felt that now and again the man's eyes turned toward him, pale and calculating under half-closed lids, with a secret avarice.

The captain and the two other members of the little coasting vessel's crew were forward, at their evening meal. Once or twice Stark heard a burst of laughter, half-whispered and furtive. It was as though all four shared in some private joke, from which he was rigidly excluded.

The heat was oppressive. Sweat gathered on Stark's dark face. His shirt stuck to his back. The air was heavy with moisture, tainted with the muddy fecundity of the land that brooded westward behind the eternal fog.

There was something ominous about the sea itself. Even on its own world, the Red Sea is hardly more than legend. It lies behind the Mountains of White Cloud, the great barrier wall that hides away half a planet. Few men have gone beyond that barrier, into the vast mystery of Inner Venus. Fewer still have come back.

Stark was one of that handful. Three times before he had crossed the mountains, and once he had stayed for nearly a year. But he had never quite grown used to the Red Sea.

It was not water. It was gaseous, dense enough to float the buoyant hulls of the metal ships, and it burned perpetually with its deep inner fires. The mists that clouded it were stained with the bloody glow. Beneath the surface Stark could see the drifts of flame where the lazy currents ran, and the little coiling bursts of sparks that came upward and spread and melted into other bursts, so that the face of the sea was like a cosmos of crimson stars.

It was very beautiful, glowing against the blue, luminous darkness of the night. Beautiful, and strange.

There was a padding of bare feet, and the captain, Malthor, came up to Stark, his outlines dim and ghostly in the gloom.

"We will reach Shuruun," he said, "before the second glass is run."

Stark nodded. "Good."

The voyage had seemed endless, and the close confinement of the narrow deck had got badly on his nerves.

"You will like Shuruun," said the captain jovially. "Our wine, our food, our women—all superb. We don't have many visitors. We keep to ourselves, as you will see. But those who do come…"

He laughed, and clapped Stark on the shoulder. "Ah, yes. You will be happy in Shuruun!"

It seemed to Stark that he caught an echo of laughter from the unseen crew, as though they listened and found a hidden jest in Malthor's words.

Stark said, "That's fine."

"Perhaps," said Malthor, "you would like to lodge with me. I could make you a good price."

He had made a good price for Stark's passage from up the coast. An exorbitantly good one.

Stark said, "No."

"You don't have to be afraid," said the Venusian, in a confidential tone. "The strangers who come to Shuruun all have the same reason. It's a good place to hide. We're out of everybody's reach."

He paused, but Stark did not rise to his bait. Presently he chuckled and went on, "In fact, it's such a safe place that most of the strangers decide to stay on. Now, at my house, I could give you…"

Stark said again, flatly, "No."

The captain shrugged. "Very well. Think it over, anyway." He peered ahead into the red, coiling mists. "Ah! See there?" He pointed, and Stark made out the shadowy loom of cliffs. "We are coming into the strait now."

Malthor turned and took the steering sweep himself, the helmsman going forward to join the others. The ship began to pick up speed. Stark saw that she had come into the grip of a current that swept toward the cliffs, a river of fire racing ever more swiftly in the depths of the sea.

The dark wall seemed to plunge toward them. At first Stark could see no passage. Then, suddenly, a narrow crimson streak appeared, widened, and became a gut of boiling flame, rushing silently around broken rocks. Red fog rose like smoke. The ship quivered, sprang ahead, and tore like a mad thing into the heart of the inferno.

In spite of himself, Stark's hands tightened on the rail. Tattered veils of mist swirled past them. The sea, the air, the ship itself, seemed drenched in blood. There was no sound, in all that wild sweep of current through the strait Only the sullen fires burst and flowed.

The reflected glare showed Stark that the Straits of Shuruun were defended. Squat fortresses brooded on the cliffs. There were ballistas, and great windlasses for the drawing of nets across the narrow throat. The men of Shuruun could enforce their law that barred all foreign shipping from their gulf.

They had reason for such a law, and such a defense. The legitimate trade of Shuruun, such as it was, was in wine and the delicate laces woven from spider-silk. Actually, however, the city lived and throve on piracy, the arts of wrecking, and a contraband trade in the distilled juice of the vela poppy.

Looking at the rocks and the fortresses, Stark could understand how it was that Shuruun had been able for more centuries than anyone could tell to victimize the shipping of the Red Sea, and offer a refuge to the outlaw, the wolf's-head, the breaker of taboo.

With startling abruptness, they were through the gut and drifting on the still surface of this all but landlocked arm of the Red Sea.

Because of the shrouding fog, Stark could see nothing of the land. But the smell of it was stronger, warm damp soil and the heavy, faintly rotten perfume of vegetation half jungle, half swamp. Once, through a rift in the wreathing vapor, he thought he glimpsed the shadowy bulk of an island, but it was gone at once.

After the terrifying rush of the strait, it seemed to Stark that the ship barely moved. His impatience and the subtle sense of danger deepened. He began to pace the deck, with the nervous, velvet motion of a prowling cat. The moist, steamy air seemed all but unbreathable after the clean dryness of Mars, from whence he had come so recently. It was oppressively still.

Suddenly he stopped, his head thrown back, listening.

The sound was borne faintly on the slow wind. It came from everywhere and nowhere, a vague dim thing without source or direction. It almost seemed that the night itself had spoken—the hot blue night of Venus, crying out of the mists with a tongue of infinite woe.

It faded and died away, only half heard, leaving behind it a sense of aching sadness, as though all the misery and longing of a world had found voice in that desolate wail.

Stark shivered. For a time there was silence, and then he heard the sound again, now on a deeper note. Still faint and far away, it was sustained longer by the vagaries of the heavy air, and it became a chant, rising and falling. There were no words. It was not the sort of thing that would have need of words. Then it was gone again.

Stark turned to Malthor. "What was that?"

The man looked at him curiously. He seemed not to have heard.

"That wailing sound," said Stark impatiently.

"Oh, that." The Venusian shrugged. "A trick of the wind. It sighs in the hollow rocks around the strait."

He yawned, giving place again to the steersman, and came to stand beside Stark. The Earthman ignored him. For some reason, that sound half heard through the mists had brought his uneasiness to a sharp pitch.

Civilization had brushed over Stark with a light hand. Raised from infancy by half-human aboriginals, his perceptions were still those of a savage. His ear was good.

Malthor lied. That cry of pain was not made by any wind.

"I have known several Earthmen," said Malthor, changing the subject, but not too swiftly. "None of them were like you."

Intuition warned Stark to play along. "I don't come from Earth," he said. "I come from Mercury."

Malthor puzzled over that. Venus is a cloudy world, where no man has ever seen the Sun, let alone a star. The captain had heard vaguely of these things. Earth and Mars he knew of. But Mercury was an unknown word.

Stark explained. "The planet nearest the Sun. It's very hot there. The Sun blazes like a huge fire, and there are no clouds to shield it."

"Ah. That is why your skin is so dark." He held his own pale forearm close to Stark's and shook his head. "I have never seen such skin," he said admiringly. "Nor such great muscles."

Looking up, he went on in a tone of complete friendliness, "I wish you would stay with me. You'll find no better lodgings in Shuruun. And I warn you, there are people in the town who will take advantage of strangers—rob them, even slay them. Now, I am known by all as a man of honor. You could sleep soundly under my roof."

He paused, then added with a smile, "Also, I have a daughter. An excellent cook—and very beautiful."

The woeful chanting came again, dim and distant on the wind, an echo of warning against some unimagined fate.

Stark said for the third time, "No."

He needed no intuition to tell him to walk wide of the captain. The man was a rogue, and not a very subtle one.

A flint-hard, angry look came briefly into Malthor's eyes. "You're a stubborn man. You'll find that Shuruun is no place for stubbornness."

He turned and went away. Stark remained where he was. The ship drifted on through a slow eternity of time. And all down that long still gulf of the Red Sea, through the heat and the wreathing fog, the ghostly chanting haunted him, like the keening of lost souls in some forgotten hell.

Presently the course of the ship was altered. Malthor came again to the afterdeck, giving a few quiet commands. Stark saw land ahead, a darker blur on the night, and then the shrouded outlines of a city.

Torches blazed on the quays and in the streets, and the low buildings caught a ruddy glow from the burning sea itself. A squat and ugly town, Shuruun, crouching witch-like on the rocky shore, her ragged skirts dipped in blood.

The ship drifted in toward the quays.

Stark heard a whisper of movement behind him, the hushed and purposeful padding of naked feet. He turned, with the astonishing swiftness of an animal that feels itself threatened, his hand dropping to his gun.

A belaying pin, thrown by the steersman, struck the side of his head with stunning force. Reeling, half blinded, he saw the distorted shapes of men closing in upon him. Malthor's voice sounded, low and hard. A second belaying pin whizzed through the air and cracked against Stark's shoulder.

Hands were laid upon him. Bodies, heavy and strong, bore his down. Malthor laughed.

Stark's teeth glinted bare and white. Someone's cheek brushed past, and he sank them into the flesh. He began to growl, a sound that should never have come from a human throat. It seemed to the startled Venusians that the man they had attacked had by some wizardry become a beast, at the first touch of violence.

The man with the torn cheek screamed. There was a voiceless scuffling on the deck, a terrible intensity of motion, and then the great dark body rose and shook itself free of the tangle, and was gone, over the rail, leaving Malthor with nothing but the silken rags of a shirt in his hands.

The surface of the Red Sea closed without a ripple over Stark. There was a burst of crimson sparks, a momentary trail of flame going down like a drowned comet, and then—nothing.

Stark dropped slowly downward through a strange world. There was no difficulty about breathing, as in a sea of water. The gases of the Red Sea support life quite well, and the creatures that dwell in it have almost normal lungs.

Stark did not pay much attention at first, except to keep his balance automatically. He was still dazed from the blow, and he was raging with anger and pain.

The primitive in him, whose name was not Stark but N'Chaka, and who had fought and starved and hunted in the blazing valleys of Mercury's Twilight Belt, learning lessons he never forgot, wished to return and slay Malthor and his men. He regretted that he had not torn out their throats, for now his trail would never be safe from them.

But the man Stark, who had learned some more bitter lessons in the name of civilization, knew the unwisdom of that. He snarled over his aching head, and cursed the Venusians in the harsh, crude dialect that was his mother tongue, but he did not turn back. There would be time enough for Malthor.

It struck him that the gulf was very deep.

Fighting down his rage, he began to swim in the direction of the shore. There was no sign of pursuit, and he judged that Malthor had decided to let him go. He puzzled over the reason for the attack. It could hardly be robbery, since he carried nothing but the clothes he stood in, and very little money.

No. There was some deeper reason. A reason connected with Malthor's insistence that he lodge with him. Stark smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. He was thinking of Shuruun, and the things men said about it, around the shores of the Red Sea.

Then his face hardened. The dim coiling fires through which he swam brought him memories of other times he had gone adventuring in the depths of the Red Sea.

He had not been alone then. Helvi had gone with him—the tall son of a barbarian kinglet up-coast by Yarell. They had hunted strange beasts through the crystal forests of the sea-bottom and bathed in the welling flames that pulse from the very heart of Venus to feed the ocean. They had been brothers.

Now Helvi was gone, into Shuruun. He had never returned.

Stark swam on. And presently he saw below him in the red gloom something that made him drop lower, frowning with surprise.

There were trees beneath him. Great forest giants towering up into an eerie sky, their branches swaying gently to the slow wash of the currents.

Stark was puzzled. The forests where he and Helvi had hunted were truly crystalline, without even the memory of life. The "trees" were no more trees in actuality than the branching corals of Terra's southern oceans.

But these were real, or had been. He thought at first that they still lived, for their leaves were green, and here and there creepers had starred them with great nodding blossoms of gold and purple and waxy white. But when he floated down close enough to touch them, he realized that they were dead—trees, creepers, blossoms, all.

They had not mummified, nor turned to stone. They were pliable, and their colors were very bright. Simply, they had ceased to live, and the gases of the sea had preserved them by some chemical magic, so perfectly that barely a leaf had fallen.

Stark did not venture into the shadowy denseness below the topmost branches. A strange fear came over him, at the sight of that vast forest dreaming in the depths of the gulf, drowned and forgotten, as though wondering why the birds had gone, taking with them the warm rains and the light of day.

He thrust his way upward, himself like a huge dark bird above the branches. An overwhelming impulse to get away from that unearthly place drove him on, his half-wild sense shuddering with an impression of evil so great that it took all his acquired common-sense to assure him that he was not pursued by demons.

He broke the surface at last, to find that he had lost his direction in the red deep and made a long circle around, so that he was far below Shuruun. He made his way back, not hurrying now, and presently clambered out over the black rocks.

He stood at the end of a muddy lane that wandered in toward the town. He followed it, moving neither fast nor slow, but with a wary alertness.

Huts of wattle-and-daub took shape out of the fog, increased in numbers, became a street of dwellings. Here and there rush-lights glimmered through the slitted windows. A man and a woman clung together in a low doorway. They saw him and sprang apart, and the woman gave a little cry. Stark went on. He did not look back, but he knew that they were following him quietly, at a little distance.

The lane twisted snakelike upon itself, crawling now through a crowded jumble of houses. There were more lights, and more people, tall white-skinned folk of the swamp-edges, with pale eyes and long hair the color of new flax, and the faces of wolves.

Stark passed among them, alien and strange with his black hair and sun-darkened skin. They did not speak, nor try to stop him. Only they looked at him out of the red fog, with a curious blend of amusement and fear, and some of them followed him, keeping well behind. A gang of small naked children came from somewhere among the houses and ran shouting beside him, out of reach, until one boy threw a stone and screamed something unintelligible except for one word—Lhari. Then they all stopped, horrified, and fled.

Stark went on, through the quarter of the lacemakers, heading by instinct toward the wharves. The glow of the Red Sea pervaded all the air, so that it seemed as though the mist was full of tiny drops of blood. There was a smell about the place he did not like, a damp miasma of mud and crowding bodies and wine, and the breath of the vela poppy. Shuruun was an unclean town, and it stank of evil.

There was something else about it, a subtle thing that touched Stark's nerves with a chill finger. Fear. He could see the shadow of it in the eyes of the people, hear its undertone in their voices. The wolves of Shuruun did not feel safe in their own kennel. Unconsciously, as this feeling grew upon him, Stark's step grew more and more wary, his eyes more cold and hard.

He came out into a broad square by the harbor front. He could see the ghostly ships moored along the quays, the piled casks of wine, the tangle of masts and cordage dim against the background of the burning gulf. There were many torches here. Large low buildings stood around the square. There was laughter and the sound of voices from the dark verandas, and somewhere a woman sang to the melancholy lilting of a reed pipe.

A suffused glow of light in the distance ahead caught Stark's eye. That way the streets sloped to a higher ground, and straining his vision against the fog, he made out very dimly the tall bulk of a castle crouched on the low cliffs, looking with bright eyes upon the night, and the streets of Shuruun.

Stark hesitated briefly. Then he started across the square toward the largest of the taverns.

There were a number of people in the open space, mostly sailors and their women. They were loose and foolish with wine, but even so they stopped where they were and stared at the dark stranger, and then drew back from him, still staring.

Those who had followed Stark came into the square after him and then paused, spreading out in an aimless sort of way to join with other groups, whispering among themselves.

The woman stopped singing in the middle of a phrase.

A curious silence fell on the square. A nervous sibilance ran round and round under the silence, and men came slowly out from the verandas and the doors of the wine shops. Suddenly a woman with disheveled hair pointed her arm at Stark and laughed, the shrieking laugh of a harpy.

Stark found his way barred by three tall young men with hard mouths and crafty eyes, who smiled at him as hounds smile before the kill.

"Stranger," they said. "Earthman."

"Outlaw," answered Stark, and it was only half a lie.

One of the young men took a step forward. "Did you fly like a dragon over the Mountains of White Cloud? Did you drop from the sky?"

"I came on Malthor's ship."

A kind of sigh went round the square, and with it the name of Malthor. The eager faces of the young men grew heavy with disappointment. But the leader said sharply, "I was on the quay when Malthor docked. You were not on board."

It was Stark's turn to smile. In the light of the torches, his eyes blazed cold and bright as ice against the sun.

"Ask Malthor the reason for that," he said. "Ask the man with the torn cheek. Or perhaps," he added softly, "you would like to learn for yourselves."

The young men looked at him, scowling, in an odd mood of indecision. Stark settled himself, every muscle loose and ready. And the woman who had laughed crept closer and peered at Stark through her tangled hair, breathing heavily of the poppy wine.

All at once she said loudly, "He came out of the sea. That's where he came from. He's…"

One of the young men struck her across the mouth and she fell down in the mud. A burly seaman ran out and caught her by the hair, dragging her to her feet again. His face was frightened and very angry. He hauled the woman away, cursing her for a fool and beating her as he went. She spat out blood, and said no more.

"Well," said Stark to the young men. "Have you made up your minds?"

"Minds!" said a voice behind them—a harsh-timbered, rasping voice that handled the liquid vocables of the Venusian speech very clumsily indeed. "They have no minds, these whelps! If they had, they'd be off about their business, instead of standing here badgering a stranger."

The young men turned, and now between them Stark could see the man who had spoken. He stood on the steps of the tavern. He was an Earthman, and at first Stark thought he was old, because his hair was white and his face deeply lined. His body was wasted with fever, the muscles all gone to knotty strings twisted over bone. He leaned heavily on a stick, and one leg was crooked and terribly scarred.

He grinned at Stark and said, in colloquial English, "Watch me get rid of 'em!"

He began to tongue-lash the young men, telling them that they were idiots, the misbegotten offspring of swamp-toads, utterly without manners, and that if they did not believe the stranger's story they should go and ask Malthor, as he suggested. Finally he shook his stick at them, fairly screeching.

"Go on, now. Go away! Leave us alone—my brother of Earth and I!"

The young men gave one hesitant glance at Stark's feral eyes. Then they looked at each other and shrugged, and went away across the square half sheepishly, like great loutish boys caught in some misdemeanor.

The white-haired Earthman beckoned to Stark. And, as Stark came up to him on the steps he said under his breath, almost angrily, "You're in a trap."

Stark glanced back over his shoulder. At the edge of the square the three young men had met a fourth, who had his face bound up in a rag. They vanished almost at once into a side street, but not before Stark had recognized the fourth man as Malthor.

It was the captain he had branded.

With loud cheerfulness, the lame man said in Venusian, "Come in and drink with me, brother, and we will talk of Earth."

III

The tavern was of the standard low-class Venusian pattern—a single huge room under bare thatch, the wall half open with the reed shutters rolled up, the floor of split logs propped up on piling out of the mud. A long low bar, little tables, mangy skins and heaps of dubious cushions on the floor around them, and at one end the entertainers—two old men with a drum and a reed pipe, and a couple of sulky, tired-looking girls.

The lame man led Stark to a table in the corner and sank down, calling for wine. His eyes, which were dark and haunted by long pain, burned with excitement. His hands shook. Before Stark had sat down he had begun to talk, his words stumbling over themselves as though he could not get them out fast enough.

"How is it there now? Has it changed any? Tell me how it is—the cities, the lights, the paved streets, the women, the Sun. Oh Lord, what I wouldn't give to see the Sun again, and women with dark hair and their clothes on!" He leaned forward, staring hungrily into Stark's face, as though he could see those things mirrored there. "For God's sake, talk to me—talk to me in English, and tell me about Earth!"

"How long have you been here?" asked Stark.

"I don't know. How do you reckon time on a world without a Sun, without one damned little star to look at? Ten years, a hundred years, how should I know? Forever. Tell me about Earth."

Stark smiled wryly. "I haven't been there for a long time. The police were too ready with a welcoming committee. But the last time I saw it, it was just the same."

The lame man shivered. He was not looking at Stark now, but at some place far beyond him.

"Autumn woods," he said. "Red and gold on the brown hills. Snow. I can remember how it felt to be cold. The air bit you when you breathed it. And the women wore high-heeled slippers. No big bare feet tromping in the mud, but little sharp heels tapping on clean pavement."

Suddenly he glared at Stark, his eyes furious and bright with tears.

"Why the hell did you have to come here and start me remembering? I'm Larrabee. I live in Shuruun. I've been here forever, and I'll be here till I die. There isn't any Earth. It's gone. Just look up into the sky, and you'll know it's gone. There's nothing anywhere but clouds, and Venus, and mud."

He sat still, shaking, turning his head from side to side. A man came with wine, put it down, and went away again. The tavern was very quiet. There was a wide space empty around the two Earthmen. Beyond that people lay on the cushions, sipping the poppy wine and watching with a sort of furtive expectancy.

Abruptly, Larrabee laughed, a harsh sound that held a certain honest mirth.

"I don't know why I should get sentimental about Earth at this late date. Never thought much about it when I was there."

Nevertheless, he kept his gaze averted, and when he picked up his cup his hand trembled so that he spilled some of the wine.

Stark was staring at him in unbelief. "Larrabee," he said. "You're Mike Larrabee. You're the man who got half a million credits out of the strong room of the Royal Venus."

Larrabee nodded. "And got away with it, right over the Mountains of White Cloud, that they said couldn't be flown. And do you know where that half a million is now? At the bottom of the Red Sea, along with my ship and my crew, out there in the gulf. Lord knows why I lived." He shrugged. "Well, anyway, I was heading for Shuruun when I crashed, and I got here. So why complain?"

He drank again, deeply, and Stark shook his head.

"You've been here nine years, then, by Earth time," he said. He had never met Larrabee, but he remembered the pictures of him that had flashed across space on police bands. Larrabee had been a young man then, dark and proud and handsome.

Larrabee guessed his thought. "I've changed, haven't I?"

Stark said lamely, "Everybody thought you were dead.''

Larrabee laughed. After that, for a moment, there was silence. Stark's ears were straining for any sound outside. There was none.

He said abruptly, "What about this trap I'm in?"

"I'll tell you one thing about it," said Larrabee. "There's no way out. I can't help you. I wouldn't if I could, get that straight. But I can't, anyway."

"Thanks," Stark said sourly. "You can at least tell me what goes on."

"Listen," said Larrabee. "I'm a cripple, and an old man, and Shuruun isn't the sweetest place in the solar system to live. But I do live. I have a wife, a slatternly wench I'll admit, but good enough in her way. You'll notice some little dark-haired brats rolling in the mud. They're mine, too. I have some skill at setting bones and such, and so I can get drunk for nothing as often as I will—which is often. Also, because of this bum leg, I'm perfectly safe. So don't ask me what goes on. I take great pains not to know."

Stark said, "Who are the Lhari?"

"Would you like to meet them?" Larrabee seemed to find something very amusing in that thought. "Just go on up to the castle. They live there. They're the Lords of Shuruun, and they're always glad to meet strangers."

He leaned forward suddenly. "Who are you anyway? What's your name, and why the devil did you come here?"

"My name is Stark. And I came here for the same reason you did."

"Stark," repeated Larrabee slowly, his eyes intent. "That rings a faint bell. Seems to me I saw a Wanted flash once, some idiot that had led a native revolt somewhere in the Jovian Colonies—a big cold-eyed brute they referred to colorfully as the wild man from Mercury."

He nodded, pleased with himself. "Wild man, eh? Well, Shuruun will tame you down!"

"Perhaps," said Stark. His eyes shifted constantly, watching Larrabee, watching the doorway and the dark veranda and the people who drank but did not talk among themselves. "Speaking of strangers, one came here at the time of the last rains. He was Venusian, from up coast. A big young man. I used to know him. Perhaps he could help me."

Larrabee snorted. By now, he had drunk his own wine and Stark's too. "Nobody can help you. As for your friend, I never saw him. I'm beginning to think I should never have seen you." Quite suddenly he caught up his stick and got with some difficulty to his feet. He did not look at Stark, but said harshly, "You better get out of here." Then he turned and limped unsteadily to the bar.

Stark rose. He glanced after Larrabee, and again his nostrils twitched to the smell of fear. Then he went out of the tavern the way he had come in, through the front door. No one moved to stop him. Outside, the square was empty. It had begun to rain.

Stark stood for a moment on the steps. He was angry, and filled with a dangerous unease, the hair-trigger nervousness of a tiger that senses the beaters creeping toward him up the wind. He would almost have welcomed the sight of Malthor and the three young men. But there was nothing to fight but the silence and the rain.

He stepped out into the mud, wet and warm around his ankles. An idea came to him, and he smiled, beginning now to move with a definite purpose, along the side of the square.

The sharp downpour strengthened. Rain smoked from Stark's naked shoulders, beat against thatch and mud with a hissing rattle. The harbor had disappeared behind boiling clouds of fog, where water struck the surface of the Red Sea and was turned again instantly by chemical action into vapor. The quays and the neighboring streets were being swallowed up in the impenetrable mist. Lightning came with an eerie bluish flare, and thunder came rolling after it.

Stark turned up the narrow way that led toward the castle.

Its lights were winking out now, one by one, blotted by the creeping fog. Lightning etched its shadowy bulk against the night, and then was gone. And through the noise of the thunder that followed, Stark thought he heard a voice calling.

He stopped, half crouching, his hand on his gun. The cry came again, a girl's voice, thin as the wail of a sea-bird through the driving rain. Then he saw her, a small white blur in the street behind him, running, and even in that dim glimpse of her every line of her body was instinct with fright.

Stark set his back against a wall and waited. There did not seem to be anyone with her, though it was hard to tell in the darkness and the storm.

She came up to him, and stopped, just out of his reach, looking at him and away again with a painful irresoluteness. A bright flash showed her to him clearly. She was young, not long out of her childhood, and pretty in a stupid sort of way. Just now her mouth trembled on the edge of weeping, and her eyes were very large and scared. Her skirt clung to her long thighs, and above it her naked body, hardly fleshed into womanhood, glistened like snow in the wet. Her pale hair hung dripping over her shoulders.

Stark said gently, "What do you want with me?"

She looked at him, so miserably like a wet puppy that he smiled. And as though that smile had taken what little resolution she had out of her, she dropped to her knees, sobbing.

"I can't do it," she wailed. "He'll kill me, but I just can't do it!"

"Do what?" asked Stark.

She stared up at him. "Run away," she urged him. "Rim away now! You'll die in the swamps, but that's better than being one of the Lost Ones!" She shook her thin arms at him. "Run away!"

The street was empty. Nothing showed, nothing stirred anywhere. Stark leaned over and pulled the girl to her feet, drawing her in under the shelter of the thatched eaves.

"Now then," he said. "Suppose you stop crying and tell me what this is all about."

Presently, between gulps and hiccoughs, he got the story out of her.

"I am Zareth," she said. "Malthor's daughter. He's afraid of you, because of what you did to him on the ship, so he ordered me to watch for you in the square, when you would come out of the tavern. Then I was to follow you, and…"

She broke off, and Stark patted her shoulder. "Go on."

But a new thought had occurred to her. "If I do, will you promise not to beat me, or…" She looked at his gun and shivered.

"I promise."

She studied his face, what she could see of it in the darkness, and then seemed to lose some of her fear.

"I was to stop you. I was to say what I've already said, about being Malthor's daughter and the rest of it, and then I was to say that he wanted me to lead you into an ambush while pretending to help you escape, but that I couldn't do it, and would help you escape anyhow because I hated Malthor and the whole business about the Lost Ones. So you would believe me, and follow me, and I would lead you into the ambush."

She shook her head and began to cry again, quietly this time, and there was nothing of the woman about her at all now. She was just a child, very miserable and afraid. Stark was glad he had branded Malthor.

"But I can't lead you into the ambush. I do hate Malthor, even if he is my father, because he beats me. And the Lost Ones…" She paused. "Sometimes I hear them at night, chanting way out there beyond the mist. It is a very terrible sound."

"It is," said Stark. "I've heard it. Who are the Lost Ones, Zareth?"

"I can't tell you that," said Zareth. "It's forbidden even to speak of them. And anyway," she finished honestly, "I don't even know. People disappear, that's all. Not our own people of Shuruun, at least not very often. But strangers like you—and I'm sure my father goes off into the swamps to hunt among the tribes there, and I'm sure he comes back from some of his voyages with nothing in his hold but men from some captured ship. Why, or what for, I don't know. Except I've heard the chanting."

"They live out there in the gulf, do they, the Lost Ones?"

"They must. There are many islands there."

"And what of the Lhari, the Lords of Shuruun? Don't they know what's going on? Or are they part of it?"

She shuddered, and said, "It's not for us to question the Lhari, nor even to wonder what they do. Those who have are gone from Shuruun, nobody knows where."

Stark nodded. He was silent for a moment, thinking. Then Zareth's little hand touched his shoulder.

"Go," she said. "Lose yourself in the swamps. You're strong, and there's something about you different from other men. You may live to find your way through."

"No. I have something to do before I leave Shuruun." He took Zareth's damp fair head between his hands and kissed her on the forehead. "You're a sweet child, Zareth, and a brave one. Tell Malthor that you did exactly as he told you, and it was not your fault I wouldn't follow you."

"He will beat me anyway," said Zareth philosophically, "but perhaps not quite so hard."

"He'll have no reason to beat you at all, if you tell him the truth—that I would not go with you because my mind was set on going to the castle of the Lhari."

There was a long, long silence, while Zareth's eyes widened slowly in horror, and the rain beat on the thatch, and fog and thunder rolled together across Shuruun.

'To the castle," she whispered. "Oh, no! Go into the swamps, or let Malthor take you—but don't go to the castle!" She took hold of his arm, her fingers biting into his flesh with the urgency of her plea. "You're a stranger, you don't know…Please, don't go up there!"

"Why not?" asked Stark. "Are the Lhari demons? Do they devour men?" He loosened her hands gently. "You'd better go now. Tell your father where I am, if he wishes to come after me."

Zareth backed away slowly, out into the rain, staring at him as though she looked at someone standing on the brink of hell, not dead, but worse than dead. Wonder showed in her face, and through it a great yearning pity. She tried once to speak, and then shook her head and turned away, breaking into a run as though she could not endure to look upon Stark any longer. In a second she was gone.

Stark looked after her for a moment, strangely touched. Then he stepped out into the rain again, heading upward along the steep path that led to the castle of the Lords of Shuruun.

The mist was blinding. Stark had to feel his way, and as he climbed higher, above the level of the town, he was lost in the sullen redness. A hot wind blew, and each flare of lightning turned the crimson fog to a hellish purple. The night was full of a vast hissing where the rain poured into the gulf. He stopped once to hide his gun in a cleft between the rocks.

At length he stumbled against a carven pillar of black stone and found the gate that hung from it, a massive thing sheathed in metal. It was barred, and the pounding of his fists upon it made little sound.

Then he saw the gong, a huge disc of beaten gold beside the gate. Stark picked up the hammer that lay there, and set the deep voice of the gong rolling out between the thunderbolts.

A barred slit opened and a man's eyes looked out at him. Stark dropped the hammer.

"Open up!" he shouted. "I would speak with the Lhari!"

From within he heard an echo of laughter. Scraps of voices came to him on the wind, and then more laughter, and then, slowly, the great valves of the gate creaked open, wide enough only to admit him.

He stepped through, and the gateway shut behind him with a ringing clash.

He stood in a huge open court. Enclosed within its walls was a village of thatched huts, with open sheds for cooking, and behind them were pens for the stabling of beasts, the wingless dragons of the swamps that can be caught and broken to the goad.

He saw this only in vague glimpses, because of the fog. The men who had let him in clustered around him, thrusting him forward into the light that streamed from the huts.

"He would speak with the Lhari!" one of them shouted, to the women and children who stood in the doorways watching. The words were picked up and tossed around the court, and a great burst of laughter went up.

Stark eyed them, saying nothing. They were a puzzling breed. The men, obviously, were soldiers and guards to the Lhari, for they wore the harness of fighting men. As obviously, these were their wives and children, all living behind the castle walls and having little to do with Shuruun.

But it was their racial characteristics that surprised him. They had interbred with the pale tribes of the Swamp-Edges that had peopled Shuruun, and there were many with milk-white hair and broad faces. Yet even these bore an alien stamp. Stark was puzzled, for the race he would have named was unknown here behind the Mountains of White Cloud, and almost unknown anywhere on Venus at sea level, among the sweltering marshes and the eternal fogs.

They stared at him even more curiously, remarking on his skin and his black hair and the unfamiliar modeling of his face. The women nudged each other and whispered, giggling, and one of them said aloud, "They'll need a barrel-hoop to collar that neck!"

The guards closed in around him. "Well, if you wish to see the Lhari, you shall," said the leader, "but first we must make sure of you."

Spear-points ringed him round. Stark made no resistance while they stripped him of all he had, except for his shorts and sandals. He had expected that, and it amused him, for there was little enough for them to take.

"All right," said the leader. "Come on."

The whole village turned out in the rain to escort Stark to the castle door. There was about them the same ominous interest that the people of Shuruun had had, with one difference. They knew what was supposed to happen to him, knew all about it, and were therefore doubly appreciative of the game.

The great doorway was square and plain, and yet neither crude nor ungraceful. The castle itself was built of the black stone, each block perfectly cut and fitted, and the door itself was sheathed in the same metal as the gate, darkened but not corroded.

The leader of the guard cried out to the warder, "Here is one who would speak with the Lhari!"

The warder laughed. "And so he shall! Their night is long, and dull."

He flung open the heavy door and cried the word down the hallway. Stark could hear it echoing hollowly within, and presently from the shadows came servants clad in silks and wearing jeweled collars, and from the guttural sound of their laughter Stark knew that they had no tongues.

Stark faltered, then. The doorway loomed hollowly before him, and it came to him suddenly that evil lay behind it and that perhaps Zareth was wiser than he when she warned him from the Lhari.

Then he thought of Helvi, and of other things, and lost his fear in anger. Lightning burned the sky. The last cry of the dying storm shook the ground under his feet. He thrust the grinning warder aside and strode into the castle, bringing a veil of the red fog with him, and did not listen to the closing of the door, which was stealthy and quiet as the footfall of approaching Death.

Torches burned here and there along the walls, and by their smoky glare he could see that the hallway was like the entrance—square and unadorned, faced with the black rock. It was high, and wide, and there was about the architecture a calm reflective dignity that had its own beauty, in some ways more impressive than the sensuous loveliness of the ruined palaces he had seen on Mars.

There were no carvings here, no paintings nor frescoes. It seemed that the builders had felt that the hall itself was enough, in its massive perfection of line and the somber gleam of polished stone. The only decoration was in the window embrasures. These were empty now, open to the sky with the red fog wreathing through them, but there were still scraps of jewel-toned panes clinging to the fretwork, to show what they had once been.

A strange feeling swept over Stark. Because of his wild upbringing, he was abnormally sensitive to the sort of impressions that most men receive either dully or not at all.

Walking down the hall, preceded by the tongueless creatures in their bright silks and blazing collars, he was struck by a subtle difference in the place. The castle itself was only an extension of the minds of its builders, a dream shaped into reality. Stark felt that that dark, cool, curiously timeless dream had not originated in a mind like his own, nor like that of any man he had ever seen.

Then the end of the hall was reached, the way barred by low broad doors of gold fashioned in the same chaste simplicity.

A soft scurrying of feet, a shapeless tittering from the servants, a glancing of malicious, mocking eyes. The golden doors swung open, and Stark was in the presence of the Lhari.

They had the appearance in that first glance, of creatures glimpsed in a fever-dream, very bright and distant, robed in a misty glow that gave them an illusion of unearthly beauty.

The place in which the Earthman now stood was like a cathedral for breadth and loftiness. Most of it was in darkness, so that it seemed to reach without limit above and on all sides, as though the walls were only shadowy phantasms of the night itself. The polished black stone under his feet held a dim translucent gleam, depthless as water in a black tarn. There was no substance anywhere.

Far away in this shadowy vastness burned a cluster of lamps, a galaxy of little stars to shed a silvery light upon the Lords of Shuruun.

There had been no sound in the place when Stark entered, for the opening of the golden doors had caught the attention of the Lhari and held it in contemplation of the stranger. Stark began to walk toward them in this utter stillness.

Quite suddenly, in the impenetrable gloom somewhere to his right, there came a sharp scuffling and a scratching of reptilian claws, a hissing and a sort of low angry muttering, all magnified and distorted by the echoing vault into a huge demoniac whispering that swept all around him.

Stark whirled around, crouched and ready, his eyes blazing and his body bathed in cold sweat. The noise increased, rushing toward him. From the distant glow of the lamps came a woman's tinkling laughter, thin crystal broken against the vault. The hissing and snarling rose to hollow crescendo, and Stark saw a blurred shape bounding at him.

His hands reached out to receive the rush, but it never came. The strange shape resolved itself into a boy of about ten, who dragged after him on a bit of rope a young dragon, new and toothless from the egg, and protesting with all its strength.

Stark straightened up, feeling let down and furious—and relieved. The boy scowled at him through a forelock of silver curls. Then he called him a very dirty word and rushed away, kicking and hauling at the little beast until it raged like the father of all dragons and sounded like it, too, in that vast echo chamber.

A voice spoke. Slow, harsh, sexless, it rang thinly through the vault. Thin—but a steel blade is thin, too. It speaks inexorably, and its word is final.

The voice said, "Come here, into the light."

Stark obeyed the voice. As he approached the lamps, the aspect of the Lhari changed and steadied. Their beauty remained, but it was not the same. They had looked like angels. Now that he could see them clearly, Stark thought that they might have been the children of Lucifer himself.

There were six of them, counting the boy. Two men, about the same age as Stark, with some complicated gambling game forgotten between them. A woman, beautiful, gowned in white silk, sitting with her hands in her lap, doing nothing. A woman, younger, not so beautiful perhaps, but with a look of stormy and bitter vitality. She wore a short tunic of crimson, and a stout leather glove on her left hand, where perched a flying thing of prey with its fierce eyes hooded. * The boy stood beside the two men, his head poised arrogantly. From time to time he cuffed the little dragon, and it snapped at him with its impotent jaws. He was proud of himself for doing that. Stark wondered how he would behave with the beast when it had grown its fangs.

Opposite him, crouched on a heap of cushions, was a third man. He was deformed, with an ungainly body and long spidery arms, and in his lap a sharp knife lay on a block of wood, half formed into the shape of an obese creature half woman, half pure evil. Stark saw with a flash of surprise that the face of the deformed young man, of all the faces there, was truly human, truly beautiful. His eyes were old in his boyish face, wise, and very sad in their wisdom. He smiled upon the stranger, and his smile was more compassionate than tears.

They looked at Stark, all of them, with restless, hungry eyes. They were the pure breed, that had left its stamp of alienage on the pale-haired folk of the swamps, the serfs who dwelt in the huts outside.

They were of the Cloud People, the folk of the High Plateaus, kings of the land on the farther slopes of the Mountains of White Cloud. It was strange to see them here, on the dark side of the barrier wall, but here they were. How they had come, and why, leaving their rich cool plains for the fetor of these foreign swamps, he could not guess. But there was no mistaking them—the proud fine shaping of their bodies, their alabaster skin, their eyes that were all colors and none, like the dawn sky, their hair that was pure warm silver.

They did not speak. They seemed to be waiting for permission to speak, and Stark wondered which one of them had voiced that steely summons.

Then it came again. "Come here—come closer." And he looked beyond them, beyond the circle of lamps into the shadows again, and saw the speaker.

She lay upon a low bed, her head propped on silken pillows, her vast, her incredibly gigantic body covered with a silken pall. Only her arms were bare, two shapeless masses of white flesh ending in tiny hands. From time to time she stretched one out and took a morsel of food from the supply laid ready beside her, snuffling and wheezing with the effort, and then gulped the tidbit down with a horrible voracity.

Her features had long ago dissolved into a shaking formlessness, with the exception of her nose, which rose out of the fat curved and cruel and thin, like the bony beak of the creature that sat on the girl's wrist and dreamed its hooded dreams of blood. And her eyes…

Stark looked into her eyes and shuddered. Then he glanced at the carving half formed in the cripple's lap, and knew what thought had guided the knife.

Half woman, half pure evil. And strong. Very strong. Her strength lay naked in her eyes for all to see, and it was an ugly strength. It could tear down mountains, but it could never build.

He saw her looking at him. Her eyes bored into his as though they would search out his very guts and study them, and he knew that she expected him to turn away, unable to bear her gaze. He did not. Presently he smiled and said, "I have outstared a rock-lizard, to determine which of us should eat the other. And I've outstared the very rock while waiting for him."

She knew that he spoke the truth. Stark expected her to be angry, but she was not. A vague mountainous rippling shook her and emerged at length as a voiceless laughter.

"You see that?" she demanded, addressing the others. "You whelps of the Lhari—not one of you dares to face me down, yet here is a great dark creature from the gods know where who can stand and shame you."

She glanced again at Stark. "What demon's blood brought you forth, that you have learned neither prudence nor fear?"

Stark answered somberly, "I learned them both before I could walk. But I learned another thing also—a thing called anger."

"And you are angry?"

"Ask Malthor if I am, and why!"

He saw the two men start a little, and a slow smile crossed the girl's face.

"Malthor," said the hulk upon the bed, and ate a mouthful of roast meat dripping with fat. "That is interesting. But rage against Malthor did not bring you here. I am curious, Stranger. Speak."

"I will."

Stark glanced around. The place was a tomb, a trap. The very air smelled of danger. The younger folk watched him in silence. Not one of them had spoken since he came in, except the boy who had cursed him, and that was unnatural in itself. The girl leaned forward, idly stroking the creature on her wrist so that it stirred and ran its knife-like talons in and out of their bony sheaths with sensuous pleasure. Her gaze on Stark was bold and cool, oddly challenging. Of them all, she alone saw him as a man. To the others he was a problem, a diversion—something less than human.

Stark said, "A man came to Shuruun at the time of the last rains. His name was Helvi, and he was son of a little king by Yarell. He came seeking his brother, who had broken taboo and fled for his life. Helvi came to tell him that the ban was lifted, and he might return. Neither one came back."

The small evil eyes were amused, blinking in their tallowy creases. "And so?"

"And so I have come after Helvi, who is my friend."

Again there was the heaving of that bulk of flesh, the explosion of laughter that hissed and wheezed in snakelike echoes through the vault.

"Friendship must run deep with you, Stranger. Ah, well. The Lhari are kind of heart. You shall find your friend."

And as though that were the signal to end their deferential silence, the younger folk burst into laughter also, until the vast hall rang with it, giving back a sound like demons laughing on the edge of Hell.

The cripple only did not laugh, but bent his bright head over his carving, and sighed.

The girl sprang up. "Not yet, Grandmother! Keep him awhile."

The cold, cruel eyes shifted to her. "And what will you do with him, Varra? Haul him about on a string, like Bor with his wretched beast?"

"Perhaps—though I think it would need a stout chain to hold him." Varra turned and looked at Stark, bold and bright, taking in the breadth and the height of him, the shaping of the great smooth muscles, the iron line of the jaw. She smiled. Her mouth was very lovely, like the red fruit of the swamp tree that bears death in its pungent sweetness.

"Here is a man," she said. "The first man I have seen since my father died."

The two men at the gaming table rose, their faces flushed and angry. One of them strode forward and gripped the girl's arm roughly.

"So I am not a man," he said, with surprising gentleness. "A sad thing, for one who is to be your husband. It's best that we settle that now, before we wed."

Varra nodded. Stark saw that the man's fingers were cutting savagely into the firm muscle of her arm, but she did not wince.

"High time to settle it all, Egil. You have borne enough from me. The day is long overdue for my taming. I must learn now to bend my neck, and acknowledge my lord."

For a moment Stark thought she meant it, the note of mockery in her voice was so subtle. Then the woman in white, who all this time had not moved nor changed expression, voiced again the thin, tinkling laugh he had heard once before. From that, and the dark suffusion of blood in Egil's face, Stark knew that Varra was only casting the man's own phrases back at him. The boy let out one derisive bark, and was cuffed into silence.

Varra looked straight at Stark. "Will you fight for me?" she demanded.

Quite suddenly, it was Stark's turn to laugh. "No!" he said.

Varra shrugged. "Very well, then. I must fight for myself."

"Man," snarled Egil. "I'll show you who's a man, you scapegrace little vixen!"

He wrenched off his girdle with his free hand, at the same time bending the girl around so he could get a fair shot at her. The creature of prey clung to her wrist, beating its wings and screaming, its hooded head jerking.

With a motion so quick that it was hardly visible, Varra slipped the hood and flew the creature straight for Egil's face.

He let go, flinging up his arms to ward off the talons and the tearing beak. The wide wings beat and hammered. Egil yelled. The boy Bor got out of range and danced up and down shrieking with delight.

Varra stood quietly. The bruises were blackening on her arm, but she did not deign to touch them. Egil blundered against the gaming table and sent the ivory pieces flying. Then he tripped over a cushion and fell flat, and the hungry talons ripped his tunic to ribbons down the back.

Varra whistled, a clear peremptory call. The creature gave a last peck at the back of Egil's head and flopped sullenly back to its perch on her wrist. She held it, turning toward Stark. He knew from the poise of her that she was on the verge of launching her pet at him. But she studied him and then shook her head.

"No," she said, and slipped the hood back on. "You would kill it."

Egil had scrambled up and gone off into the darkness, sucking a cut on his arm. His face was black with rage. The other man looked at Varra.

"If you were pledged to me," he said, "I'd have that temper out of you!"

"Come and try it," answered Varra.

The man shrugged and sat down. "It's not my place. I keep the peace in my own house." He glanced at the woman in white, and Stark saw that her face, hitherto blank of any expression, had taken on a look of abject fear.

"You do," said Varra, "and, if I were Arel, I would stab you while you slept. But you're safe. She had no spirit to begin with."

Arel shivered and looked steadfastly at her hands. The man began to gather up the scattered pieces. He said casually, "Egil will wring your neck some day, Varra, and I shan't weep to see it."

All this time the old woman had eaten and watched, watched and eaten, her eyes glittering with interest.

"A pretty brood, are they not?" she demanded of Stark. "Full of spirit, quarreling like young hawks in the nest. That's why I keep them around me, so—they are such sport to watch. All except Treon there." She indicated the crippled youth. "He does nothing. Dull and soft-mouthed, worse than Arel. What a grandson to be cursed with! But his sister has fire enough for two." She munched a sweet, grunting with pride.

Treon raised his head and spoke, and his voice was like music, echoing with an eerie loveliness in that dark place.

"Dull I may be, Grandmother, and weak in body, and without hope. Yet I shall be the last of the Lhari. Death sits waiting on the towers, and he shall gather you all before me. I know, for the winds have told me."

He turned his suffering eyes upon Stark and smiled, a smile of such woe and resignation that the Earthman's heart ached with it. Yet there was a thankfulness in it too, as though some long waiting was over at last.

"You," he said softly, "Stranger with the fierce eyes. I saw you come, out of the darkness, and where you set foot there was a bloody print. Your arms were red to the elbows, and your breast was splashed with the redness, and on your brow was the symbol of death. Then I knew, and the wind whispered into my ear, 'It is so. This man shall pull the castle down, and its stones shall crush Shuruun and set the Lost Ones free.' "

He laughed, very quietly. "Look at him, all of you. For he will be your doom!"

There was a moment's silence, and Stark, with all the superstitions of a wild race thick within him, turned cold to the roots of his hair. Then the old woman said disgustedly, "Have the winds warned you of this, my idiot?"

And with astonishing force and accuracy she picked up a ripe fruit and flung it at Treon.

"Stop your mouth with that," she told him. "I am weary to death of your prophecies."

Treon looked at the crimson juice trickling slowly down the breast of his tunic, to drip upon the carving in his lap. The half formed head was covered with it. Treon was shaken with silent mirth.

"Well," said Varra, coming up to Stark, "what do you think of the Lhari? The proud Lhari, who would not stoop to mingle their blood with the cattle of the swamps. My half-witted brother, my worthless cousins, that little monster Bor who is the last twig of the tree—do you wonder I flew my falcon at Egil?"

She waited for an answer, her head thrown back, the silver curls framing her face like wisps of storm-cloud. There was a swagger about her that at once irritated and delighted Stark. A hellcat, he thought, but a mighty fetching one, and bold as brass. Bold—and honest. Her lips were parted, midway between anger and a smile.

He caught her to him suddenly and kissed her, holding her slim strong body as though she were a doll. He was in no hurry to set her down. When at last he did, he grinned and said, "Was that what you wanted?"

"Yes," answered Varra. "That was what I wanted." She spun about, her jaw set dangerously. "Grandmother…"

She got no farther. Stark saw that the old woman was attempting to sit upright, her face purpling with effort and the most terrible wrath he had ever seen.

"You," she gasped at the girl. She choked on her fury and her shortness of breath, and then Egil came soft-footed into the light, bearing in his hand a thing made of black metal and oddly shaped, with a blunt, thick muzzle.

"Lie back, Grandmother," he said. "I had a mind to use this on Varra—"

Even as he spoke he pressed a stud, and Stark in the act of leaping for the sheltering darkness, crashed down and lay like a dead man. There had been no sound, no flash, nothing, but a vast hand that smote him suddenly into oblivion.

Egil finished,—"but I see a better target."

Red. Red. Red. The color of blood. Blood in his eyes. He was remembering now. The quarry had turned on him, and they had fought on the bare, blistering rocks.

Nor had N'Chaka killed. The Lord of the Rocks was very big, a giant among lizards, and N'Chaka was small. The Lord of the Rocks had laid open N'Chaka's head before the wooden spear had more than scratched his flank.

It was strange that N'Chaka still lived. The Lord of the Rocks must have been full fed. Only that had saved him.

N'Chaka groaned, not with pain, but with shame. He had failed. Hoping for a great triumph, he had disobeyed the tribal law that forbids a boy to hunt the quarry of a man, and he had failed. Old One would not reward him with the girdle and the flint spear of manhood. Old One would give him to the women for the punishment of little whips. Tika would laugh at him, and it would be many seasons before Old One would grant him permission to try the Man's Hunt.

Blood in his eyes.

He blinked to clear them. The instinct of survival was prodding him. He must arouse himself and creep away, before the Lord of the Rocks returned to eat him.

The redness would not go away. It swam and flowed, strangely sparkling. He blinked again, and tried to lift his head, and could not, and fear struck down upon him like the iron frost of night upon the rocks of the valley.

It was all wrong. He could see himself clearly, a naked boy dizzy with pain, rising and clambering over the ledges and the shale to the safety of the cave. He could see that, and yet he could not move.

All wrong. Time, space, the universe, darkened and turned.

A voice spoke to him. A girl's voice. Not Tika's and the speech was strange.

Tika was dead. Memories rushed through his mind, the bitter things, the cruel things. Old One was dead, and all the others…

The voice spoke again, calling him by a name that was not his own.

Stark.

Memory shattered into a kaleidoscope of broken pictures, fragments, rushing, spinning. He was adrift among them. He was lost, and the terror of it brought a scream into his throat.

Soft hands touching his face, gentle words, swift and soothing. The redness cleared and steadied, though it did not go away, and quite suddenly he was himself again, with all his memories where they belonged.

He was lying on his back, and Zareth, Malthor's daughter, was looking down at him. He knew now what the redness was. He had seen it too often before not to know. He was somewhere at the bottom of the Red Sea—that weird ocean in which a man can breathe.

And he could not move. That had not changed, nor gone away. His body was dead.

The terror he had felt before was nothing, to the agony that filled him now. He lay entombed in his own flesh, staring up at Zareth, wanting an answer to a question he dared not ask.

She understood, from the look in his eyes.

"It's all right," she said, and smiled. "It will wear off. You'll be all right. It's only the weapon of the Lhari. Somehow it puts the body to sleep, but it will wake again."

Stark remembered the black object that Egil had held in his hands. A projector of some sort, then, beaming a current of high-frequency vibration that paralyzed the nerve centers. He was amazed. The Cloud People were barbarians themselves, though on a higher scale than the swamp-edge tribes, and certainly had no such scientific proficiency. He wondered where the Lhari had got hold of such a weapon.

It didn't really matter. Not just now. Relief swept over him, bringing him dangerously close to tears. The effect would wear off. At the moment, that was all he cared about.

He looked up at Zareth again. Her pale hair floated with the slow breathing of the sea, a milky cloud against the spark-shot crimson. He saw now that her face was drawn and shadowed, and there was a terrible hopelessness in her eyes. She had been alive when he first saw her—frightened, not too bright, but full of emotion and a certain dogged courage. Now the spark was gone, crushed out.

She wore a collar around her white neck, a ring of dark metal with the ends fused together for all time.

"Where are we?" he asked.

And she answered, her voice carrying deep and hollow in the dense substance of the sea, "We are in the place of the Lost Ones."

Stark looked beyond her, as far as he could see, since he was unable to turn his head. And wonder came to him.

Black walls, black vault above him, a vast hall filled with the wash of the sea that slipped in streaks of whispering flame through the high embrasures. A hall that was twin to the vault of shadows where he had met the Lhari.

"There is a city," said Zareth dully. "You will see it soon. You will see nothing else until you die."

Stark said, very gently, "How do you come here, little one?"

"Because of my father. I will tell you all I know, which is little enough. Malthor has been slaver to the Lhari for a long time. There are a number of them among the captains of Shuruun, but that is a thing that is never spoken of—so I, his daughter, could only guess. I was sure of it when he sent me after you."

She laughed, a bitter sound. "Now I'm here, with the collar of the Lost Ones on my neck. But Malthor is here, too." She laughed again, ugly laughter to come from a young mouth. Then she looked at Stark, and her hand reached out timidly to touch his hair in what was almost a caress. Her eyes were wide, and soft, and full of tears.

"Why didn't you go into the swamps when I warned you?"

Stark answered stolidly, "Too late to worry about that now." Then, "You say Malthor is here, a slave?"

"Yes." Again, that look of wonder and admiration in her eyes. "I don't know what you said or did to the Lhari, but the Lord Egil came down in a black rage and cursed my father for a bungling fool because he could not hold you. My father whined and made excuses, and all would have been well—only his curiosity got the better of him and he asked the Lord Egil what had happened. You were like a wild beast, Malthor said, and he hoped you had not harmed the Lady Varra, as he could see from Egil's wounds that there had been trouble.

"The Lord Egil turned quite purple. I thought he was going to fall in a fit."

"Yes," said Stark. "That was the wrong thing to say." The ludicrous side of it struck him, and he was suddenly roaring with laughter. "Malthor should have kept his mouth shut!"

"Egil called his guard and ordered them to take Malthor. And when he realized what had happened, Malthor turned on me, trying to say that it was all my fault, that I let you escape."

Stark stopped laughing.

Her voice went on slowly, "Egil seemed quite mad with fury. I have heard that the Lhari are all mad, and I think it is so. At any rate, he ordered me taken too, for he wanted to stamp Malthor's seed into the mud forever. So we are here."

There was a long silence. Stark could think of no word of comfort, and as for hope, he had better wait until he was sure he could at least raise his head. Egil might have damaged him permanently, out of spite. In fact, he was surprised he wasn't dead.

He glanced again at the collar on Zareth's neck. Slave. Slave to the Lhari, in the city of the Lost Ones.

What the devil did they do with slaves, at the bottom of the sea?

The heavy gases conducted sound remarkably well, except for an odd property of diffusion which made it seem that a voice came from everywhere at once. Now, all at once, Stark became aware of a dull clamor of voices drifting towards him.

He tried to see, and Zareth turned his head carefully so that he might.

The Lost Ones were returning from whatever work it was they did.

Out of the dim red murk beyond the open door they swam, into the long, long vastness of the hall that was filled with the same red murk, moving slowly, their white bodies trailing wakes of sullen flame. The host of the damned drifting through a strange red-litten hell, weary and without hope.

One by one they sank onto pallets laid in rows on the black stone floor, and lay there, utterly exhausted, their pale hair lifting and floating with the slow eddies of the sea. And each one wore a collar.

One man did not lie down. He came toward Stark, a tall barbarian who drew himself with great strokes of his arms so that he was wrapped in wheeling sparks. Stark knew his face.

"Helvi," he said, and smiled in welcome.

"Brother!"

Helvi crouched down—a great handsome boy he had been the last time Stark saw him, but he was a man now, with all the laughter turned to grim deep lines around his mouth and the bones of his face standing out like granite ridges.

"Brother," he said again, looking at Stark through a glitter of unashamed tears. "Fool." And he cursed Stark savagely because he had come to Shuruun to look for an idiot who had gone the same way, and was already as good as dead.

"Would you have followed me?" asked Stark.

"But I am only an ignorant child of the swamps," said Helvi. "You come from space, you know the other worlds, you can read and write—you should have better sense!"

Stark grinned. "And I'm still an ignorant child of the rocks. So we're two fools together. Where is Tobal?"

Tobal was Helvi's brother, who had broken taboo and looked for refuge in Shuruun. Apparently he had found peace at last, for Helvi shook his head.

"A man cannot live too long under the sea. It is not enough merely to breathe and eat. Tobal overran his time, and I am close to the end of mine." He held up his hand and then swept it down sharply, watching the broken fires dance along his arms.

"The mind breaks before the body," said Helvi casually, as though it were a matter of no importance.

Zareth spoke. "Helvi has guarded you each period while the others slept."

"And not I alone," said Helvi. "The little one stood with me."

"Guarded me!" said Stark. "Why?"

For answer, Helvi gestured toward a pallet not far away. Malthor lay there, his eyes half open and full of malice, the fresh scar livid on his cheek.

"He feels," said Helvi, "that you should not have fought upon his ship."

Stark felt an inward chill of horror. To lie here helpless, watching Malthor come toward him with open fingers reaching for his helpless throat…

He made a passionate effort to move, and gave up, gasping. Helvi grinned.

"Now is the time I should wrestle you, Stark, for I never could throw you before." He gave Stark's head a shake, very gentle for all its apparent roughness. "You'll be throwing me again. Sleep now, and don't worry."

He settled himself to watch, and presently in spite of himself Stark slept, with Zareth curled at his feet like a little dog.

There was no time down there in the heart of the Red Sea. No daylight, no dawn, no space of darkness. No winds blew, no rain nor storm broke the endless silence. Only the lazy currents whispered by on their way to nowhere, and the red sparks, danced, and the great hall waited, remembering the past.

Stark waited, too. How long he never knew, but he was used to waiting. He had learned his patience on the knees of the great mountains whose heads lift proudly into open space to look at the Sun, and he had absorbed their own contempt for time.

Little by little, life returned to his body. A mongrel guard came now and again to examine him, pricking Stark's flesh with his knife to test the reaction, so that Stark should not malinger.

He reckoned without Stark's control. The Earthman bore his prodding without so much as a twitch until his limbs were completely his own again. Then he sprang up and pitched the man half the length of the hall, turning over and over, yelling with startled anger.

At the next period of labor, Stark was driven with the rest out into the City of the Lost Ones.

VII

Stark had been in places before that oppressed him with a sense of their strangeness or their wickedness—Sinharat, the lovely ruin of coral and gold lost in the Martin wastes; Jekkara, Valkis—the Low-Canal towns that smell of blood and wine; the cliff-caves of Arianrhod on the edge of Darkside, the buried tomb-cities of Callisto. But this—this was nightmare to haunt a man's dreams.

He stared about him as he went in the long line of slaves, and felt such a cold shuddering contraction of his belly as he had never known before.

Wide avenues paved with polished blocks of stone, perfect as ebon mirrors. Buildings, tall and stately, pure and plain, with a calm strength that could outlast the ages. Black, all black, with no fripperies of paint or carving to soften them, only here and there a window like a drowned jewel glinting through the red.

Vines like drifts of snow cascading down the stones. Gardens with close-clipped turf and flowers lifting bright on their green stalks, their petals open to a daylight that was gone, their heads bending as though to some forgotten breeze. All neat, all tended, the branches pruned, the fresh soil turned this morning—by whose hand?

Stark remembered the great forest dreaming at the bottom of the gulf, and shivered. He did not like to think how long ago these flowers must have opened their young bloom to the last light they were ever going to see. For they were dead—dead as the forest, dead as the city. Forever bright—and dead.

Stark thought that it must always have been a silent city. It was impossible to imagine noisy throngs flocking to a market square down those immense avenues. The black walls were not made to echo song or laughter. Even the children must have moved quietly along the garden paths, small wise creatures born to an ancient dignity.

He was beginning to understand now the meaning of that weird forest. The Gulf of Shuruun had not always been a gulf. It had been a valley, rich, fertile, with this great city in its arms, and here and there on the upper slopes the retreat of some noble or philosopher—of which the castle of the Lhari was a survivor.

A wall of rock had held back the Red Sea from his valley. And then, somehow, the wall had cracked, and the sullen crimson tide had flowed slowly, slowly into the fertile bottoms, rising higher, lapping the towers and the tree tops in swirling flame, drowning the land forever. Stark wondered if the people had known the disaster was coming, if they had gone forth to tend their gardens for the last time so that they might remain perfect in the embalming gases of the sea.

The columns of slaves, herded by overseers armed with small black weapons similar to the one Egil had used, came out into a broad square whose farther edges were veiled in the red murk. And Stark looked on ruin.

A great building had fallen in the center of the square. The gods only knew what force had burst its walls and tossed the giant blocks like pebbles into a heap. But there it was, the one untidy thing in the city, a mountain of debris.

Nothing else was damaged. It seemed that this had been the place of temples, and they stood unharmed, ranked around the sides of the square, the dim fires rippling through their open porticoes. Deep in their inner shadows Stark thought he could make out images, gigantic things brooding in the spark-shot gloom.

He had no chance to study them. The overseers cursed them on, and now he saw what use the slaves were put to. They were clearing away the wreckage of the fallen building.

Helvi whispered, "For sixteen years men have slaved and died down here, and the work is not half done. And why do the Lhari want it done at all? I'll tell you why. Because they are mad, mad as swamp-dragons gone musth in the spring!"

It seemed madness indeed, to labor at this pile of rocks in a dead city at the bottom of the sea. It was madness. And yet the Lhari, though they might be insane, were not fools. There was a reason for it, and Stark was sure it was a good reason—good for the Lhari, at any rate.

An overseer came up to Stark, thrusting him roughly toward a sledge already partly loaded with broken rocks. Stark hesitated, his eyes turning ugly, and Helvi said,

"Come on, you fool! Do you want to be down flat on your back again?"

Stark glanced at the little weapon, blunt and ready, and turned reluctantly to obey. And there began his servitude.

It was a weird sort of life he led. For a while he tried to reckon time by the periods of work and sleep, but he lost count, and it did not greatly matter anyway.

He labored with the others, hauling the huge blocks away, clearing out the cellars that were partly bared, shoring up weak walls underground. The slaves clung to their old habit of thought, calling the work-periods "days" and the sleep-periods "nights."

Each "day" Egil, or his brother Cond, came to see what had been done, and went away black-browed and disappointed, ordering the work speeded up.

Treon was there also much of the time. He would come slowly in his awkward crabwise way and perch like a pale gargoyle on the stones, never speaking, watching with his sad beautiful eyes. He woke a vague foreboding in Stark. There was something awesome in Treon's silent patience, as though he waited the coming of some black doom, long delayed but inevitable. Stark would remember the prophecy, and shiver.

It was obvious to Stark after a while that the Lhari were clearing the building to get at the cellars underneath. The great dark caverns already bared had yielded nothing, but the brothers still hoped. Over and over Cond and Egil sounded the walls and the floors, prying here and there, and chafing at the delay in opening up the underground labyrinth. What they hoped to find, no one knew.

Varra came, too. Alone, and often, she would drift down through the dim mist-fires and watch, smiling a secret smile, her hair like blown silver where the currents played with it. She had nothing but curt words for Egil, but she kept her eyes on the great dark Earthman, and there was a look in them that stirred his blood. Egil was not blind, and it stirred his too, but in a different way.

Zareth saw that look. She kept as close to Stark as possible, asking no favors, but following him around with a sort of quiet devotion, seeming contented only when she was near him. One "night" in the slave barracks she crouched beside his pallet, her hand on his bare knee. She did not speak, and her face was hidden by the floating masses of her hair.

Stark turned her head so that he could see her, pushing the pale cloud gently away.

"What troubles you, little sister?"

Her eyes were wide and shadowed with some vague fear. But she only said, "It's not my place to speak."

"Why not?"

"Because…" Her mouth trembled, and then suddenly she said, "Oh, it's foolish, I know. But the woman of the Lhari…"

"What about her?"

"She watches you. Always she watches you! And the Lord Egil is angry. There is something in her mind, and it will bring you only evil. I know it!"

"It seems to me," said Stark wryly, "that the Lhari have already done as much evil as possible to all of us."

"No," answered Zareth, with an odd wisdom. "Our hearts are still clean."

Stark smiled. He leaned over and kissed her. "I'll be careful, little sister."

Quite suddenly she flung her arms around his neck and clung to him tightly, and Stark's face sobered. He patted her, rather awkwardly, and then she had gone, to curl up on her own pallet with her head buried in her arms.

Stark lay down. His heart was sad, and there was a stinging moisture in his eyes.

The red eternities dragged on. Stark learned what Helvi had meant when he said that the mind broke before the body. The sea bottom was no place for creatures of the upper air. He learned also the meaning of the metal collars, and the manner of Tobal's death.

Helvi explained.

"There are boundaries laid down. Within them we may range, if we have the strength and the desire after work. Beyond them we may not go. And there is no chance of escape by breaking through the barrier. How this is done I do not understand, but it is so, and the collars are the key to it.

"When a slave approaches the barrier the collar brightens as though with fire, and the slave falls. I have tried this myself, and I know. Half paralyzed, you may still crawl back to safety. But if you are mad, as Tobal was, and charge the barrier strongly…"

He made a cutting motion with his hands.

Stark nodded. He did not attempt to explain electricity or electronic vibrations to Helvi, but it seemed plain enough that the force with which the Lhari kept their slaves in check was something of the sort. The collars acted as conductors, perhaps for the same type of beam that was generated in the hand-weapons. When the metal broke the invisible boundary line it triggered off a force-beam from the central power station, in the manner of the obedient electric eye that opens doors and rings alarm bells. First a warning—then death.

The boundaries were wide enough, extending around the city and enclosing a good bit of forest beyond it. There was no possibility of a slave hiding among the trees, because the collar could be traced by the same type of beam, turned to low power, and the punishment meted out to a retaken man was such that few were foolish enough to try that game.

The surface, of course, was utterly forbidden. The one unguarded spot was the island where the central power station was, and here the slaves were allowed to come sometimes at night. The Lhari had discovered that they lived longer and worked better if they had an occasional breath of air and a look at the sky.

Many times Stark made that pilgrimage with the others. Up from the red depths they would come, through the reeling bands of fire where the currents ran, through the clouds of crimson sparks and the sullen patches of stillness that were like pools of blood, a company of white ghosts shrouded in flame, rising from their tomb for a little taste of the world they had lost.

It didn't matter that they were so weary they had barely the strength to get back to the barracks and sleep. They found the strength. To walk again on the open ground, to be rid of the eternal crimson dusk and the oppressive weight on the chest—to look up into the hot blue night of Venus and smell the fragrance of the liha-trees borne on the land wind…They found the strength.

They sang here, sitting on the island rocks and staring through the mists toward the shore they would never see again. It was their chanting that Stark had heard when he came down the gulf with Malthor, that wordless cry of grief and loss. Now he was here himself, holding Zareth close to comfort her and joining his own deep voice into that primitive reproach to the gods.

While he sat, howling like the savage he was, he studied the power plant, a squat blockhouse of a place. On the nights the slaves came guards were stationed outside to warn them away. The blockhouse was doubly guarded with the shock-beam. To attempt to take it by force would only mean death for all concerned.

Stark gave that idea up for the time being. There was never a second when escape was not in his thoughts, but he was too old in the game to break his neck against a stone wall. Like Malthor, he would wait.

Zareth and Helvi both changed after Stark's coming. Though they never talked of breaking free, both of them lost their air of hopelessness. Stark made neither plans nor promises. But Helvi knew him from of old, and the girl had her own subtle understanding, and they held up their heads again.

Then, one "day" as the work was ending, Varra came smiling out of the red murk and beckoned to him, and Stark's heart gave a great leap. Without a backward look he left Helvi and Zareth, and went with her, down the wide still avenue that led outward to the forest

VIII

They left the stately buildings and the wide spaces behind them, and went in among the trees. Stark hated the forest. The city was bad enough, but it was dead, honestly dead, except for those neat nightmare gardens. There was something terrifying about these great trees, full-leafed and green, rioting with flowering vines and all the rich undergrowth of the jungle, standing like massed corpses made lovely by mortuary art They swayed and rustled as the coiling fires swept them, branches bending to that silent horrible parody of wind. Stark always felt trapped there, and stifled by the stiff leaves and the vines.

But he went, and Varra slipped like a silver bird between the great trunks, apparently happy.

"I have come here often, ever since I was old enough. It's wonderful. Here I can stoop and fly like one of my own hawks." She laughed and plucked a golden flower to set in her hair, and then darted away again, her white legs flashing.

Stark followed. He could see what she meant. Here in this strange sea one's motion was as much flying as swimming, since the pressure equalized the weight of the body. There was a queer sort of thrill in plunging headlong from the tree tops, to arrow down through a tangle of vines and branches and then sweep upward again.

She was playing with him, and he knew it. The challenge got his blood up. He could have caught her easily but he did not, only now and again he circled her to show his strength. They sped on and on, trailing wakes of flame, a black hawk chasing a silver dove through the forests of a dream.

But the dove had been fledged in an eagle's nest. Stark wearied of the game at last. He caught her and they clung together, drifting still among the trees with the momentum of that wonderful weightless flight.

Her kiss at first was lazy, teasing and curious. Then it changed. All Stark's smoldering anger leaped into a different kind of flame. His handling of her was rough and cruel, and she laughed, a little fierce voiceless laugh, and gave it back to him, and he remembered how he had thought her mouth was like a bitter fruit that would give a man pain when he kissed it.

She broke away at last and came to rest on a broad branch, leaning back against the trunk and laughing, her eyes brilliant and cruel as Stark's own. And Stark sat down at her feet.

"What do you want?" he demanded. "What do you want with me?"

She smiled. There was nothing sidelong or shy about her. She was bold as a new blade.

"I'll tell you, wild man."

He started. "Where did you pick up that name?"

"I have been asking the Earthman Larrabee about you. It suits you well." She leaned forward. "This is what I want of you. Slay me Egil and his brother Cond. Also Bor, who will grow up worse than either—although that I can do myself, if you're averse to killing children, though Bor is more monster than child. Grandmother can't live forever, and with my cousins out of the way she's no threat. Treon doesn't count."

"And if I do—what then?"

"Freedom. And me. You'll rule Shuruun at my side."

Stark's eyes were mocking. "For how long, Varra?"

"Who knows? And what does it matter? The years take care of themselves." She shrugged. "The Lhari blood has run out, and it's time there was a fresh strain. Our children will rule after us, and they'll be men."

Stark laughed. He roared with it.

"It's not enough that I'm a slave to the Lhari. Now I must be executioner and herd bull as well!" He looked at her keenly. "Why me, Varra? Why pick on me?"

"Because, as I have said, you are the first man I have seen since my father died. Also, there is something about you…"

She pushed herself upward to hover lazily, her lips just brushing his.

"Do you think it would be so bad a thing to live with me, wild man?"

She was lovely and maddening, a silver witch shining among the dim fires of the sea, full of wickedness and laughter. Stark reached out and drew her to him.

"Not bad," he murmured. "Dangerous."

He kissed her, and she whispered, "I think you're not afraid of danger,"

"On the contrary, I'm a cautious man." He held her off, where he could look straight into her eyes. "I owe Egil something on my own, but I will not murder. The fight must be fair, and Cond will have to take care of himself."

"Fair! Was Egil fair with you—or me?"

He shrugged. "My way, or not at all."

She thought it over a while, then nodded. "All right. As for Cond, you will give him a blood debt, and pride will make him fight. The Lhari are all proud," she added bitterly. "That's our curse. But it's bred in the bone, as you'll find out."

"One more thing. Zareth and Helvi are to go free, and there must be an end to this slavery."

She stared at him. "You drive a hard bargain, wild man!"

"Yes or no?"

"Yes and no. Zareth and Helvi you may have, if you insist, though the gods know what you see in that pallid child. As to the other…" She smiled very mockingly. "I'm no fool, Stark. You're evading me, and two can play that game."

He laughed. "Fair enough. And now tell me this, witch with the silver curls—how am I to get at Egil that I may kill him?"

"I'll arrange that."

She said it with such vicious assurance that he was pretty sure she would arrange it. He was silent for a moment, and then he asked,

"Varra—what are the Lhari searching for at the bottom of the sea?"

She answered slowly, "I told you that we are a proud clan. We were driven out of the High Plateaus centuries ago because of our pride. Now it's all we have left, but it's a driving thing."

She paused, and then went on. "I think we had known about the city for a long time, but it had never meant anything until my father became fascinated by it. He would stay down here days at a time, exploring,, and it was he who found the weapons and the machine of power which is on the island. Then he found the chart and the metal book, hidden away in a secret place. The book was written in pictographs—as though it was meant to be deciphered—and the chart showed the square with the ruined building and the temples, with a separate diagram of catacombs underneath the ground.

"The book told of a secret—a thing of wonder and of fear. And my father believed that the building had been wrecked to close the entrance to the catacombs where the secret was kept. He determined to find it."

Sixteen years of other men's lives. Stark shivered. "What was the secret, Varra?"

"The manner of controlling life. How it was done I do not know, but with it one might build a race of giants, of monsters, or of gods. You can see what that would mean to us, a proud and dying clan."

"Yes," Stark answered slowly. "I can see."

The magnitude of the idea shook him. The builders of the city must have been wise indeed in their scientific research to evolve such a terrible power. To mold the living cells of the body to one's will—to create, not life itself but its form and fashion…

A race of giants, or of gods. The Lhari would like that. To transform their own degenerate flesh into something beyond the race of men, to develop their followers into a corps of fighting men that no one could stand against, to see that their children were given an unholy advantage over all the children of men…Stark was appalled at the realization of the evil they could do if they ever found that secret.

Varra said, "There was a warning in the book. The meaning of it was not quite clear, but it seemed that the ancient ones felt that they had sinned against the gods and been punished, perhaps by some plague. They were a strange race, and not human. At any rate, they destroyed the great building there as a barrier against anyone who should come after them, and then let the Red Sea in to cover their city forever. They must have been superstitious children, for all their knowledge."

"Then you all ignored the warning, and never worried that a whole city had died to prove it."

She shrugged. "Oh, Treon has been muttering prophecies about it for years. Nobody listens to him. As for myself, I don't care whether we find the secret or not. My belief is it was destroyed along with the building, and besides, I have no faith in such things."

"Besides," mocked Stark shrewdly, "you wouldn't care to see Egil and Cond striding across the heavens of Venus, and you're doubtful just what your own place would be in the new pantheon."

She showed her teeth at him. "You're too wise for your own good. And now goodbye." She gave him a quick, hard kiss and was gone, flashing upward, high above the treetops where he dared not follow.

Stark made his way slowly back to the city, upset and very thoughtful.

As he came back into the great square, heading toward the barracks, he stopped, every nerve taut.

Somewhere, in one of the shadowy temples, the clapper of a votive bell was swinging, sending its deep pulsing note across the silence. Slowly, slowly, like the beating of a dying heart it came, and mingled with it was the faint sound of Zareth's voice, calling his name.

He crossed the square, moving very carefully through the red murk, and presently he saw her.

It was not hard to find her. There was one temple larger than all the rest. Stark judged that it must once have faced the entrance of the fallen building, as though the great figure within was set to watch over the scientists and the philosophers who came there to dream their vast and sometimes terrible dreams.

The philosophers were gone, and the scientists had destroyed themselves. But the image still watched over the drowned city, its hand raised both in warning and in benediction.

Now, across its reptilian knees, Zareth lay. The temple was open on all sides, and Stark could see her clearly, a little white scrap of humanity against the black unhuman figure.

Malthor stood beside her. It was he who had been tolling the votive bell. He had stopped now, and Zareth's words came clearly to Stark.

"Go away, go away! They're waiting for you. Don't come in here!"

"I'm waiting for you, Stark," Malthor called out, smiling. "Are you afraid to come?" And he took Zareth by the hair and struck her, slowly and deliberately, twice across the face.

All expression left Stark's face, leaving it perfectly blank except for his eyes, which took on a sudden lambent gleam. He began to move toward the temple, not hurrying even then, but moving in such a way that it seemed an army could not have stopped him.

Zareth broke free from her father. Perhaps she was intended to break free.

"Egil!" she screamed. "It's a trap…"

Again Malthor caught her and this time he struck her harder, so that she crumpled down again across the image that watched with its jeweled, gentle eyes and saw nothing.

"She's afraid for you," said Malthor. "She knows I mean to kill you if I can. Well, perhaps Egil is here also. Perhaps he is not. But certainly Zareth is here. I have beaten her well, and I shall beat her again, as long as she lives to be beaten, for her treachery to me. And if you want to save her from that, you outland dog, you'll have to kill me. Are you afraid?"

Stark was afraid. Malthor and Zareth were alone in the temple. The pillared colonnades were empty except for the dim fires of the sea. Yet Stark was afraid, for an instinct older than speech warned him to be.

It did not matter. Zareth's white skin was mottled with dark bruises, and Malthor was smiling at him, and it did not matter.

Under the shadow of the roof and down the colonnade he went, swiftly now, leaving a streak of fire behind him. Malthor looked into his eyes, and his smile trembled and was gone.

He crouched. And at the last moment, when the dark body plunged down at him as a shark plunges, he drew a hidden knife from his girdle and struck.

Stark had not counted on that. The slaves were searched for possible weapons every day, and even a sliver of stone was forbidden. Somebody must have given it to him, someone…

The thought flashed through his mind while he was in the very act of trying to avoid that death blow. Too late, too late, because his own momentum carried him onto the point…

Reflexes quicker than any man's, the hair-trigger reactions of a wild thing. Muscles straining, the center of balance shifted with an awful wrenching effort, hands grasping at the fire-shot redness as though to force it to defy its own laws. The blade ripped a long shallow gash across his breast. But it did not go home. By a fraction of an inch, it did not go home.

While Stark was still off balance, Malthor sprang.

They grappled. The knife blade glittered redly, a hungry tongue eager to taste Stark's life. The two men rolled over and over, drifting and tumbling erratically, churning the sea to a froth of sparks, and still the image watched, its calm reptilian features unchangingly benign and wise. Threads of a darker red laced heavily across the dancing fires.

Stark got Malthor's arm under his own and held it there with both hands. His back was to the man now. Malthor kicked and clawed with his feet against the backs of Stark's thighs, and his left arm came up and tried to clamp around Stark's throat. Stark buried his chin so that it could not, and then Malthor's hand began to tear at Stark's face, searching for his eyes.

Stark voiced a deep bestial sound in his throat. He moved his head suddenly, catching Malthor's hand between his jaws. He did not let go. Presently his teeth were locked against the thumb-joint, and Malthor was screaming, but Stark could give all his attention to what he was doing with the arm that held the knife. His eyes had changed. They were all beast now, the eyes of a killer blazing cold and beautiful in his dark face.

There was a dull crack, and the arm ceased to strain or fight. It bent back upon itself, and the knife fell, drifting quietly down. Malthor was beyond screaming now. He made one effort to get away as Stark released him, but it was a futile gesture, and he made no sound as Stark broke his neck.

He thrust the body from him. It drifted away, moving lazily with the suck of the currents through the colonnade, now and again touching a black pillar as though in casual wonder, wandering out at last into the square. Malthor was in no hurry. He had all eternity before him.

Stark moved carefully away from the girl, who was trying feebly now to sit up on the knees of the image. He called out, to some unseen presence hidden in the shadows under the roof,

"Malthor screamed your name, Egil. Why didn't you come?"

There was a flicker of movement in the intense darkness of the ledge at the top of the pillars.

"Why should I?" asked the Lord Egil of the Lhari. "I offered him his freedom if he could kill you, but it seems he could not—even though I gave him a knife, and drugs to keep your friend Helvi out of the way."

He came out where Stark could see him, very handsome in a tunic of yellow silk, the blunt black weapon in his hands.

"The important thing was to bait a trap. You would not face me because of this—" He raised the weapon. "I might have killed you as you worked, of course, but my family would have had hard things to say about that. You're a phenomenally good slave."

"They'd have said hard words like 'coward,' Egil," Stark said softly. "And Varra would have set her bird at you in earnest."

Egil nodded. His lip curved cruelly. "Exactly. That amused you, didn't it? And now my little cousin is training another falcon to swoop at me. She hooded you today, didn't she, Outlander?"

He laughed. "Ah well. I didn't kill you openly because there's a better way. Do you think I want it gossiped all over the Red Sea that my cousin jilted me for a foreign slave? Do you think I wish it known that I hated you, and why? No. I would have killed Malthor anyway, if you hadn't done it, because he knew. And when I have killed you and the girl I shall take your bodies to the barrier and leave them there together, and it will be obvious to everyone, even Varra, that you were killed trying to escape."

The weapon's muzzle pointed straight at Stark, and Egil's finger quivered on the trigger stud. Full power, this time. Instead of paralysis, death. Stark measured the distance between himself and Egil. He would be dead before he struck, but the impetus of his leap might carry him on, and give Zareth a chance to escape. The muscles of his thighs stirred and tensed.

A voice said, "And will it be obvious how and why I died, Egil? For if you kill them, you must kill me too."

Where Treon had come from, or when, Stark did not know. But he was there by the image, and his voice was full of a strong music, and his eyes shone with a fey light.

Egil had started, and now he swore in fury. "You idiot! You twisted freak! How did you come here?"

"How does the wind come, and the rain? I am not as other men." He laughed, a somber sound with no mirth in it. "I am here, Egil, and that's all that matters. And you will not slay this stranger who is more beast than man, and more man than any of us. The gods have a use for him."

He had moved as he spoke, until now he stood between Stark and Egil.

"Get out of the way," said Egil.

Treon shook his head.

"Very well," said Egil. "If you wish to die, you may."

The fey gleam brightened in Treon's eyes. "This is a day of death," he said softly, "but not of his, or mine."

Egil said a short, ugly word, and raised the weapon up.

Things happened very quickly after that. Stark sprang, arching up and over Treon's head, cleaving the red gases like a burning arrow. Egil started back, and shifted his aim upward, and his finger snapped down on the trigger stud.

Something white came between Stark and Egil, and took the force of the bolt.

Something white. A girl's body, crowned with streaming hair, and a collar of metal glowing bright around the slender neck.

Zareth.

They had forgotten her, the beaten child crouched on the knees of the image. Stark had moved to keep her out of danger, and she was no threat to the mighty Egil, and Treon's thoughts were known only to himself and the winds that taught him. Unnoticed, she had crept to a place where one last plunge would place her between Stark and death.

The rush of Stark's going took him on over her, except that her hair brushed softly against his skin. Then he was on top of Egil, and it had all been done so swiftly that the Lord of the Lhari had not had time to loose another bolt.

Stark tore the weapon from Egil's hand. He was cold, icy cold, and there was a strange blindness on him, so that he could see nothing clearly but Egil's face. And it was Stark who screamed this time, a dreadful sound like the cry of a great cat gone beyond reason or fear.

Treon stood watching. He watched the blood stream darkly into the sea, and he listened to the silence come, and he saw the thing that had been his cousin drift away on the slow tide, and it was as though he had seen it all before and was not surprised.

Stark went to Zareth's body. The girl was still breathing, very faintly, and her eyes turned to Stark, and she smiled.

Stark was blind now with tears. All his rage had run out of him with Egil's blood, leaving nothing but an aching pity and a sadness, and a wondering awe. He took Zareth very tenderly into his arms and held her, dumbly, watching the tears fall on her upturned face. And presently he knew that she was dead.

Sometime later Treon came to him and said softly, "To this end she was born, and she knew it, and was happy. Even now she smiles. And she should, for she had a better death than most of us." He laid his hand on Stark's shoulder. "Come, I'll show you where to put her. She will be safe there, and tomorrow you can bury her where she would wish to be."

Stark rose and followed him, bearing Zareth in his arms.

Treon went to the pedestal on which the image sat. He pressed in a certain way upon a series of hidden springs, and a section of the paving slid noiselessly back, revealing stone steps leading down.

Treon led the way down, into darkness that was lightened only by the dim fires they themselves woke in passing. No currents ran here. The red gas lay dull and stagnant, closed within the walls of a square passage built of the same black stone.

"These are the crypts," he said. "The labyrinth that is shown on the chart my father found." And he told about the chart, as Varra had.

He led the way surely, his misshapen body moving without hesitation past the mouths of branching corridors and the doors of chambers whose interiors were lost in shadow.

"The history of the city is here. All the books and the learning, that they had not the heart to destroy. There are no weapons. They were not a warlike people, and I think that the force we of the Lhari have used differently was defensive only, protection against the beasts and the raiding primitives of the swamps."

With a great effort, Stark wrenched his thoughts away from the light burden he carried.

"I thought," he said dully, "that the crypts were under the wrecked building."

"So we all thought. We were intended to think so. That is why the building was wrecked. And for sixteen years we of the Lhari have killed men and women with dragging the stones of it away. But the temple was shown also in the chart. We thought it was there merely as a landmark, an identification for the great building. But I began to wonder…"

"How long have you known?"

"Not long. Perhaps two rains. It took many seasons to find the secret of this passage. I came here at night, when the others slept."

"And you didn't tell?"

"No!" said Treon. "You are thinking that if I had told, there would have been an end to the slavery and the death. But what then? My family, turned loose with the power to destroy a world, as this city was destroyed? No! It was better for the slaves to die."

He motioned Stark aside, then, between doors of gold that stood ajar, into a vault so great that there was no guessing its size in the red and shrouding gloom.

"This was the burial place of their kings," said Treon softly. "Leave the little one here."

Stark looked around him, still too numb to feel awe, but impressed even so.

They were set in straight lines, the beds of black marble—lines so long that there was no end to them except the limit of vision. And on them slept the old kings, their bodies, marvelously embalmed, covered with silken palls, their hands crossed upon their breasts, their wise unhuman faces stamped with the mark of peace.

Very gently, Stark laid Zareth down on a marble couch, and covered her also with silk, and closed her eyes and folded her hands. And it seemed to him that her face, too, had that look of peace.

He went out with Treon, thinking that none of them had earned a better place in the hall of kings than Zareth.

"Treon," he said.

"Yes?"

"That prophecy you spoke when I came to the castle—I will bear it out."

Treon nodded. "That is the way of prophecies."

He did not return toward the temple, but led the way deeper into the heart of the catacombs. A great excitement burned within him, a bright and terrible thing that communicated itself to Stark. Treon had suddenly taken on the stature of a figure of destiny, and the Earthman had the feeling that he was in the grip of some current that would plunge on irresistibly until everything in its path was swept away. Stark's flesh quivered.

They reached the end of the corridor at last. And there, in the red gloom, a shape sat waiting before a black, barred door. A shape grotesque and incredibly misshapen, so horribly malformed that by it Treon's crippled body appeared almost beautiful. Yet its face was as the faces of the images and the old kings, and its sunken eyes had once held wisdom, and one of its seven-fingered hands was still slim and sensitive.

Stark recoiled. The thing made him physically sick, and he would have turned away, but Treon urged him on.

"Go closer. It is dead, embalmed, but it has a message for you. It has waited all this time to give that message."

Reluctantly, Stark went forward.

Quite suddenly, it seemed that the thing spoke.

Behold me. Look upon me, and take counsel before you grasp that power which lies beyond the door!

Stark leaped back, crying out, and Treon smiled.

"It was so with me. But I have listened to it many times since then. It speaks not with a voice, but within the mind, and only when one has passed a certain spot."

Stark's reasoning mind pondered over that. A thought-record, obviously, triggered off by an electronic beam. The ancients had taken good care that their warning would be heard and understood by anyone who should solve the riddle of the catacombs. Thought-images, speaking directly to the brain, know no barrier of time or language.

He stepped forward again, and once more the telepathic voice spoke to him.

"We tampered with the secrets of the gods. We intended no evil. It was only that we love perfection, and wished to shape all living things as flawless as our buildings and our gardens. We did not know that it was against the Law…

"I was one of those who found the way to change the living cell. We used the unseen force that comes from the Land of the Gods beyond the sky, and we so harnessed it that we could build from the living flesh as the potter builds from the clay. We healed the halt and the maimed, and made those stand tall and straight who came crooked from the egg, and for a time we were as brothers to the gods themselves. I myself, even I, knew the glory of perfection. And then came the reckoning.

"The cell, once made to change, would not stop changing. The growth was slow, and for a while we did not notice it, but when we did it was too late. We were becoming a city of monsters. And the force we had used was worse than useless, for the more we tried to mold the monstrous flesh to its normal shape, the more the stimulated cells grew and grew, until the bodies we labored over were like things of wet mud that flow and change even as you look at them.

"One by one the people of the city destroyed themselves. And those of us who were left realized the judgment of the gods, and our duty. We made all things ready, and let the Red Sea hide us forever from our own kind, and those who should come after.

"Yet we did not destroy our knowledge. Perhaps it was our pride only that forbade us, but we could not bring ourselves to do it. Perhaps other gods, other races wiser than we, can take away the evil and keep only the good. For it is good for all creatures to be, if not perfect, at least strong and sound.

"But heed this warning, whoever you may be that listen. If your gods are jealous, if your people have not the wisdom or the knowledge to succeed where we failed in controlling this force, then touch it not! Or you, and all your people, will become as I."

The voice stopped. Stark moved back again, and said to Treon incredulously, "And your family would ignore that warning?"

Treon laughed. "They are fools. They are cruel and greedy and very proud. They would say that this was a lie to frighten away intruders, or that human flesh would not be subject to the laws that govern the flesh of reptiles. They would say anything, because they have dreamed this dream too long to be denied."

Stark shuddered and looked at the black door. "The thing ought to be destroyed."

"Yes," said Treon softly.

His eyes were shining, looking into some private dream of his own. He started forward, and when Stark would have gone with him he thrust him back, saying, "No. You have no part in this." He shook his head.

"I have waited," he whispered, almost to himself. "The winds bade me wait, until the day was ripe to fall from the tree of death. I have waited, and at dawn I knew, for the wind said, Now is the gathering of the fruit at hand."

He looked suddenly at Stark, and his eyes had in them a clear sanity, for all their feyness.

"You heard, Stark. 'We made those stand tall and straight who came crooked from the egg.' I will have my hour. I will stand as a man for the little time that is left."

He turned, and Stark made no move to follow. He watched Treon's twisted body recede, white against the red dusk, until it passed the monstrous watcher and came to the black door. The long thin arms reached up and pushed the bar away.

The door swung slowly back. Through the opening Stark glimpsed a chamber that held a structure of crystal rods and discs mounted on a frame of metal, the whole thing glowing and glittering with a restless bluish light that dimmed and brightened as though it echoed some vast pulse-beat. There was other apparatus, intricate banks of tubes and condensers, but this was the heart of it, and the heart was still alive.

Treon passed within and closed the door behind him.

Stark drew back some distance from the door and its guardian, crouched down, and set his back against the wall. He thought about the apparatus. Cosmic rays, perhaps—the unseen force that came from beyond the sky. Even yet, all their potentialities were not known. But a few luckless spacemen had found that under certain conditions they could do amazing things to human tissue.

It was a line of thought Stark did not like at all. He tried to keep his mind away from Treon entirely. He tried not to think at all. It was dark there in the corridor, and very still, and the shapeless horror sat quiet in the doorway and waited with him. Stark began to shiver, a shallow animal-twitching of the flesh.

He waited. After a while he thought Treon must be dead, but he did not move. He did not wish to go into that room to see.

He waited.

Suddenly he leaped up, cold sweat bursting out all over him. A crash had echoed down the corridor, a clashing of shattered crystal and a high singing note that trailed off into nothing.

The door opened.

A man came out. A man tall and straight and beautiful as an angel, a strong-limbed man with Treon's face, Treon's tragic eyes. And behind him the chamber was dark. The pulsing heart of power had stopped.

The door was shut and barred again. Treon's voice was saying, "There are records left, and much of the apparatus, so that the secret is not lost entirely. Only it is out of reach."

He came to Stark and held out his hand. "Let us fight together, as men. And do not fear. I shall die, long before this body changes." He smiled, the remembered smile that was full of pity for all living things. "I know, for the winds have told me."

Stark took his hand and held it.

"Good," said Treon. "And now lead on, stranger with the fierce eyes. For the prophecy is yours, and the day is yours, and I who have crept about like a snail all my life know little of battles. Lead, and I will follow."

Stark fingered the collar around his neck. "Can you rid me of this?"

Treon nodded. "There are tools and acid in one of the chambers."

He found them, and worked swiftly, and while he worked Stark thought, smiling—and there was no pity in that smile at all.

They came back at last into the temple, and Treon closed the entrance to the catacombs. It was still night, for the square was empty of slaves. Stark found Egil's weapon where it had fallen, on the ledge where Egil died.

"We must hurry," said Stark. "Come on."

The island was shrouded heavily in mist and the blue darkness of the night. Stark and Treon crept silently among the rocks until they could see the glimmer of torchlight through the window-slits of the power station.

There were seven guards, five inside the blockhouse, two outside to patrol.

When they were close enough, Stark slipped away, going like a shadow, and never a pebble turned under his bare foot. Presently he found a spot to his liking and crouched down. A sentry went by not three feet away, yawning and looking hopefully at the sky for the first signs of dawn.

Treon's voice rang out, the sweet unmistakable voice. "Ho, there, guards!"

The sentry stopped and whirled around. Off around the curve of the stone wall someone began to run, his sandals thud-thudding on the soft ground, and the second guard came up.

"Who speaks?" one demanded. "The Lord Treon?"

They peered into the darkness, and Treon answered, "Yes." He had come forward far enough so that they could make out the pale blur of his face, keeping his body out of sight among the rocks and the shrubs that sprang up between them.

"Make haste," he ordered. "Bid them open the door, there." He spoke in breathless jerks, as though spent. "A tragedy—a disaster! Bid them open!"

One of the men leaped to obey, hammering on the massive door that was kept barred from the inside. The other stood goggle-eyed, watching. Then the door opened, spilling a flood of yellow torchlight into the red fog.

"What is it?" cried the men inside. "What has happened?"

"Come out!" gasped Treon. "My cousin is dead, the Lord Egil is dead, murdered by a slave."

He let that sink in. Three or more men came outside into the circle of light, and their faces were frightened, as though somehow they feared they might be held responsible for this thing.

"You know him," said Treon. "The great black-haired one from Earth. He has slain the Lord Egil and got away into the forest, and we need all extra guards to go after him, since many must be left to guard the other slaves, who are mutinous. You, and you—" He picked out the four biggest ones. "Go at once and join the search. I will stay here with the others."

It nearly worked. The four took a hesitant step or two, and then one paused and said doubtfully,

"But, my lord, it is forbidden that we leave our posts, for any reason. Any reason at all, my lord! The Lord Cond would slay us if we left this place."

"And you fear the Lord Cond more than you do me," said Treon philosophically. "Ah, well. I understand."

He stepped out, full into the light.

A gasp went up, and then a startled yell. The three men from inside had come out armed only with swords, but the two sentries had their shock-weapons. One of them shrieked,

"It is a demon, who speaks with Treon's voice!"

And the two black weapons started up.

Behind them, Stark fired two silent bolts in quick succession, and the men fell, safely out of the way for hours. Then he leaped for the door.

He collided with two men who were doing the same thing. The third had turned to hold Treon off with his sword until they were safely inside.

Seeing that Treon, who was unarmed, was in danger of being spitted on the man's point, Stark fired between the two lunging bodies as he fell, and brought the guard down. Then he was involved in a thrashing tangle of arms and legs, and a lucky blow jarred the shock-weapon out of his hand.

Treon added himself to the fray. Pleasuring in his new strength, he caught one man by the neck and pulled him off. The guards were big men, and powerful, and they fought desperately. Stark was bruised and bleeding from a cut mouth before he could get in a finishing blow.

Someone rushed past him into the doorway. Treon yelled. Out of the tail of his eyes Stark saw the Lhari sitting dazed on the ground. The door was closing.

Stark hunched up his shoulders and sprang.

He hit the heavy panel with a jar that nearly knocked him breathless. It slammed open, and there was a cry of pain and the sound of someone falling. Stark burst through, to find the last of the guards rolling every which way over the floor. But one rolled over onto his feet again, drawing his sword as he rose. He had not had time before.

Stark continued his rush without stopping. He plunged headlong into the man before the point was clear of the scabbard, bore him over and down, and finished the man off with savage efficiency.

He leaped to his feet, breathing hard, spitting blood out of his mouth, and looked around the control room. But the others had fled, obviously to raise the warning.

The mechanism was simple. It was contained in a large black metal oblong about the size and shape of a coffin, equipped with grids and lenses and dials. It hummed softly to itself, but what its source of power was Stark did not know. Perhaps those same cosmic rays, harnessed to a different use.

He closed what seemed to be a master switch, and the humming stopped, and the flickering light died out of the lenses. He picked up the slain guard's sword and carefully wrecked everything that was breakable. Then he went outside again.

Treon was standing up, shaking his head. He smiled ruefully.

"It seems that strength alone is not enough," he said. "One must have skill as well."

"The barriers are down," said Stark. "The way is clear."

Treon nodded, and went with him back into the sea. This time both carried shock weapons taken from the guards—six in all, with Egil's. Total armament for war.

As they forged swiftly through the red depths, Stark asked, "What of the people of Shuruun? How will they fight?"

Treon answered, "Those of Malthor's breed will stand for the Lhari. They must, for all their hope is there. The others will wait, until they see which side is safest. They would rise against the Lhari if they dared, for we have brought them only fear in their lifetimes. But they will wait, and see."

Stark nodded. He did not speak again.

They passed over the brooding city, and Stark thought of Egil and of Malthor who were part of that silence now, drifting slowly through the empty streets where the little currents took them, wrapped in their shrouds of dim fire.

He thought of Zareth sleeping in the hall of kings, and his eyes held a cold, cruel light.

They swooped down over the slave barracks. Treon remained on watch outside. Stark went in, taking with him the extra weapons.

The slaves still slept. Some of them dreamed, and moaned in their dreaming, and others might have been dead, with their hollow faces white as skulls.

Slaves. One hundred and four, counting the women.

Stark shouted out to them, and they woke, starting up on their pallets, their eyes full of terror. Then they saw who it was that called them, standing collarless and armed, and there was a great surging and a clamor that stilled as Stark shouted again, demanding silence. This time Helvi's voice echoed his. The tall barbarian had wakened from his drugged sleep.

Stark told them, very briefly, all that happened.

"You are freed from the collar," he said. "This day you can survive or die as men, and not slaves." He paused, then asked, "Who will go with me into Shuruun?"

They answered with one voice, the voice of the Lost Ones, who saw the red pall of death begin to lift from over them. The Lost Ones, who had found hope again.

Stark laughed. He was happy. He gave the extra weapons to Helvi and three others that he chose, and Helvi looked into his eyes and laughed too.

Treon spoke from the open door. "They are coming!"

Stark gave Helvi quick instructions and darted out, taking with him one of the other men. With Treon, they hid among the shrubbery of the garden that was outside the hall, patterned and beautiful, swaying its lifeless brilliance in the lazy drifts of lire.

The guards came. Twenty of them, tall armed men, to turn out the slaves for another period of labor, dragging the useless stones.

And the hidden weapons spoke with their silent tongues.

Eight of the guards fell inside the hall. Nine of them went down outside. Ten of the slaves died before the remaining three were overcome.

Now there were twenty swords among ninety-four slaves, counting the women.

They left the city and rose up over the dreaming forest, a flight of white ghosts with flames in their hair, coming back from the red dusk and the silence to find the light again.

Light, and vengeance.

The first pale glimmer of dawn was sifting through the clouds as they came up among the rocks below the castle of the Lhari. Stark left them and went like a shadow up the tumbled cliffs to where he had hidden his gun on the night he had first come to Shuruun. Nothing stirred. The fog lifted up from the sea like a vapor of blood, and the face of Venus was still dark. Only the high clouds were touched with pearl.

Stark returned to the others. He gave one of his shock-weapons to a swamp-lander with a cold madness in his eyes. Then he spoke a few final words to Helvi and went back with Treon under the surface of the sea.

Treon led the way. He went along the face of the submerged cliff, and presently he touched Stark's arm and pointed to where a round mouth opened in the rock.

"It was made long ago," said Treon, "so that the Lhari and their slavers might come and go and not be seen. Come—and be very quiet."

They swam into the tunnel mouth, and down the dark way that lay beyond, until the lift of the floor brought them out of the sea. Then they felt their way silently along, stopping now and again to listen.

Surprise was their only hope. Treon had said that with the two of them they might succeed. More men would surely be discovered, and meet a swift end at the hands of the guards.

Stark hoped Treon was right.

They came to a blank wall of dressed stone. Treon leaned his weight against one side, and a great block swung slowly around on a central pivot. Guttering torchlight came through the crack. By it Stark could see that the room beyond was empty.

They stepped through, and as they did so a servant in bright silks came yawning into the room with a fresh torch to replace the one that was dying.

He stopped in mid-step, his eyes widening. He dropped the torch. His mouth opened to shape a scream, but no sound came, and Stark remembered that these servants were tongueless—to prevent them from telling what they saw or heard in the castle, Treon said.

The man spun about and fled, down a long dim-lit hall. Stark ran him down without effort. He struck once with the barrel of bis gun, and the man fell and was still.

Treon came up. His face had a look almost of exaltation, a queer shining of the eyes that made Stark shiver. He led on, through a series of empty rooms, all somber black, and they met no one else for a while.

He stopped at last before a small door of burnished gold. He looked at Stark once, and nodded, and thrust the panels open and stepped through.

XII

They stood inside the vast echoing hall that stretched away into darkness until it seemed there was no end to it. The cluster of silver lamps burned as before, and within their circle of radiance the Lhari started up from their places and stared at the strangers who had come in through their private door.

Cond, and Arel with her hands idle in her lap. Bor, pummeling the little dragon to make it hiss and snap, laughing at its impotence. Varra, stroking the winged creature on her wrist, testing with her white finger the sharpness of its beak. And the old woman, with a scrap of fat meat halfway to her mouth.

They had stopped, frozen, in the midst of these actions. And Treon walked slowly into the light.

"Do you know me?" he said.

A strange shivering ran through them. Now, as before, the old woman spoke first, her eyes glittering with a look as rapacious as her appetite.

"You are Treon," she said, and her whole vast body shook.

The name went crying and whispering off around the dark walls. Treon! Treon! Treon! Cond leaped forward, touching his cousin's straight strong body with hands that trembled.

"You have found it," he said. "The secret."

"Yes." Treon lifted his silver head and laughed, a beautiful ringing bell-note that sang from the echoing corners. "I found it, and it's gone, smashed, beyond your reach forever. Egil is dead, and the day of the Lhari is done."

There was a long, long silence, and then the old woman whispered, "You lie!"

Treon turned to Stark.

"Ask him, the stranger who came bearing doom upon his forehead. Ask him if I lie."

Cond's face became something less than human. He made a queer crazed sound and flung himself at Treon's throat.

Bor screamed suddenly. He alone was not much concerned with the finding or the losing of the secret, and he alone seemed to realize the significance of Stark's presence. He screamed, looking at the big dark man, and went rushing off down the hall, crying for the guard as he went, and the echoes roared and racketed. He fought open the great doors and ran out, and as he did so the sound of fighting came through from the compound.

The slaves, with their swords and clubs, with their stones and shards of rock, had come over the wall from the cliffs.

Stark had moved forward, but Treon did not need his help. He had got his hands around Cond's throat, and he was smiling. Stark did not disturb him.

The old woman was talking, cursing, commanding, choking on her own apoplectic breath. Arel began to laugh. She did not move, and her hands remained limp and open in her lap. She laughed and laughed, and Varra looked at Stark and hated him.

"You're a fool, wild man," she said. "You would not take what I offered you, so you shall have nothing—only death."

She slipped the hood from her creature and set it straight at Stark. Then she drew a knife from her girdle and plunged it into Treon's side.

Treon reeled back. His grip loosened and Cond tore away, half throttled, raging, his mouth flecked with foam. He drew his short sword and staggered in upon Treon.

Furious wings beat and thundered around Stark's head, and talons were clawing for his eyes. He reached up with his left hand and caught the brute by one leg and held it. Not long, but long enough to get one clear shot at Cond that dropped him in his tracks. Then he snapped the falcon's neck.

He flung the creature at Varra's feet, and picked up the gun again. The guards were rushing into the hall now at the lower end, and he began to fire at them.

Treon was sitting on the floor. Blood was coming in a steady trickle from his side, but he had the shock-weapon in his hands, and he was still smiling.

There was a great boiling roar of noise from outside. Men were fighting there, killing, dying, screaming their triumph or their pain. The echoes raged within the hall, and the noise of Stark's gun was like a hissing thunder. The guards, armed only with swords, went down like ripe wheat before the sickle, but there were many of them, too many for Stark and Treon to hold for long.

The old woman shrieked and shrieked, and was suddenly still.

Helvi burst in through the press, with a knot of collared slaves. The fight dissolved into a whirling chaos. Stark threw his gun away. He was afraid now of hitting his own men. He caught up a sword from a fallen guard and began to hew his way to the barbarian.

Suddenly Treon cried his name. He leaped aside, away from the man he was fighting, and saw Varra fall with the dagger still in her hand. She had come up behind him to stab, and Treon had seen and pressed the trigger stud just in time.

For the first time, there were tears in Treon's eyes.

A sort of sickness came over Stark. There was something horrible in this spectacle of a family destroying itself. He was too much the savage to be sentimental over Varra, but all the same he could not bear to look at Treon for a while.

Presently he found himself back to back with Helvi, and as they swung their swords—the shock-weapons had been discarded for the same reason as Stark's gun—Helvi panted, "It has been a good fight, my brother! We cannot win, but we can have a good death, which is better than slavery!"

It looked as though Helvi was right. The slaves, unfortunately, weakened by their long confinement, worn out by overwork, were being beaten back. The tide turned, and Stark was swept with it out into the compound, fighting stubbornly.

The great gate stood open. Beyond it stood the people of Shuruun, watching, hanging back—as Treon had said, they would wait and see.

In the forefront, leaning on his stick, stood Larrabee the Earthman.

Stark cut his way free of the press. He leaped up onto the wall and stood there, breathing hard, sweating, bloody, with a dripping sword in his hand. He waved it, shouting down to the men of Shuruun.

"What are you waiting for, you scuts, you women? The Lhari are dead, the Lost Ones are freed—must we of Earth do all your work for you?"

And he looked straight at Larrabee.

Larrabee stared back, his dark suffering eyes full of a bitter mirth. "Oh, well," he said in English. "Why not?"

He threw back his head and laughed, and the bitterness was gone. He voiced a high, shrill rebel yell and lifted his stick like a cudgel, limping toward the gate, and the men of Shuruun gave tongue and followed him.

After that, it was soon over.

They found Bor's body in the stable pens, where he had fled to hide when the fighting started. The dragons, maddened by the smell of the blood, had slain him very quickly.

Helvi had come through alive, and Larrabee, who had kept himself carefully out of harm's way after he had started the men of Shurrun on their attack. Nearly half the slaves were dead, and the rest wounded. Of those who had served the Lhari, few were left.

Stark went back into the great hall. He walked slowly, for he was very weary, and where he set his foot there was a bloody print, and his arms were red to the elbows, and his breast was splashed with the redness. Treon watched him come, and smiled, nodding.

"It is as I said. And I have outlived them all."

Arel had stopped laughing at last. She had made no move to run away, and the tide of battle had rolled over her and drowned her unaware. The old woman lay still, a mountain of inert flesh upon her bed. Her hand still clutched a ripe fruit, clutched convulsively in the moment of death, the red juice dripping through her fingers.

"Now I am going, too," said Treon, "and I am well content. With me goes the last of our rotten blood, and Venus will be the cleaner for it. Bury my body deep, stranger with the fierce eyes. I would not have it looked on after this."

He sighed and fell forward.

Bor's little dragon crept whimpering out from its hiding place under the old woman's bed and scurried away down the hall, trailing its dragging rope.

Stark leaned on the taffrail, watching the dark mass of Shuruun recede into the red mists.

The decks were crowded with the outland slaves, going home. The Lhari were gone, the Lost Ones freed forever, and Shuruun was now only another port on the Red Sea. Its people would still be wolf's-heads and pirates, but that was natural and as it should be. The black evil was gone.

Stark was glad to see the last of it. He would be glad also to see the last of the Red Sea.

The off-shore wind sent the ship briskly down the gulf. Stark thought of Larrabee, left behind with his dreams of winter snows and city streets and women with dainty feet. It seemed that he had lived too long in Shuruun, and had lost the courage to leave it.

"Poor Larrabee," he said to Helvi, who was standing near him. "He'll die in the mud, still cursing it."

Someone laughed behind him. He heard a limping step on the deck and turned to see Larrabee coming toward him.

"Changed my mind at the last minute," Larrabee said. 'Tve been below, lest I should see my muddy brats and be tempted to change it again." He leaned beside Stark, shaking his head. "Ah, well, they'll do nicely without me. I'm an old man, and I've a right to choose my own place to die in. I'm going back to Earth, with you."

Stark glanced at him. "I'm not going to Earth."

Larrabee sighed. "No. No, I suppose you're not. After all, you're no Earthman, really, except for an accident of blood. Where are you going?"

"I don't know. Away from Venus, but I don't know yet where."

Larrabee's dark eyes surveyed him shrewdly. " 'A restless, cold-eyed tiger of a man,' that's what Varra said. He's lost something, she said. He'll look for it all his life, and never find it."

After that there was silence. The red fog wrapped them, and the wind rose and sent them scudding before it.

Then, faint and far off, there came a moaning wail, a sound like broken chanting that turned Stark's flesh cold.

All on board heard it. They listened, utterly silent, their eyes wide, and somewhere a woman began to weep.

Stark shook himself. "It's only the wind," he said roughly, "in the rocks by the strait."

The sound rose and fell, weary, infinitely mournful, and the part of Stark that was N'Chaka said that he lied. It was not the wind that keened so sadly through the mists. It was the voices of the Lost Ones who were forever lost—Zareth, sleeping in the hall of kings, and all the others who would never leave the dreaming city and the forest, never find the light again.

Stark shivered, and turned away, watching the leaping fires of the strait sweep toward them.

Black Amazon of Mars

THROUGH ALL THE LONG cold hours of the Norland night the Martian had not moved nor spoken. At dusk of the day before Eric John Stark had brought him into the ruined tower and laid him down, wrapped in blankets, on the snow. He had built a fire of dead brush, and since then the two men had waited, alone in the vast wasteland that girdles the polar cap of Mars.

Now, just before dawn, Camar the Martian spoke.

“Stark.”

“Yes?”

“I am dying.”

“Yes.”

“I will not reach Kushat.”

“No.”

Camar nodded. He was silent again.

The wind howled down from the northern ice, and the broken walls rose up against it, brooding, gigantic, roofless now but so huge and sprawling that they seemed less like walls than cliffs of ebon stone. Stark would not have gone near them but for Camar. They were wrong, somehow, with a taint of forgotten evil still about them.

The big Earthman glanced at Camar, and his face was sad. “A man likes to die in his own place,” he said abruptly. “I am sorry.”

“The Lord of Silence is a great personage,” Camar answered. “He does not mind the meeting place. No. It was not for that I came back into the Norlands.”

He was shaken by an agony that was not of the body. “And I shall not reach Kushat!”

Stark spoke quietly, using the courtly High Martian almost as fluently as Camar.

“I have known that there was a burden heavier than death upon my brother’s soul.”

He leaned over, placing one large hand on the Martian’s shoulder. “My brother has given his life for mine. Therefore, I will take his burden upon myself, if I can.”

He did not want Camar’s burden, whatever it might be. But the Martian had fought beside him through a long guerilla campaign among the harried tribes of the nearer moon. He was a good man of his hands, and in the end had taken the bullet that was meant for Stark, knowing quite well what he was doing. They were friends.

That was why Stark had brought Camar into the bleak north country, trying to reach the city of his birth. The Martian was driven by some secret demon. He was afraid to die before he reached Kushat.

And now he had no choice.

“I have sinned, Stark. I have stolen a holy thing. You’re an outlander, you would not know of Ban Cruach, and the talisman that he left when he went away forever beyond the Gates of Death.”

Camar flung aside the blankets and sat up, his voice gaining a febrile strength.

“I was born and bred in the Thieves’ Quarter under the Wall. I was proud of my skill. And the talisman was a challenge. It was a treasured thing—so treasured that hardly a man has touched it since the days of Ban Cruach who made it. And that was in the days when men still had the lustre on them, before they forgot that they were gods.

“‘Guard well the Gates of Death,’ he said, ‘that is the city’s trust. And keep the talisman always, for the day may come when you will need its strength. Who holds Kushat holds Mars—and the talisman will keep the city safe.’

“I was a thief, and proud. And I stole the talisman.”

His hands went to his girdle, a belt of worn leather with a boss of battered steel. But his fingers were already numb.

“Take it, Stark. Open the boss—there, on the side, where the beast’s head is carved…”

STARK took the belt from Camar and found the hidden spring. The rounded top of the boss came free. Inside it was something wrapped in a scrap of silk.

“I had to leave Kushat,” Camar whispered. “I could never go back. But it was enough—to have taken that.”

He watched, shaken between awe and pride and remorse, as Stark unwrapped the bit of silk.

Stark had discounted most of Camar’s talk as superstition, but even so he had expected something more spectacular than the object he held in his palm.

It was a lens, some four inches across—man-made, and made with great skill, but still only a bit of crystal. Turning it about, Stark saw that it was not a simple lens, but an intricate interlocking of many facets. Incredibly complicated, hypnotic if one looked at it too long.

“What is its use?” he asked of Camar.

“We are as children. We have forgotten. But there is a legend, a belief—that Ban Cruach himself made the talisman as a sign that he would not forget us, and would come back when Kushat is threatened. Back through the Gates of Death, to teach us again the power that was his!”

“I do not understand,” said Stark. “What are the Gates of Death?”

Camar answered, “It is a pass that opens into the black mountains beyond Kushat. The city stands guard before it—why, no man remembers, except that it is a great trust.”

His gaze feasted on the talisman.

Stark said, “You wish me to take this to Kushat?”

“Yes. Yes! And yet…” Camar looked at Stark, his eyes filling suddenly with tears. “No. The North is not used to strangers. With me, you might have been safe. But alone… No, Stark. You have risked too much already. Go back, out of the Norlands, while you can.”

He lay back on the blankets. Stark saw that a bluish pallor had come into the hollows of his cheeks.

“Camar,” he said. And again, “Camar!”

“Yes?”

“Go in peace, Camar. I will take the talisman to Kushat.”

The Martian sighed, and smiled, and Stark was glad that he had made the promise.

“The riders of Mekh are wolves,” said Camar suddenly. “They hunt these gorges. Look out for them.”

“I will.”

Stark’s knowledge of the geography of this part of Mars was vague indeed, but he knew that the mountain valleys of Mekh lay ahead and to the north, between him and Kushat. Camar had told him of these upland warriors. He was willing to heed the warning.

Camar had done with talking. Stark knew that he had not long to wait. The wind spoke with the voice of a great organ. The moons had set and it was very dark outside the tower, except for the white glimmering of the snow. Stark looked up at the brooding walls, and shivered. There was a smell of death already in the air.

To keep from thinking, he bent closer to the fire, studying the lens. There were scratches on the bezel, as though it had been held sometime in a clamp, or setting, like a jewel. An ornament, probably, worn as a badge of rank. Strange ornament for a barbarian king, in the dawn of Mars. The firelight made tiny dancing sparks in the endless inner facets. Quite suddenly, he had a curious feeling that the thing was alive.

A pang of primitive and unreasoning fear shot through him, and he fought it down. His vision was beginning to blur, and he shut his eyes, and in the darkness it seemed to him that he could see and hear…

HE STARTED UP, shaken now with an eerie terror, and raised his hand to hurl the talisman away. But the part of him that had learned with much pain and effort to be civilized made him stop, and think.

He sat down again. An instrument of hypnosis? Possibly. And yet that fleeting touch of sight and sound had not been his own, out of his own memories.

He was tempted now, fascinated, like a child that plays with fire. The talisman had been worn somehow. Where? On the breast? On the brow?

He tried the first, with no result. Then he touched the flat surface of the lens to his forehead.

The great tower of stone rose up monstrous to the sky. It was whole, and there were pallid lights within that stirred and flickered, and it was crowned with a shimmering darkness.

He lay outside the tower, on his belly, and he was filled with fear and a great anger, and a loathing such as turns the bones to water. There was no snow. There was ice everywhere, rising to half the tower’s height, sheathing the ground.

Ice. Cold and clear and beautiful—and deadly.

He moved. He glided snakelike, with infinite caution, over the smooth surface. The tower was gone, and far below him was a city. He saw the temples and the palaces, the glittering lovely city beneath him in the ice, blurred and fairylike and strange, a dream half glimpsed through crystal.

He saw the Ones that lived there, moving slowly through the streets. He could not see them clearly, only the vague shining of their bodies, and he was glad.

He hated them, with a hatred that conquered even his fear, which was great indeed.

He was not Eric John Stark. He was Ban Cruach.

The tower and the city vanished, swept away on a reeling tide.

He stood beneath a scarp of black rock, notched with a single pass. The cliffs hung over him, leaning out their vast bulk as though to crush him, and the narrow mouth of the pass was full of evil laughter where the wind went by.

He began to walk forward, into the pass. He was quite alone.

The light was dim and strange at the bottom of that cleft. Little veils of mist crept and clung between the ice and the rock, thickened, became more dense as he went farther and farther into the pass. He could not see, and the wind spoke with many tongues, piping in the crevices of the cliffs.

All at once there was a shadow in the mist before him, a dim gigantic shape that moved toward him, and he knew that he looked at death. He cried out…

It was Stark who yelled in blind atavistic fear, and the echo of his own cry brought him up standing, shaking in every limb. He had dropped the talisman. It lay gleaming in the snow at his feet, and the alien memories were gone—and Camar was dead.

After a time he crouched down, breathing harshly. He did not want to touch the lens again. The part of him that had learned to fear strange gods and evil spirits with every step he took, the primitive aboriginal that lay so close under the surface of his mind, warned him to leave it, to run away, to desert this place of death and ruined stone.

He forced himself to take it up. He did not look at it. He wrapped it in the bit of silk and replaced it inside the iron boss, and clasped the belt around his waist. Then he found the small flask that lay with his gear beside the fire and took a long pull, and tried to think rationally of the thing that had happened.

Memories. Not his own, but the memories of Ban Cruach, a million years ago in the morning of a world. Memories of hate, a secret war against unhuman beings that dwelt in crystal cities cut in the living ice, and used these ruined towers for some dark purpose of their own.

Was that the meaning of the talisman, the power that lay within it? Had Ban Cruach, by some elder and forgotten science, imprisoned the echoes of his own mind in the crystal?

Why? Perhaps as a warning, as a reminder of ageless, alien danger beyond the Gates of Death?

Suddenly one of the beasts tethered outside the ruined tower started up from its sleep with a hissing snarl.

Instantly Stark became motionless.

They came silently on their padded feet, the rangy mountain brutes moving daintily through the sprawling ruin. Their riders too were silent—tall men with fierce eyes and russet hair, wearing leather coats and carrying each a long, straight spear.

There were a score of them around the tower in the windy gloom. Stark did not bother to draw his gun. He had learned very young the difference between courage and idiocy.

He walked out toward them, slowly lest one of them be startled into spearing him, yet not slowly enough to denote fear. And he held up his right hand and gave them greeting.

They did not answer him. They sat their restive mounts and stared at him, and Stark knew that Camar had spoken the truth. These were the riders of Mekh, and they were wolves.

STARK WAITED, UNTIL THEY should tire of their own silence.

Finally one demanded, “Of what country are you?”

He answered, “I am called N’Chaka, the Man-Without-a-Tribe.”

It was the name they had given him, the half-human aboriginals who had raised him in the blaze and thunder and bitter frosts of Mercury.

“A stranger,” said the leader, and smiled. He pointed at the dead Camar and asked, “Did you slay him?”

“He was my friend,” said Stark, “I was bringing him home to die.”

Two riders dismounted to inspect the body. One called up to the leader, “He was from Kushat, if I know the breed, Thord! And he has not been robbed.” He proceeded to take care of that detail himself.

“A stranger,” repeated the leader, Thord. “Bound for Kushat, with a man of Kushat. Well. I think you will come with us, stranger.”

Stark shrugged. And with the long spears pricking him, he did not resist when the tall Thord plundered him of all he owned except his clothes—and Camar’s belt, which was not worth the stealing. His gun Thord flung contemptuously away.

One of the men brought Stark’s beast and Camar’s from where they were tethered, and the Earthman mounted—as usual, over the violent protest of the creature, which did not like the smell of him. They moved out from under the shelter of the walls, into the full fury of the wind.

For the rest of that night, and through the next day and the night that followed it they rode eastward, stopping only to rest the beasts and chew on their rations of jerked meat.

To Stark, riding a prisoner, it came with full force that this was the North country, half a world away from the Mars of spaceships and commerce and visitors from other planets. The future had never touched these wild mountains and barren plains. The past held pride enough.

To the north, the horizon showed a strange and ghostly glimmer where the barrier wall of the polar pack reared up, gigantic against the sky. The wind blew, down from the ice, through the mountain gorges, across the plains, never ceasing. And here and there the cryptic towers rose, broken monoliths of stone. Stark remembered the vision of the talisman, the huge structure crowned with eerie darkness. He looked upon the ruins with loathing and curiosity. The men of Mekh could tell him nothing.

Thord did not tell Stark where they were taking him, and Stark did not ask. It would have been an admission of fear.

In mid-afternoon of the second day they came to a lip of rock where the snow was swept clean, and below it was a sheer drop into a narrow valley. Looking down, Stark saw that on the floor of the valley, up and down as far as he could see, were men and beasts and shelters of hide and brush, and fires burning. By the hundreds, by the several thousand, they camped under the cliffs, and their voices rose up on the thin air in a vast deep murmur that was deafening after the silence of the plains.

A war party, gathered now, before the thaw. Stark smiled. He became curious to meet the leader of this army.

They found their way single file along a winding track that dropped down the cliff face. The wind stopped abruptly, cut off by the valley walls. They came in among the shelters of the camp.

Here the snow was churned and soiled and melted to slush by the fires. There were no women in the camp, no sign of the usual cheerful rabble that follows a barbarian army. There were only men—hillmen and warriors all, tough-handed killers with no thought but battle.

They came out of their holes to shout at Thord and his men, and stare at the stranger. Thord was flushed and jovial with importance.

“I have no time for you,” he shouted back. “I go to speak with the Lord Ciaran.”

Stark rode impassively, a dark giant with a face of stone. From time to time he made his beast curvet, and laughed at himself inwardly for doing it.

They came at length to a shelter larger than the others, but built exactly the same and no more comfortable. A spear was thrust into the snow beside the entrance, and from it hung a black pennant with a single bar of silver across it, like lightning in a night sky. Beside it was a shield with the same device. There were no guards.

Thord dismounted, bidding Stark to do the same. He hammered on the shield with the hilt of his sword, announcing himself.

“Lord Ciaran! It is Thord—with a captive.”

A voice, toneless and strangely muffled, spoke from within.

“Enter, Thord.”

Thord pushed aside the hide curtain and went in, with Stark at his heels.

THE DIM DAYLIGHT did not penetrate the interior. Cressets burned, giving off a flickering brilliance and a smell of strong oil. The floor of packed snow was carpeted with furs, much worn. Otherwise there was no adornment, and no furniture but a chair and a table, both dark with age and use, and a pallet of skins in one shadowy corner with what seemed to be a heap of rags upon it

In the chair sat a man.

He seemed very tall, in the shaking light of the cressets. From neck to thigh his lean body was cased in black link mail, and under that a tunic of leather, dyed black. Across his knees he held a sable axe, a great thing made for the shearing of skulls, and his hands lay upon it gently, as though it were a toy he loved.

His head and face were covered by a thing that Stark had seen before only in very old paintings—the ancient war-mask of the inland Kings of Mars. Wrought of black and gleaming steel, it presented an unhuman visage of slitted eyeholes and a barred slot for breathing. Behind, it sprang out in a thin, soaring sweep, like a dark wing edge-on in flight.

The intent, expressionless scrutiny of that mask was bent, not upon Thord, but upon Eric John Stark.

The hollow voice spoke again, from behind the mask. “Well?”

“We were hunting in the gorges to the south,” said Thord. “We saw a fire…” He told the story, of how they had found the stranger and the body of the man from Kushat.

“Kushat!” said the Lord Ciaran softly. “Ah! And why, stranger, were you going to Kushat?”

“My name is Stark. Eric John Stark, Earthman, out of Mercury.” He was tired of being called stranger. Quite suddenly, he was tired of the whole business.

“Why should I not go to Kushat? Is it against some law, that a man may not go there in peace without being hounded all over the Norlands? And why do the men of Mekh make it their business? They have nothing to do with the city.”

Thord held his breath, watching with delighted anticipation.

The hands of the man in armor caressed the axe. They were slender hands, smooth and sinewy—small hands, it seemed, for such a weapon.

“We make what we will our business, Eric John Stark.” He spoke with a peculiar gentleness. “I have asked you. Why were you going to Kushat?”

“Because,” Stark answered with equal restraint, “my comrade wanted to go home to die.”

“It seems a long, hard journey, just for dying.” The black helm bent forward, in an attitude of thought. “Only the condemned or banished leave their cities, or their clans. Why did your comrade flee Kushat?”

A voice spoke suddenly from out of the heap of rags that lay on the pallet in the shadows of the corner. A man’s voice, deep and husky, with the harsh quaver of age or madness in it.

“Three men beside myself have fled Kushat, over the years that matter. One died in the spring floods. One was caught in the moving ice of winter. One lived. A thief named Camar, who stole a certain talisman.”

Stark said, “My comrade was called Greshi.” The leather belt weighed heavy about him, and the iron boss seemed hot against his belly. He was beginning, now, to be afraid.

THE LORD CIARAN spoke, ignoring Stark. “It was the sacred talisman of Kushat. Without it, the city is like a man without a soul.”

As the Veil of Tanit was to Carthage, Stark thought, and reflected on the fate of that city after the Veil was stolen.

“The nobles were afraid of their own people,” the man in armor said. “They did not dare to tell that it was gone. But we know.”

“And,” said Stark, “you will attack Kushat before the thaw, when they least expect you.”

“You have a sharp mind, stranger. Yes. But the great wall will be hard to carry, even so. If I came, bearing in my hands the talisman of Ban Cruach…”

He did not finish, but turned instead to Thord. “When you plundered the dead man’s body, what did you find?”

“Nothing, Lord. A few coins, a knife, hardly worth the taking.”

“And you, Eric John Stark. What did you take from the body?”

With perfect truth he answered, “Nothing.”

“Thord,” said the Lord Ciaran, “search him.”

Thord came smiling up to Stark and ripped his jacket open.

With uncanny swiftness, the Earthman moved. The edge of one broad hand took Thord under the ear, and before the man’s knees had time to sag Stark had caught his arm. He turned, crouching forward, and pitched Thord headlong through the door flap.

He straightened and turned again. His eyes held a feral glint. “The man has robbed me once,” he said. “It is enough.”

He heard Thord’s men coming. Three of them tried to jam through the entrance at once, and he sprang at them. He made no sound. His fists did the talking for him, and then his feet, as he kicked the stunned barbarians back upon their leader.

“Now,” he said to the Lord Ciaran, “will we talk as men?”

The man in armor laughed, a sound of pure enjoyment. It seemed that the gaze behind the mask studied Stark’s savage face, and then lifted to greet the sullen Thord who came back into the shelter, his cheeks flushed crimson with rage.

“Go,” said the Lord Ciaran. “The stranger and I will talk.”

“But Lord,” he protested, glaring at Stark, “it is not safe…”

“My dark mistress looks after my safety,” said Ciaran, stroking the axe across his knees. “Go.” Thord went.

The man in armor was silent then, the blind mask turned to Stark, who met that eyeless gaze and was silent also. And the bundle of rags in the shadows straightened slowly and became a tall old man with rusty hair and beard, through which peered craggy juts of bone and two bright, small points of fire, as though some wicked flame burned within him.

He shuffled over and crouched at the feet of the Lord Ciaran, watching the Earthman. And the man in armor leaned forward.

“I will tell you something, Eric John Stark. I am a bastard, but I come of the blood of kings. My name and rank I must make with my own hands. But I will set them high, and my name will ring in the Norlands!

“I will take Kushat, Who holds Kushat, holds Mars—and the power and the riches that lie beyond the Gates of Death!”

“I have seen them,” said the old man, and his eyes blazed. “I have seen Ban Cruach the mighty. I have seen the temples and the palaces glitter in the ice. I have seen Them, the shining ones. Oh, I have seen them, the beautiful, hideous ones!”

He glanced sidelong at Stark, very cunning. “That is why Otar is mad, stranger. He has seen.”

A chill swept Stark. He too had seen, not with his own eyes but with the mind and memories of Ban Cruach, of a million years ago.

Then it had been no illusion, the fantastic vision opened to him by the talisman now hidden in his belt! If this old madman had seen…

“What beings lurk beyond the Gates of Death I do not know,” said Ciaran. “But my dark mistress will test their strength—and I think my red wolves will hunt them down, once they get a smell of plunder.”

“The beautiful, terrible ones,” whispered Otar. “And oh, the temples and the palaces, and the great towers of stone!”

“Ride with me, Stark,” said the Lord Ciaran abruptly. “Yield up the talisman, and be the shield at my back. I have offered no other man that honor.”

Stark asked slowly, “Why do you choose me?”

“We are of one blood, Stark, though we be strangers.”

The Earthman’s cold eyes narrowed. “What would your red wolves say to that? And what would Otar say? Look at him, already stiff with jealousy, and fear lest I answer, ‘Yes’.”

“I do not think you would be afraid of either of them.”

“On the contrary,” said Stark, “I am a prudent man.” He paused. “There is one other thing. I will bargain with no man until I have looked into his eyes. Take off your helm, Ciaran—and then perhaps we will talk!”

Otar’s breath made a snakelike hissing between his toothless gums, and the hands of the Lord Ciaran tightened on the haft of the axe.

“No!” he whispered. “That I can never do.”

Otar rose to his feet, and for the first time Stark felt the full strength that lay in this strange old man.

“Would you look upon the face of destruction?” he thundered. “Do you ask for death? Do you think a thing is hidden behind a mask of steel without a reason, that you demand to see it?”

He turned. “My Lord,” he said. “By tomorrow the last of the clans will have joined us. After that, we must march. Give this Earthman to Thord, for the time that remains—and you will have the talisman.”

The blank, blind mask was unmoving, turned toward Stark, and the Earthman thought that from behind it came a faint sound that might have been a sigh.

Then…

“Thord!” cried the Lord Ciaran, and lifted up the axe.

III

THE FLAMES LEAPED HIGH from the fire in the windless gorge. Men sat around it in a great circle, the wild riders out of the mountain valleys of Mekh. They sat with the curbed and shivering eagerness of wolves around a dying quarry. Now and again their white teeth showed in a kind of silent laughter, and their eyes watched.

“He is strong,” they whispered, one to the other. “He will live the night out, surely!”

On an outcrop of rock sat the Lord Ciaran, wrapped in a black cloak, holding the great axe in the crook of his arm. Beside him, Otar huddled in the snow.

Close by, the long spears had been driven deep and lashed together to make a scaffolding, and upon this frame was hung a man. A big man, iron-muscled and very lean, the bulk of his shoulders filling the space between the bending shafts. Eric John Stark of Earth, out of Mercury.

He had already been scourged without mercy. He sagged of his own weight between the spears, breathing in harsh sobs, and the trampled snow around him was spotted red.

Thord was wielding the lash. He had stripped off his own coat, and his body glistened with sweat in spite of the cold. He cut his victim with great care, making the long lash sing and crack. He was proud of his skill.

Stark did not cry out.

Presently Thord stepped back, panting, and looked at the Lord Ciaran. And the black helm nodded.

Thord dropped the whip. He went up to the big dark man and lifted his head by the hair.

“Stark,” he said, and shook the head roughly. “Stranger!”

Eyes opened and stared at him, and Thord could not repress a slight shiver. It seemed that the pain and indignity had wrought some evil magic on this man he had ridden with, and thought he knew. He had seen exactly the same gaze in a big snow-cat caught in a trap, and he felt suddenly that it was not a man he spoke to, but a predatory beast.

“Stark,” he said. “Where is the talisman of Ban Cruach?”

The Earthman did not answer.

Thord laughed. He glanced up at the sky, where the moons rode low and swift.

“The night is only half gone. Do you think you can last it out?”

The cold, cruel, patient eyes watched Thord. There was no reply.

Some quality of pride in that gaze angered the barbarian. It seemed to mock him, who was so sure of his ability to loosen a reluctant tongue.

“You think I cannot make you talk, don’t you? You don’t know me, stranger! You don’t know Thord, who can make the rocks speak out if he will!”

He reached out with his free hand and struck Stark across the face.

It seemed impossible that anything so still could move so quickly. There was an ugly flash of teeth, and Thord’s wrist was caught above the thumb-joint. He bellowed, and the iron jaws closed down, worrying the bone.

Quite suddenly, Thord screamed. Not for pain, but for panic. And the rows of watching men swayed forward, and even the Lord Ciaran rose up, startled.

“Hark!” ran the whispering around the fire. “Hark how he growls!”

Thord had let go of Stark’s hair and was beating him about the head with his clenched fist. His face was white.

“Werewolf!” he screamed. “Let me go, beast-thing! Let me go!”

But the dark man clung to Thord’s wrist, snarling, and did not hear. After a bit there came the dull crack of bone.

Stark opened his jaws. Thord ceased to strike him. He backed off slowly, staring at the torn flesh. Stark had sunk down to the length of his arms.

With his left hand, Thord drew his knife. The Lord Ciaran stepped forward. “Wait, Thord!”

“It is a thing of evil,” whispered the barbarian. “Warlock. Werewolf. Beast.”

He sprang at Stark.

THE MAN in armor moved, very swiftly, and the great axe went whirling through the air. It caught Thord squarely where the cords of his neck ran into the shoulder—caught, and shore on through.

There was a silence in the valley.

The Lord Ciaran walked slowly across the trampled snow and took up his axe again.

“I will be obeyed,” he said. “And I will not stand for fear, not of god, man, nor devil.” He gestured toward Stark. “Cut him down. And see that he does not die.”

He strode away, and Otar began to laugh.

From a vast distance, Stark heard that shrill, wild laughter. His mouth was full of blood, and he was mad with a cold fury.

A cunning that was purely animal guided his movements then. His head fell forward, and his body hung inert against the thongs. He might almost have been dead.

A knot of men came toward him. He listened to them. They were hesitant and afraid. Then, as he did not move, they plucked up courage and came closer, and one prodded him gently with the point of his spear.

“Prick him well,” said another, “Let us be sure!”

The sharp point bit a little deeper. A few drops of blood welled out and joined the small red streams that ran from the weals of the lash. Stark did not stir.

The spearman grunted. “He is safe enough now.”

Stark felt the knife blades working at the thongs. He waited. The rawhide snapped, and he was free.

He did not fall. He would not have fallen then if he had taken a death wound. He gathered his legs under him and sprang.

He picked up the spearman in that first rush and flung him into the fire. Then he began to run toward the place where the scaly mounts were herded, leaving a trail of blood behind him on the snow.

A man loomed up in front of him. He saw the shadow of a spear and swerved, and caught the haft in his two hands. He wrenched it free and struck down with the butt of it, and went on. Behind him he heard voices shouting and the beginning of turmoil.

The Lord Ciaran turned and came back, striding fast.

There were men before Stark now, many men, the circle of watchers breaking up because there had been nothing more to watch. He gripped the long spear. It was a good weapon, better than the flint-tipped stick with which the boy N’Chaka had hunted the giant lizard of the rocks.

His body curved into a half crouch. He voiced one cry, the challenging scream of a predatory killer, and went in among the men.

He did slaughter with that spear. They were not expecting attack. They were not expecting anything. Stark had sprung to life too quickly. And they were afraid of him. He could smell the fear on them. Fear not of a man like themselves, but of a creature less and more than man.

He killed, and was happy.

They fell away from him, the wild riders of Mekh. They were sure now that he was a demon. He raged among them with the bright spear, and they heard again that sound that should not have come from a human throat, and their superstitious terror rose and sent them scrambling out of his path, trampling on each other in childish panic.

He broke through, and now there was nothing between him and escape but two mounted men who guarded the herd.

Being mounted, they had more courage. They felt that even a warlock could not stand against their charge. They came at him as he ran, the padded feet of their beasts making a muffled drumming in the snow.

Without breaking stride, Stark hurled his spear.

IT DROVE through one man’s body and tumbled him off, so that he fell under his comrade’s mount and fouled its legs. It staggered and reared up, hissing, and Stark fled on.

Once he glanced over his shoulder. Through the milling, shouting crowd of men he glimpsed a dark, mailed figure with a winged mask, going through the ruck with a loping stride and bearing a sable axe raised high for the throwing.

Stark was close to the herd now. And they caught his scent.

The Norland brutes had never liked the smell of him, and now the reek of blood upon him was enough in itself to set them wild. They began to hiss and snarl uneasily, rubbing their reptilian flanks together as they wheeled around, staring at him with lambent eyes.

He rushed them, before they should quite decide to break. He was quick enough to catch one by the fleshy comb that served it for a forelock, held it with savage indifference to its squealing, and leaped to its back. Then he let it bolt, and as he rode it he yelled, a shrill brute cry that urged the creatures on to panic.

The herd broke, stampeding outward from its center like a bursting shell.

Stark was in the forefront. Clinging low to the scaly neck, he saw the men of Mekh scattered and churned and tramped into the snow by the flying pads. In and out of the shelters, kicking the brush walls down, lifting up their harsh reptilian voices, they went racketing through the camp, leaving behind them wreckage as of a storm. And Stark went with them.

He snatched a cloak from off the shoulders of some petty chieftain as he went by, and then, twisting cruelly on the fleshy comb, beating with his fist at the creature’s head, he got his mount turned in the way he wanted it to go, down the valley.

He caught one last glimpse of the Lord Ciaran, fighting to hold one of the creatures long enough to mount, and then a dozen striving bodies surged around him, and Stark was gone.

The beast did not slacken pace. It was as though it thought it could outrun the alien, bloody thing that clung to its back. The last fringes of the camp shot by and vanished in the gloom, and the clean snow of the lower valley lay open before it. The creature laid its belly to the ground and went, the white spray spurting from its heels.

Stark hung on. His strength was gone now, run out suddenly with the battle-madness. He became conscious now that he was sick and bleeding, that his body was one cruel pain. In that moment, more than in the hours that had gone before, he hated the black leader of the clans of Mekh.

That flight down the valley became a sort of ugly dream. Stark was aware of rock walls reeling past, and then they seemed to widen away and the wind came out of nowhere like the stroke of a great hammer, and he was on the open moors again.

The beast began to falter and slow down. Presently it stopped.

Stark scooped up snow to rub on his wounds. He came near to fainting, but the bleeding stopped and after that the pain was numbed to a dull ache. He wrapped the cloak around him and urged the beast to go on, gently this time, patiently, and after it had breathed it obeyed him, settling into the shuffling pace it could keep up for hours.

He was three days on the moors. Part of the time he rode in a sort of stupor, and part of the time he was feverishly alert, watching the skyline. Frequently he took the shapes of thrusting rocks for riders, and found what cover he could until he was sure they did not move. He was afraid to dismount, for the beast had no bridle. When it halted to rest he remained upon its back, shaking, his brow beaded with sweat.

The wind scoured his tracks clean as soon as he made them. Twice, in the distance, he did see riders, and one of those times he burrowed into a tall drift and stayed there for several hours.

The ruined towers marched with him across the bitter land, lonely giants fifty miles apart. He did not go near them.

He knew that he wandered a good bit, but he could not help it, and it was probably his salvation. In those tortured badlands, riven by ages of frost and flood, one might follow a man on a straight track between two points. But to find a single rider lost in that wilderness was a matter of sheer luck, and the odds were with Stark.

One evening at sunset he came out upon a plain that sloped upward to a black and towering scarp, notched with a single pass.

The light was level and blood-red, glittering on the frosty rock so that it seemed the throat of the pass was aflame with evil fires. To Stark’s mind, essentially primitive and stripped now of all its acquired reason, that narrow cleft appeared as the doorway to the dwelling place of demons as horrible as the fabled creatures that roam the Darkside of his native world.

He looked long at the Gates of Death, and a dark memory crept into his brain. Memory of that nightmare experience when the talisman had made him seem to walk into that frightful pass, not as Stark, but as Ban Cruach.

He remembered Otar’s words—I have seen Ban Cruach the mighty. Was he still there beyond those darkling gates, fighting his unimagined war, alone?

Again, in memory, Stark heard the evil piping of the wind. Again, the shadow of a dim and terrible shape loomed up before him…

He forced remembrance of that vision from his mind, by a great effort. He could not turn back now. There was no place to go.

His weary beast plodded on, and now Stark saw as in a dream that a great walled city stood guard before that awful Gate. He watched the city glide toward him through a crimson haze, and fancied he could see the ages clustered like birds around the towers.

He had reached Kushat, with the talisman of Ban Cruach still strapped in the bloodstained belt around his waist.

HE STOOD IN A LARGE SQUARE, lined about with huckster’s stalls and the booths of wine-sellers. Beyond were buildings, streets, a city. Stark got a blurred impression of a grand and brooding darkness, bulking huge against the mountains, as bleak and proud as they, and quite as ancient, with many ruins and deserted quarters.

He was not sure how he had come there, but he was standing on his own feet, and someone was pouring sour wine into his mouth. He drank it greedily. There were people around him, jostling, chattering, demanding answers to their questions. A girl’s voice said sharply, “Let him be! Can’t you see he’s hurt?”

Stark looked down. She was slim and ragged, with black hair and large eyes yellow as a cat’s. She held a leather bottle in her hands. She smiled at him and said, “I’m Thanis. Will you drink more wine?”

“I will,” said Stark, and did, and then said, “Thank you, Thanis.” He put his hand on her shoulder, to steady himself. It was a supple shoulder, surprisingly strong. He liked the feel of it.

The crowd was still churning around him, growing larger, and now he heard the tramp of military feet. A small detachment of men in light armor pushed their way through.

A very young officer whose breastplate hurt the eye with brightness demanded to be told at once who Stark was and why he had come there.

“No one crosses the moors in winter,” he said, as though that in itself were a sign of evil intent.

“The clans of Mekh are crossing them,” Stark answered. “An army, to take Kushat—one, two days behind me.”

The crowd picked that up. Excited voices tossed it back and forth, and clamored for more news. Stark spoke to the officer.

“I will see your captain, and at once.”

“You’ll see the inside of a prison, more likely!” snapped the young man. “What’s this nonsense about the clans of Mekh?”

Stark regarded him. He looked so long and so curiously that the crowd began to snicker and the officer’s beardless face flushed pink to the ears.

“I have fought in many wars,” said Stark gently. “And long ago I learned to listen, when someone came to warn me of attack.”

“Better take him to the captain, Lugh,” cried Thanis. “It’s our skins too, you know, if there is war.”

The crowd began to shout. They were all poor folk, wrapped in threadbare cloaks or tattered leather. They had no love for the guards. And whether there was war or not, their winter had been long and dull, and they were going to make the most of this excitement.

“Take him, Lugh! Let him warn the nobles. Let them think how they’ll defend Kushat and the Gates of Death, now that the talisman is gone!”

“That is a lie!” Lugh shouted. “And you know the penalty for telling it. Hold your tongues, or I’ll have you all whipped.” He gestured angrily at Stark. “See if he is armed.”

One of the soldiers stepped forward, but Stark was quicker. He slipped the thong and let the cloak fall, baring his upper body.

“The clansmen have already taken everything I owned,” he said. “But they gave me something, in return.”

The crowd stared at the half healed stripes that scarred him, and there was a drawing in of breath.

The soldier picked up the cloak and laid it over the Earthman’s shoulders. And Lugh said sullenly, “Come, then.”

Stark’s fingers tightened on Thanis’ shoulder. “Come with me, little one,” he whispered. “Otherwise, I must crawl.”

She smiled at him and came. The crowd followed.

The captain of the guards was a fleshy man with a smell of wine about him and a face already crumbling apart though his hair was not yet grey. He sat in a squat tower above the square, and he observed Stark with no particular interest.

“You had something to tell,” said Lugh. “Tell it.”

STARK TOLD THEM, leaving out all mention of Camar and the talisman. This was neither the time nor the man to hear that story. The captain listened to all he had to say about the gathering of the clans of Mekh, and then sat studying him with a bleary shrewdness.

“You have proof of all this?”

“These stripes. Their leader Ciaran ordered them laid on himself.”

The captain sighed, and leaned back.

“Any wandering band of hunters could have scourged you,” he said. “A nameless vagabond from the gods know where, and a lawless one at that, if I’m any judge of men—you probably deserved it.”

He reached for wine, and smiled. “Look you, stranger. In the Norlands, no one makes war in the winter. And no one ever heard of Ciaran. If you hoped for a reward from the city, you overshot badly.”

“The Lord Ciaran,” said Stark, grimly controlling his anger, “will be battering at your gates within two days. And you will hear of him then.”

“Perhaps. You can wait for him—in a cell. And you can leave Kushat with the first caravan after the thaw. We have enough rabble here without taking in more.”

Thanis caught Stark by the cloak and held him back.

“Sir,” she said, as though it were an unclean word. “I will vouch for the stranger.”

The captain glanced at her. “You?”

“Sir, I am a free citizen of Kushat. According to law, I may vouch for him.”

“If you scum of the Thieves’ Quarter would practice the law as well as you prate it, we would have less trouble,” growled the captain. “Very well, take the creature, if you want him. I don’t suppose you’ve anything to lose.”

Lugh laughed.

“Name and dwelling place,” said the captain, and wrote them down. “Remember, he is not to leave the Quarter.”

Thanis nodded. “Come,” she said to. Stark. He did not move, and she looked up at him. He was staring at the captain. His beard had grown in these last days, and his face was still scarred by Thord’s blows and made wolfish with pain and fever. And now, out of this evil mask, his eyes were peering with a chill and terrible intensity at the soft-bellied man who sat and mocked him.

Thanis laid her hand on his rough cheek. “Come,” she said. “Come and rest.”

Gently she turned his head. He blinked and swayed, and she took him around the waist and led him unprotesting to the door.

There she paused, looking back.

“Sir,” she said, very meekly, “news of this attack is being shouted through the Quarter now. If it should come, and it were known that you had the warning and did not pass it on…” She made an expressive gesture, and went out.

Lugh glanced uneasily at the captain. “She’s right, sir. If by chance the man did tell the truth…”

The captain swore. “Rot. A rogue’s tale. And yet…” He scowled indecisively, and then reached for parchment. “After all, it’s a simple thing. Write it up, pass it on, and let the nobles do the worrying.”

His pen began to scratch.

Thanis took Stark by steep and narrow ways, darkling now in the afterglow, where the city climbed and fell again over the uneven rock. Stark was aware of the heavy smells of spices and unfamiliar foods, and the musky undertones of a million generations swarmed together to spawn and die in these crowded catacombs of slate and stone.

There was a house, blending into other houses, close under the loom of the great Wall. There was a flight of steps, hollowed deep with use, twisting crazily around outer corners.

There was a low room, and a slender man named Balin, vaguely glimpsed, who said he was Thanis’ brother. There was a bed of skins and woven cloths.

Stark slept.

HANDS and voices called him back. Strong hands shaking him, urgent voices. He started up growling, like an animal suddenly awaked, still lost in the dark mists of exhaustion. Balin swore, and caught his fingers away.

“What is this you have brought home, Thanis? By the gods, it snapped at me!”

Thanis ignored him. “Stark,” she said. “Stark! Listen. Men are coming. Soldiers. They will question you. Do you hear me?”

Stark said heavily, “I hear.”

“Do not speak of Camar!”

Stark got to his feet, and Balin said hastily, “Peace! The thing is safe. I would not steal a death warrant!”

His voice had a ring of truth. Stark sat down again. It was an effort to keep awake. There was clamor in the street below. It was still night.

Balin said carefully, “Tell them what you told the captain, nothing more. They will kill you if they know.”

A rough hand thundered at the door, and a voice cried, “Open up!”

Balin sauntered over to lift the bar. Thanis sat beside Stark, her hand touching his. Stark rubbed his face. He had been shaved and washed, his wounds rubbed with salve. The belt was gone, and his bloodstained clothing. He realized only then that he was naked, and drew a cloth around him. Thanis whispered, “The belt is there on that peg, under your cloak.”

Balin opened the door, and the room was full of men.

Stark recognized the captain. There were others, four of them, young, old, intermediate, annoyed at being hauled away from their beds and their gaming tables at this hour. The sixth man wore the jewelled cuirass of a noble. He had a nice, a kind face. Grey hair, mild eyes, soft cheeks. A fine man, but ludicrous in the trappings of a soldier.

“Is this the man?” he asked, and the captain nodded.

“Yes.” It was his turn to say Sir.

Balin brought a chair. He had a fine flourish about him. He wore a crimson jewel in his left ear, and every line of him was quick and sensitive, instinct with mockery. His eyes were brightly cynical, in a face worn lean with years of merry sinning. Stark liked him.

He was a civilized man. They all were—the noble, the captain, the lot of them. So civilized that the origins of their culture were forgotten half an age before the first clay brick was laid in Babylon.

Too civilized, Stark thought. Peace had drawn their fangs and cut their claws. He thought of the wild clansmen coming fast across the snow, and felt a certain pity for the men of Kushat.

The noble sat down.

“This is a strange tale you bring, wanderer. I would hear it from your own lips.”

Stark told it. He spoke slowly, watching every word, cursing the weariness that fogged his brain.

The noble, who was called Rogain, asked him questions. Where was the camp? How many men? What were the exact words of the Lord Ciaran, and who was he?

Stark answered, with meticulous care.

Rogain sat for some time lost in thought. He seemed worried and upset, one hand playing aimlessly with the hilt of his sword. A scholar’s hand, without a callous on it.

“There is one thing more,” said Rogain. “What business had you on the moors in winter?”

Stark smiled. “I am a wanderer by profession.”

“Outlaw?” asked the captain, and Stark shrugged.

“Mercenary is a kinder word.”

ROGAIN studied the pattern of stripes on the Earthman’s dark skin. “Why did the Lord Ciaran, so-called, order you scourged?”

“I had thrashed one of his chieftains.”

Rogain sighed and rose. He stood regarding Stark from under brooding brows, and at length he said, “It is a wild tale. I can’t believe it—and yet, why should you lie?”

He paused, as though hoping that Stark would answer that and relieve him of worry.

Stark yawned. “The tale is easily proved. Wait a day or two.”

“I will arm the city,” said Rogain. “I dare not do otherwise. But I will tell you this.” An astonishing unpleasant look came into his eyes. “If the attack does not come—if you have set a whole city by the ears for nothing—I will have you flayed alive and your body tumbled over the Wall for the carrion birds to feed on.”

He strode out, taking his retinue with him. Balin smiled. “He will do it, too,” he said, and dropped the bar.

Stark did not answer. He stared at Balin, and then at Thanis, and then at the belt hanging on the peg, in a curiously blank and yet penetrating fashion, like an animal that thinks its own thoughts. He took a deep breath. Then, as though he found the air clean of danger, he rolled over and went instantly to sleep.

Balin lifted his shoulders expressively. He grinned at Thanis. “Are you positive it’s human?”

“He’s beautiful,” said Thanis, and tucked the cloths around him. “Hold your tongue.” She continued to sit there, watching Stark’s face as the slow dreams moved across it. Balin laughed.

It was evening again when Stark awoke. He sat up, stretching lazily. Thanis crouched by the hearthstone, stirring something savory in a blackened pot. She wore a red kirtle and a necklet of beaten gold, and her hair was combed out smooth and shining.

She smiled at him and rose, bringing him his own boots and trousers, carefully cleaned, and a tunic of leather tanned fine and soft as silk. Stark asked her where she got it.

“Balin stole it—from the baths where the nobles go. He said you might as well have the best.” She laughed. “He had a devil of a time finding one big enough to fit you.”

She watched with unashamed interest while he dressed. Stark said, “Don’t burn the soup.”

She put her tongue out at him. “Better be proud of that fine hide while you have it,” she said. “There’s no sign of attack.”

Stark was aware of sounds that had not been there before—the pacing of men on the Wall above the house, the calling of the watch. Kushat was armed and ready—and his time was running out. He hoped that Ciaran had not been delayed on the moors.

Thanis said, “I should explain about the belt. When Balin undressed you, he saw Camar’s name scratched on the inside of the boss. And, he can open a lizard’s egg without harming the shell.”

“What about you?” asked Stark. She flexed her supple fingers. “I do well enough.”

BALIN came in. He had been seeking news, but there was little to be had.

“The soldiers are grumbling about a false alarm,” he said. “The people are excited, but more as though they were playing a game. Kushat has not fought a war for centuries.” He sighed. “The pity of it is, Stark, I believe your story. And I’m afraid.”

Thanis handed him a steaming bowl. “Here—employ your tongue with this. Afraid, indeed! Have you forgotten the Wall? No one has carried it since the city was built. Let them attack!”

Stark was amused. “For a child, you know much concerning war.”

“I knew enough to save your skin!” she flared, and Balin smiled.

“She has you there, Stark. And speaking of skins…” He glanced up at the belt. “Or better, speaking of talismans, which we were not. How did you come by it?”

Stark told him. “He had a sin on his soul, did Camar. And—he was my friend.”

Balin looked at him with deep respect. “You were a fool,” he said “Look you. The thing is returned to Kushat. Your promise is kept. There is nothing for you here but danger, and were I you I would not wait to be flayed, or slain, or taken in a quarrel that is not yours.”

“Ah,” said Stark softly, “but it is mine. The Lord Ciaran made it so.” He, too, glanced at the belt. “What of the talisman?”

“Return it where it came from,” Thanis said. “My brother is a better thief than Camar. He can certainly do that.”

“No!” said Balin, with surprising force. “We will keep it, Stark and I. Whether it has power, I do not know. But if it has—I think Kushat will need it, and in strong hands.”

Stark said somebrely, “It has power, the Talisman. Whether for good or evil, I don’t know.”

They looked at him, startled. But a touch of awe seemed to repress their curiosity.

He could not tell them. He was, somehow, reluctant to tell anyone of that dark vision of what lay beyond the Gates of Death, which the talisman of Ban Cruach had lent him.

Balin stood up. “Well, for good or evil, at least the sacred relic of Ban Cruach has come home.” He yawned. “I am going to bed. Will you come, Thanis, or will you stay and quarrel with our guest?”

“I will stay,” she said, “and quarrel.”

“Ah, well.” Balin sighed puckishly. “Good night.” He vanished into an inner room. Stark looked at Thanis. She had a warm mouth, and her eyes were beautiful, and full of light.

He smiled, holding out his hand.

The night wore on, and Stark lay drowsing. Thanis had opened the curtains. Wind and moonlight swept together into the room, and she stood leaning upon the sill, above the slumbering city. The smile that lingered in the corners of her mouth was sad and far-away, and very tender.

Stark stirred uneasily, making small sounds in his throat. His motions grew violent. Thanis crossed the room and touched him.

Instantly he was awake.

“Animal,” she said softly. “You dream.”

Stark shook his head. His eyes were still clouded, though not with sleep. “Blood,” he said, “heavy in the wind.”

“I smell nothing but the dawn,” she said, and laughed.

Stark rose. “Get Balin. I’m going up on the Wall.”

She did not know him now. “What is it, Stark? What’s wrong?”

“Get Balin.” Suddenly it seemed that the room stifled him. He caught up his cloak and Camar’s belt and flung open the door, standing on the narrow steps outside. The moonlight caught in his eyes, pale as frost-fire.

Thanis shivered. Balin joined her without being called. He, too, had slept but lightly. Together they followed Stark up the rough-cut stair that led to the top of the Wall.

He looked southward, where the plain ran down from the mountains and spread away below Kushat. Nothing moved out there. Nothing marred the empty whiteness. But Stark said,

“They will attack at dawn.”

THEY WAITED. Some distance away a guard leaned against the parapet, huddled in his cloak. He glanced at them incuriously. It was bitterly cold. The wind came whistling down through the Gates of Death, and below in the streets the watchfires shuddered and flared.

They waited, and still there was nothing.

Balin said impatiently, “How can you know they’re coming?”

Stark shivered, a shallow rippling of the flesh that had nothing to do with cold, and every muscle of his body came alive. Phobos plunged downward. The moonlight dimmed and changed, and the plain was very empty, very still.

“They will wait for darkness. They will have an hour or so, between moonset and dawn.”

Thanis muttered, “Dreams! Besides, I’m cold.” She hesitated, and then crept in under Balin’s cloak. Stark had gone away from her. She watched him sulkily where he leaned upon the stone. He might have been part of it, as dark and unstirring.

Deimos sank low toward the west.

Stark turned his head, drawn inevitably to look toward the cliffs above Kushat, soaring upward to blot out half the sky. Here, close under them, they seemed to tower outward in a curving mass, like the last wave of eternity rolling down, crested white with the ash of shattered worlds.

I have stood beneath those cliffs before, I have felt them leaning down to crush me, and I have been afraid.

He was still afraid. The mind that had poured its memories into that crystal lens had been dead a million years, but neither time nor death had dulled the terror that beset Ban Cruach in his journey through that nightmare pass.

He looked into the black and narrow mouth of the Gates of Death, cleaving the scarp like a wound, and the primitive ape-thing within him cringed and moaned, oppressed with a sudden sense of fate.

He had come painfully across half a world, to crouch before the Gates of Death. Some evil magic had let him see forbidden things, had linked his mind in an unholy bond with the long-dead mind of one who had been half a god. These evil miracles had not been for nothing. He would not be allowed to go unscathed.

He drew himself up sharply then, and swore. He had left N’Chaka behind, a naked boy running in a place of rocks and sun on Mercury. He had become Eric John Stark, a man, and civilized. He thrust the senseless premonition from him, and turned his back upon the mountains.

Deimos touched the horizon. A last gleam of reddish light tinged the snow, and then was gone.

Thanis, who was half asleep, said with sudden irritation, “I do not believe in your barbarians. I’m going home.” She thrust Balin aside and went away, down the steps.

The plain was now in utter darkness, under the faint, far Northern stars.

Stark settled himself against the parapet. There was a sort of timeless patience about him. Balin envied it. He would have liked to go with Thanis. He was cold and doubtful, but he stayed.

Time passed, endless minutes of it, lengthening into what seemed hours.

Stark said, “Can you hear them?”

“No.”

“They come.” His hearing, far keener than Balin’s, picked up the little sounds, the vast inchoate rustling of an army on the move in stealth and darkness. Light-armed men, hunters, used to stalking wild beasts in the show. They could move softly, very softly.

“I hear nothing,” Balin said, and again they waited.

The westering stars moved toward the horizon, and at length in the east a dim pallor crept across the sky.

The plain was still shrouded in night, but now Stark could make out the high towers of the King City of Kushat, ghostly and indistinct—the ancient, proud high towers of the rulers and their nobles, set above the crowded Quarters of merchants and artisans and thieves. He wondered who would be king in Kushat by the time this unrisen sun had set.

“You were wrong,” said Balin, peering. “There is nothing on the plain.” Stark said, “Wait.”

SWIFTLY NOW, in the thin air of Mars, the dawn came with a rush and a leap, flooding the world with harsh light. It flashed in cruel brilliance from sword-blades, from spearheads, from helmets and burnished mail, from the war-harness of beasts, glistened on bare russet heads and coats of leather, set the banners of the clans to burning, crimson and gold and green, bright against the snow.

There was no sound, not a whisper, in all the land.

Somewhere a hunting horn sent forth one deep cry to split the morning. Then burst out the wild skirling of the mountain pipes and the broken thunder of drums, and a wordless scream of exultation that rang back from the Wall of Kushat like the very voice of battle. The men of Mekh began to move.

Raggedly, slowly at first, then more swiftly as the press of warriors broke and flowed, the barbarians swept toward the city as water sweeps over a broken dam.

Knots and clumps of men, tall men running like deer, leaping, shouting, swinging their great brands. Riders, spurring their mounts until they fled belly down. Spears, axes, swordblades tossing, a sea of men and beasts, rushing, trampling, shaking the ground with the thunder of their going.

And ahead of them all came a solitary figure in black mail, riding a raking beast trapped all in black, and bearing a sable axe.

Kushat came to life. There was a swarming and a yelling in the streets, and soldiers began to pour up onto the Wall. A thin company, Stark thought, and shook his head. Mobs of citizens choked the alleys, and every rooftop was full. A troop of nobles went by, brave in their bright mail, to take up their post in the square by the great gate.

Balin said nothing, and Stark did not disturb his thoughts. From the look of him, they were dark indeed.

Soldiers came and ordered them off the the Wall. They went back to their own roof, where they were joined by Thanis. She was in a high state of excitement, but unafraid.

“Let them attack!” she said. “Let them break their spears against the Wall. They will crawl away again.”

Stark began to grow restless. Up in their high emplacements, the big ballistas creaked and thrummed. The muted song of the bows became a wailing hum. Men fell, and were kicked off the ledges by their fellows. The blood-howl of the clans rang unceasing on the frosty air, and Stark heard the rap of scaling ladders against stone.

Thanis said abruptly, “What is that—that sound like thunder?”

“Rams,” he answered. “They are battering the gate.”

She listened, and Stark saw in her face the beginning of fear.

It was a long fight. Stark watched it hungrily from the roof all that morning. The soldiers of Kushat did bravely and well, but they were as folded sheep against the tall killers of the mountains. By noon the officers were beating the Quarters for men to replace the slain.

Stark and Balin went up again, onto the Wall.

The clans had suffered. Their dead lay in windrows under the Wall, amid the broken ladders. But Stark knew his barbarians. They had sat restless and chafing in the valley for many days, and now the battle-madness was on them and they were not going to be stopped.

Wave after wave of them rolled up, and was cast back, and came on again relentlessly. The intermittent thunder boomed still from the gates, where sweating giants swung the rams under cover of their own bowmen. And everywhere, up and down through the forefront of the fighting, rode the man in black armor, and wild cheering followed him.

Balin said heavily, “It is the end of Kushat.”

A LADDER banged against the stones a few feet away. Men swarmed up the rungs, fierce-eyed clansmen with laughter in their mouths, Stark was first at the head.

They had given him a spear. He spitted two men through with it and lost it, and a third man came leaping over the parapet. Stark received him into his arms.

Balin watched. He saw the warrior go crashing back, sweeping his fellows off the ladder. He saw Stark’s face. He heard the sounds and smelled the blood and sweat of war, and he was sick to the marrow of his bones, and his hatred of the barbarians was a terrible thing.

Stark caught up a dead man’s blade, and within ten minutes his arm was as red as a butcher’s. And ever he watched the winged helm that went back and forth below, a standard to the clans.

By mid-afternoon the barbarians had gained the Wall in three places. They spread inward along the ledges, pouring up in a resistless tide, and the defenders broke. The rout became a panic.

“It’s all over now,” Stark said. “Find Thanis, and hide her.”

Balin let fall his sword. “Give me the talisman,” he whispered, and Stark saw that he was weeping. “Give it me, and I will go beyond the Gates of Death and rouse Ban Cruach from his sleep. And if he has forgotten Kushat, I will take his power into my own hands. I will fling wide the Gates of Death and loose destruction on the men of Mekh—or if the legends are all lies, then I will die.”

He was like a man crazed. “Give me the talisman!”

Stark slapped him, carefully and without heat, across the face. “Get your sister, Balin. Hide her, unless you would be uncle to a red-haired brat.”

He went then, like a man who has been stunned. Screaming women with their children clogged the ways that led inward from the Wall, and there was bloody work afoot on the rooftops and in the narrow alleys.

The gate was holding, still.

STARK FORCED his way toward the square. The booths of the hucksters were overthrown, the wine-jars broken and the red wine spilled. Beasts squealed and stamped, tired of their chafing harness, driven wild by the shouting and the smell of blood. The dead were heaped high where they had fallen from above.

They were all soldiers here, clinging grimly to their last foothold. The deep song of the rams shook the very stones. The iron-sheathed timbers of the gate gave back an answering scream, and toward the end all other sounds grew hushed. The nobles came down slowly from the Wall and mounted, and sat waiting.

There were fewer of them now. Their bright armor was dented and stained, and their faces had a pallor on them.

One last hammer-stroke of the rams.

With a bitter shriek the weakened bolts tore out, and the great gate was broken through.

The nobles of Kushat made their first, and final charge.

As soldiers they went up against the riders of Mekh, and as soldiers they held them until they died. Those that were left were borne back into the square, caught as in the crest of an avalanche. And first through the gates came the winged battle-mask of the Lord Ciaran, and the sable axe that drank men’s lives where it hewed.

There was a beast with no rider to claim it, tugging at its headrope. Stark swung onto the saddle pad and cut it free. Where the press was thickest, a welter of struggling brutes and men fighting knee to knee, there was the man in black armor, riding like a god, magnificent, born to war. Stark’s eyes shone with a strange, cold light. He struck his heels hard into the scaly flanks. The beast plunged forward.

In and over and through, making the long sword sing. The beast was strong, and frightened beyond fear. It bit and trampled, and Stark cut a path for them, and presently he shouted above the din,

“Ho, there! Ciaran!”

The black mask turned toward him, and the remembered voice spoke from behind the barred slot, joyously.

“The wanderer. The wild man!”

Their two mounts shocked together. The axe came down in a whistling curve, and a red swordblade flashed to meet it. Swift, swift, a ringing clash of steel, and the blade was shattered and the axe fallen to the ground.

Stark pressed in.

Ciaran reached for his sword, but his hand was numbed by the force of that blow and he was slow, a split second. The hilt of Stark’s weapon, still clutched in his own numbed grip, fetched him a stunning blow on the helm, so that the metal rang like a flawed bell.

The Lord Ciaran reeled back, only for a moment, but long enough. Stark grasped the war-mask and ripped it off, and got his hands around the naked throat.

He did not break that neck, as he had planned. And the Clansmen who had started in to save their leader stopped and did not move.

Stark knew now why the Lord Ciaran had never shown his face.

The throat he held was white and strong, and his hands around it were buried in a mane of red-gold hair that fell down over the shirt of mail. A red mouth passionate with fury, wonderful carving bone under sculptured flesh, eyes fierce and proud and tameless as the eyes of a young eagle, fire-blue, defying him, hating him…

“By the gods,” said Stark, very softly. “By the eternal gods!”

A WOMAN! AND IN THAT moment of amazement, she was quicker than he.

There was nothing to warn him, no least flicker of expression. Her two fists came up together between his outstretched arms and caught him under the jaw with a force that nearly snapped his neck. He went over backward, clean out of the saddle, and lay sprawled on the bloody stones, half stunned, the wind knocked out of him.

The woman wheeled her mount. Bending low, she took up the axe from where it had fallen, and faced her warriors, who were as dazed as Stark.

“I have led you well,” she said. “I have taken you Kushat. Will any man dispute me?”

They knew the axe, if they did not know her. They looked from side to side uneasily, completely at a loss, and Stark, still gasping on the ground, thought that he had never seen anything as proud and beautiful as she was then in her black mail, with her bright hair blowing and her glance like blue lightning.

The nobles of Kushat chose that moment to charge. This strange unmasking of the Mekhish lord had given them time to rally, and now they thought that the Gods had wrought a miracle to help them. They found hope, where they had lost everything but courage.

“A wench!” they cried. “A strumpet of the camps. A woman!”

They howled it like an epithet, and tore into the barbarians.

She who had been the Lord Ciaran drove the spurs in deep, so that the beast leaped forward screaming. She went, and did not look to see if any had followed, in among the men of Kushat. And the great axe rose and fell, and rose again.

She killed three, and left two others bleeding on the stones, and not once did she look back.

The clansmen found their tongues.

“Ciaran! Ciaran!”

The crashing shout drowned out the sound of battle. As one man, they turned and followed her.

Stark, scrambling for his life underfoot, could not forbear smiling. Their childlike minds could see only two alternatives—to slay her out of hand, or to worship her. They had chosen to worship. He thought the bards would be singing of the Lord Ciaran of Mekh as long as there were men to listen.

He managed to take cover behind a wrecked booth, and presently make his way out of the square. They had forgotten him, for the moment. He did not wish to wait, just then, until they—or she—remembered.

She.

He still did not believe it, quite. He touched the bruise under his jaw where she had struck him, and thought of the lithe, swift strength of her, and the way she had ridden alone into battle. He remembered the death of Thord, and how she had kept her red wolves tamed, and he was filled with wonder, and a deep excitment.

He remembered what she had said to him once—We are of one blood, though we be strangers.

He laughed, silently, and his eyes were very bright.

The tide of war had rolled on toward the King City, where from the sound of it there was hot fighting around the castle. Eddies of the main struggle swept shrieking through the streets, but the rat-runs under the Wall were clear. Everyone had stampeded inward, the victims with the victors close on their heels. The short northern day was almost gone.

He found a hiding place that offered reasonable safety, and settled himself to wait.

Night came, but he did not move. From the sounds that reached him, the sacking of Kushat was in full swing. They were looting the richer streets first. Their upraised voices were thick with wine, and mingled with the cries of women. The reflection of many fires tinged the sky.

By midnight the sounds began to slacken, and by the second hour after the city slept, drugged with wine and blood and the weariness of battle. Stark went silently out into the streets, toward the King City.

According to the immemorial pattern of Martian city-states, the castles of the king and the noble families were clustered together in solitary grandeur. Many of the towers were fallen now, the great halls open to the sky. Time had crushed the grandeur that had been Kushat, more fatally than the boots of any conqueror.

In the house of the king, the flamboys guttered low and the chieftains of Mekh slept with their weary pipers among the benches of the banquet hall. In the niches of the tall, carved portal, the guards nodded over their spears. They, too, had fought that day. Even so, Stark did not go near them.

Shivering slightly in the bitter wind, he followed the bulk of the massive walls until he found a postern door, half open as some kitchen knave had left it in his flight. Stark entered, moving like a shadow.

THE PASSAGEWAY was empty, dimly lighted by a single torch. A stairway branched off from it, and he climbed that, picking his way by guess and his memories of similar castles he had seen in the past,

He emerged into a narrow hall, obviously for the use of servants. A tapestry closed the end, stirring in the chill draught that blew along the floor. He peered around it, and saw a massive, vaulted corridor, the stone walls panelled in wood much split and blackened by time, but still showing forth the wonderful carvings of beasts and men, larger than life and overlaid with gold and bright enamel.

From the corridor a single doorway opened—and Otar slept before it, curled on a pallet like a dog.

Stark went back down the narrow hall. He was sure that there must be a back entrance to the king’s chambers, and he found the little door he was looking for.

From there on was darkness. He felt his way, stepping with infinite caution, and presently there was a faint gleam of light filtering around the edges of another curtain of heavy tapestry.

He crept toward it, and heard a man’s slow breathing on the other side.

He drew the curtain back, a careful inch. The man was sprawled on a bench athwart the door. He slept the honest sleep of exhaustion, his sword in his hand, the stains of his day’s work still upon him. He was alone in the small room. A door in the farther wall was closed.

Stark hit him, and caught the sword before it fell. The man grunted once and became utterly relaxed. Stark bound him with his own harness and shoved a gag in his mouth, and went on, through the door in the opposite wall.

The room beyond was large and high and full of shadows. A fire burned low on the hearth, and the uncertain light showed dimly the hangings and the rich stuffs that carpeted the floor, and the dark, sparse shapes of furniture.

Stark made out the lattice-work of a covered bed, let into the wall after the northern fashion.

She was there, sleeping, her red-gold hair the colour of the flames.

He stood a moment, watching her, and then, as though she sensed his presence, she stirred and opened her eyes.

She did not cry out. He had known that she would not. There was no fear in her. She said, with a kind of wry humor, “I will have a word with my guards about this.”

SHE FLUNG ASIDE the covering and rose. She was almost as tall as he, white-skinned and very straight. He noted the long thighs, the narrow loins and magnificent shoulders, the small virginal breasts. She moved as a man moves, without coquetry. A long furred gown, that Stark guessed had lately graced the shoulders of the king, lay over a chair. She put it on.

“Well, wild man?”

“I have come to warn you.” He hesitated over her name, and she said, “My mother named me Ciara, if that seems better to you.” She gave him her falcon’s glance. “I could have slain you in the square, but now I think you did me a service. The truth would have come out sometime—better then, when they had no time to think about it.” She laughed. “They will follow me now, over the edge of the world, if I ask them.”

Stark said slowly, “Even beyond the Gates of Death?”

“Certainly, there. Above all, there!”

She turned to one of the tall windows and looked out at the cliffs and the high notch of the pass, touched with greenish silver by the little moons.

“Ban Cruach was a great king. He came out of nowhere to rule the Norlands with a rod of iron, and men speak of him still as half a god. Where did he get his power, if not from beyond the Gates of Death? Why did he go back there at the end of his days, if not to hide away his secret? Why did he build Kushat to guard the pass forever, if not to hoard that power out of reach of all the other nations of Mars?

“Yea, Stark. My men will follow me. And if they do not, I will go alone.”

“You are not Ban Cruach. Nor am I.” He took her by the shoulders. “Listen, Ciara. You’re already king in the Norlands, and half a legend as you stand. Be content.”

“Content!” Her face was close to his, and he saw the blaze of it, the white intensity of ambition and an iron pride. “Are you content?” she asked him, “Have you ever been content?”

He smiled. “For strangers, we do know each other well. No. But the spurs are not so deep in me.”

“The wind and the fire. One spends its strength in wandering, the other devours. But one can help the other. I made you an offer once, and you said you would not bargain unless you could look into my eyes. Look now!”

He did, and his hands upon her shoulders trembled.

“No,” he said harshly. “You’re a fool, Ciara. Would you be as Otar, mad with what you have seen?”

“Otar is an old man, and likely crazed before he crossed the mountains. Besides—I am not Otar.”

Stark said somberly, “Even the bravest may break. Ban Cruach himself…”

She must have seen the shadow of that horror in his eyes, for he felt her body tense.

“What of Ban Cruach? What do you know, Stark? Tell me!”

He was silent, and she went from him angrily.

“You have the talisman,” she said. “That I am sure of. And if need be, I will flay you alive to get it!” She faced him across the room. “But whether I get it or not, I will go through the Gates of Death. I must wait, now, until after the thaw. The warm wind will blow soon, and the gorges will be running full. But afterward, I will go, and no talk of fears and demons will stop me.”

She began to pace the room with long strides, and the full skirts of the gown made a subtle whispering about her.

“You do not know,” she said, in a low and bitter voice. “I was a girl-child, without a name. By the time I could walk, I was a servant in the house of my grandfather. The two things that kept me living were pride and hate. I left my scrubbing of floors to practice arms with the young boys. I was beaten for it every day, but every day I went. I knew even then that only force would free me. And my father was a king’s son, a good man of his hands. His blood was strong in me. I learned.”

She held her head very high. She had earned the right to hold it so. She finished quietly, “I have come a long way. I will not turn back now.”

“Ciara.” Stark came and stood before her. “I am talking to you as a fighting man, an equal. There may be power behind the Gates of Death, I do not know. But this I have seen—madness, horror, an evil that is beyond our understanding.

“I think you will not accuse me of cowardice. And yet I would not go into that pass for all the power of all the kings of Mars!”

Once started, he could not stop. The full force of that dark vision of the talisman swept over him again in memory. He came closer to her, driven by the need to make her understand.

“Yes, I have the talisman! And I have had a taste of its purpose. I think Ban Cruach left it as a warning, so that none would follow him. I have seen the temples and the palaces glitter in the ice. I have seen the Gates of Death—not with my own eyes, Ciara, but with his. With the eyes and the memories of Ban Cruach!”

He had caught her again, his hands strong on her strong arms.

“Will you believe me, or must you see for yourself—the dreadful things that walk those buried streets, the shapes that rise from nowhere in the mists of the pass?”

Her gaze burned into his. Her breath was hot and sweet upon his lips, and she was like a sword between his hands, shining and unafraid.

“Give me the talisman. Let me see!”

He answered furiously, “You are mad. As mad as Otar.” And he kissed her, in a rage, in a panic lest all that beauty be destroyed—a kiss as brutal as a blow, that left him shaken.

SHE BACKED AWAY slowly, one step, and he thought she would have killed him. He said heavily:

“If you will see, you will. The thing is here.”

He opened the boss and laid the crystal in her outstretched hand. He did not meet her eyes.

“Sit down. Hold the flat side against your brow.”

She sat, in a great chair of carven wood. Stark noticed that her hand was unsteady, her face the colour of white ash. He was glad she did not have the axe where she could reach it. She did not play at anger.

For a long moment she studied the intricate lens, the incredible depository of a man’s mind. Then she raised it slowly to her forehead.

He saw her grow rigid in the chair. How long he watched beside her he never knew. Seconds, an eternity. He saw her eyes turn blank and strange, and a shadow came into her face, changing it subtly, altering the lines, so that it seemed almost a stranger was peering through her flesh.

All at once, in a voice that was not her own, she cried out terribly, “Oh gods of Mars!”

The talisman dropped rolling to the floor, and Ciara fell forward into Stark’s arms.

He thought at first that she was dead. He carried her to the bed, in an agony of fear that surprised him with its violence, and laid her down, and put his hand over her heart.

It was beating strongly. Relief that was almost a sickness swept over him. He turned, searching vaguely for wine, and saw the talisman. He picked it up and put it back inside the boss. A jewelled flagon stood on a table across the room. He took it and started back, and then, abruptly, there was a wild clamor in the hall outside and Otar was shouting Ciara’s name, pounding on the door.

It was not barred. In another moment they would burst through, and he knew that they would not stop to enquire what he was doing there.

He dropped the flagon and went out swiftly, the way he had come. The guard was still unconscious. In the narrow hall beyond, Stark hesitated. A woman’s voice was rising high above the tumult in the main corridor, and he thought he recognized it.

He went to the tapestry curtain and looked for the second time around its edge.

The lofty space was full of men, newly wakened from their heavy sleep and as nervous as so many bears. Thanis struggled in the grip of two of them. Her scarlet kirtle was torn, her hair flying in wild elf-locks, and her face was the face of a mad thing. The whole story of the doom of Kushat was written large upon it.

She screamed again and again, and would not be silenced.

“Tell her, the witch that leads you! Tell her that she is already doomed to death; with all her army!”

Otar opened up the door of Ciara’s room.

Thanis surged forward. She must have fled through all that castle before she was caught, and Stark’s heart ached for her.

“You!” she shrieked through the doorway, and poured out all the filth of the quarter upon Clara’s name. “Balin has gone to bring doom upon you! He will open wide the Gates of Death, and then you will die!—die!—die!”

Stark felt the shock of a terrible dread, as he let the curtain fall. Mad with hatred against conquerors, Balin had fulfilled his raging promise and had gone to fling open the Gates of Death.

Remembering his nightmare vision of the shining, evil ones whom Ban Cruach had long ago prisoned beyond those gates, Stark felt a sickness grow within him as he went down the stair and out the postern door.

It was almost dawn. He looked up at the brooding cliffs, and it seemed to him that the wind in the pass had a sound of laughter that mocked his growing dread.

He knew what he must do, if an ancient, mysterious horror was not to be released upon Kushat.

I may still catch Balin before he has gone too far! If I don’t—

He dared not think of that. He began to walk very swiftly through the night streets, toward the distant, towering Gates of Death.

VII

IT WAS PAST NOON. HE HAD climbed high toward the saddle of the pass. Kushat lay small below him, and he could see now the pattern of the gorges, cut ages deep in the living rock, that carried the spring torrents of the watershed around the mighty ledge on which the city was built.

The pass itself was channeled, but only by its own snows and melting ice. It was too high for a watercourse. Nevertheless, Stark thought, a man might find it hard to stay alive if he were caught there by the thaw.

He had seen nothing of Balin. The gods knew how many hours’ start he had. Stark imagined him, scrambling wild-eyed over the rocks, driven by the same madness that had sent Thanis up into the castle to call down destruction on Ciara’s head.

The sun was brilliant but without warmth. Stark shivered, and the icy wind blew strong. The cliffs hung over him, vast and sheer and crushing, and the narrow mouth of the pass was before him. He would go no farther. He would turn back, now.

But he did not. He began to walk forward, into the Gates of Death.

The steps of the Earthman slowed and faltered. He had known fear in his life before. But now he was carrying the burden of two men’s terrors—Ban Cruach’s, and his own.

He stopped, enveloped in the clinging mist. He tried to reason with himself—that Ban Cruach’s fears had died a million years ago, that Otar had come this way and lived, and Balin had come also.

But the thin veneer of civilization sloughed away and left him with the naked bones of truth. His nostrils twitched to the smell of evil, the subtle unclean taint that only a beast, or one as close to it as he, can sense and know. Every nerve was a point of pain, raw with apprehension. An overpowering recognition of danger, hidden somewhere, mocking at him, made his very body change, draw in upon itself and flatten forward, so that when at last he went on again he was more like a four-footed thing than a man walking upright.

Infinitely wary, silent, moving surely over the ice and the tumbled rock, he followed Balin. He had ceased to think. He was going now on sheer instinct.

The pass led on and on. It grew darker, and in the dim uncanny twilight there were looming shapes that menaced him, and ghostly wings that brushed him, and a terrible stillness that was not broken by the eerie voices of the wind.

Rock and mist and ice. Nothing that moved or lived. And yet the sense of danger deepened, and when he paused the beating of his heart was like thunder in his ears.

Once, far away, he thought he heard the echoes of a man’s voice crying, but he had no sight of Balin.

The pass began to drop, and the twilight deepened into a kind of sickly night.

On and down, more slowly now, crouching, slinking, heavily oppressed, tempted to snarl at boulders and tear at wraiths of fog. He had no idea of the miles he had travelled. But the ice was thicker now, the cold intense.

The rock walls broke off sharply. The mist thinned. The pallid darkness lifted to a clear twilight. He came to the end of the Gates of Death.

Stark stopped. Ahead of him, almost blocking the end of the pass, something dark and high and massive loomed in the thinning mists.

It was a great cairn, and upon it sat a figure, facing outward from the Gates of Death as though it kept watch over whatever country lay beyond.

The figure of a man in antique Martian armor.

After a moment, Stark crept toward the cairn. He was still almost all savage, torn between fear and fascination.

He was forced to scramble over the lower rocks of the cairn itself. Quite suddenly he felt a hard shock, and a flashing sensation of warmth that was somehow inside his own flesh, and not in any tempering of the frozen air. He gave a startled leap forward, and whirled, looking up into the face of the mailed figure with the confused idea that it had reached down and struck him.

It had not moved, of course. And Stark knew, with no need of anyone to tell him, that he looked into the face of Ban Cruach.

IT WAS A FACE made for battles and for ruling, the bony ridges harsh and strong, the hollows under them worn deep with years. Those eyes, dark shadows under the rusty helm, had dreamed high dreams, and neither age nor death had conquered them.

And even in death, Ban Cruach was not unarmed.

Clad as for battle in his ancient mail, he held upright between his hands a mighty sword. The pommel was a ball of crystal large as a man’s fist, that held within it a spark of intense brilliance. The little, blinding flame throbbed with its own force, and the sword-blade blazed with a white, cruel radiance.

Ban Cruach, dead but frozen to eternal changelessness by the bitter cold, sitting here upon his cairn for a million years and warding forever the inner end of the Gates of Death, as his ancient city of Kushat warded the outer.

Stark took two cautious steps closer to Ban Cruach, and felt again the shock and the flaring heat in his blood. He recoiled, satisfied.

The strange force in the blazing sword made an invisible barrier across the mouth of the pass, protected Ban Cruach himself. A barrier of short waves, he thought, of the type used in deep therapy, having no heat in themselves but increasing the heat in body cells by increasing their vibration. But these waves were stronger than any he had known before.

A barrier, a wall of force, closing the inner end of the Gates of Death. A barrier that was not designed against man.

Stark shivered. He turned from the sombre, brooding form of Ban Cruach and his eyes followed the gaze of the dead king, out beyond the cairn.

He looked across this forbidden land within the Gates of Death.

At his back was the mountain barrier. Before him, a handful of miles to the north, the terminus of the polar cap rose like a cliff of bluish crystal soaring up to touch the early stars. Locked in between those two titanic walls was a great valley of ice.

White and glimmering that valley was, and very still, and very beautiful, the ice shaped gracefully into curving domes and hollows. And in the center of it stood a dark tower of stone, a cyclopean bulk that Stark knew must go down an unguessable distance to its base on the bedrock. It was like the tower in which Camar had died. But this one was not a broken ruin. It loomed with alien arrogance, and within its bulk pallid lights flickered eerily, and it was crowned by a cloud of shimmering darkness.

It was like the tower of his dread vision, the tower that he had seen, not as Eric John Stark, but as Ban Cruach!

Stark’s gaze dropped slowly from the evil tower to the curving ice of the valley. And the fear within him grew beyond all bounds.

He had seen that, too, in his vision. The glimmering ice, the domes and hollows of it. He had looked down through it at the city that lay beneath, and he had seen those who came and went in the buried streets.

Stark hunkered down. For a long while he did not stir.

He did not want to go out there. He did not want to go out from the grim, warning figure of Ban Cruach with his blazing sword, into that silent valley. He was afraid, afraid of what he might see if he went there and looked down through the ice, afraid of the final dread fulfillment of his vision.

But he had come after Balin, and Balin must be out there somewhere. He did not want to go, but he was himself, and he must.

HE WENT, going very softly, out toward the tower of stone. And there was no sound in all that land.

The last of the twilight had faded. The ice gleamed, faintly luminous under the stars, and there was light beneath it, a soft radiance that filled all the valley with the glow of a buried moon.

Stark tried to keep his eyes upon the tower. He did not wish to look down at what lay under his stealthy feet.

Inevitably, he looked.

The temples and the palaces glittering in the ice…

Level upon level, going down. Wells of soft light spanned with soaring bridges, slender spires rising, an endless variation of streets and crystal walls exquisitely patterned, above and below and overlapping, so that it was like looking down through a thousand giant snowflakes. A metropolis of gossamer and frost, fragile and lovely as a dream, locked in the clear, pure vault of the ice.

Stark saw the people of the city passing along the bright streets, their outlines blurred by the icy vault as things are half obscured by water. The creatures of vision, vaguely shining, infinitely evil.

He shut his eyes and waited until the shock and the dizziness left him. Then he set his gaze resolutely on the tower, and crept on, over the glassy sky that covered those buried streets.

Silence. Even the wind was hushed.

He had gone perhaps half the distance when the cry rang out.

It burst upon the valley with a shocking violence. “Stark! Stark!” The ice rang with it, curving ridges picked up his name and flung it back and forth with eerie crystal voices, and the echoes fled out whispering Stark! Stark! until it seemed that the very mountains spoke.

Stark whirled about. In the pallid gloom between the ice and the stars there was light enough to see the cairn behind him, and the dim figure atop it with the shining sword.

Light enough to see Ciara, and the dark knot of riders who had followed her through the Gates of Death.

She cried his name again. “Come back! Come back!”

The ice of the valley answered mockingly, “Come back! Come back!” and Stark was gripped with a terror that held him motionless.

She should not have called him. She should not have made a sound in that deathly place.

A man’s hoarse scream rose above the flying echoes. The riders turned and fled suddenly, the squealing, hissing beasts crowding each other, floundering wildly on the rocks of the cairn, stampeding back into the pass.

Ciara was left alone. Stark saw her fight the rearing beast she rode and then fling herself out of the saddle and let it go. She came toward him, running, clad all in her black armor, the great axe swinging high. “Behind you, Stark! Oh, gods of Mars!” He turned then and saw them, coming out from the tower of stone, the pale, shining creatures that move so swiftly across the ice, so fleet and swift that no man living could outrun them.

HE SHOUTED to Ciara to turn back. He drew his sword and over his shoulder he cursed her in a black fury because he could hear her mailed feet coming on behind him.

The gliding creatures, sleek and slender, reedlike, bending, delicate as wraiths, their bodies shaped from northern rainbows of amethyst and rose—if they should touch Ciara, if their loathsome hands should touch her…

Stark let out one raging catlike scream, and rushed them.

The opalescent bodies slipped away beyond his reach. The creatures watched him.

They had no faces, but they watched. They were eyeless but not blind, earless, but not without hearing. The inquisitive tendrils that formed their sensory organs stirred and shifted like the petals of ungodly flowers, and the color of them was the white frost-fire that dances on the snow.

“Go back, Ciara!”

But she would not go, and he knew that they would not have let her. She reached him, and they set their backs together. The shining ones ringed them round, many feet away across the ice, and watched the long sword and the great hungry axe, and there was something in the lissome swaying of their bodies that suggested laughter.

“You fool,” said Stark. “You bloody fool.”

“And you?” answered Ciara. “Oh, yes, I know about Balin. That mad girl, screaming in the palace—she told me, and you were seen from the wall, climbing to the Gates of Death. I tried to catch you.”

“Why?”

She did not answer that. “They won’t fight us, Stark. Do you think we could make it back to the cairn?“

“No. But we can try.”

Guarding each others’ backs, they began to walk toward Ban Cruach and the pass. If they could once reach the barrier, they would be safe.

Stark knew now what Ban Cruach’s wall of force was built against. And he began to guess the riddle of the Gates of Death.

The shining ones glided with them, out of reach. They did not try to bar the way. They formed a circle around the man and woman, moving with them and around them at the same time, an endless weaving chain of many bodies shining with soft jewel tones of color.

They drew closer and closer to the cairn, to the brooding figure of Ban Cruach and his sword. It crossed Stark’s mind that the creatures were playing with him and Ciara. Yet they had no weapons. Almost, he began to hope…

From the tower where the shimmering cloud of darkness clung came a black crescent of force that swept across the icefield like a sickle and gathered the two humans in.

Stark felt a shock of numbing cold that turned his nerves to ice. His sword dropped from his hand, and he heard Ciara’s axe go down. His body was without strength, without feeling, dead.

He fell, and the shining ones glided in toward him.

VIII

TWICE BEFORE IN HIS LIFE Stark had come near to freezing. It had been like this, the numbness and the cold. And yet it seemed that the dark force had struck rather at his nerve centers than at his flesh.

He could not see Ciara, who was behind him, but he heard the metallic clashing of her mail and one small, whispered cry, and he knew that she had fallen, too.

The glowing creatures surrounded him. He saw their bodies bending over him, the frosty tendrils of their faces writhing as though in excitement or delight.

Their hands touched him. Little hands with seven fingers, deft and frail. Even his numbed flesh felt the terrible cold of their touch, freezing as outer space. He yelled, or tried to, but they were not abashed.

They lifted him and bore him toward the tower, a company of them, bearing his heavy weight upon their gleaming shoulders.

He saw the tower loom high and higher still above him. The cloud of dark force that crowned it blotted out the stars. It became too huge and high to see at all, and then there was a low flat arch of stone close above his face, and he was inside.

Straight overhead—a hundred feet, two hundred, he could not tell—was a globe of crystal, fitted into the top of the tower as a jewel is held in a setting.

The air around it was shadowed with the same eerie gloom that hovered outside, but less dense, so that Stark could see the smouldering purple spark that burned within the globe, sending out its dark vibrations.

A globe of crystal, with a heart of sullen flame. Stark remembered the sword of Ban Cruach, and the white fire that burned in its hilt.

Two globes, the bright-cored and the dark. The sword of Ban Cruach touched the blood with heat. The globe of the tower deadened the flesh with cold. It was the same force, but at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Stark saw the cryptic controls of that glooming globe—a bank of them, on a wide stone ledge just inside the tower, close beside him. There were shining ones on that ledge tending those controls, and there were other strange and massive mechanisms there too.

Flying spirals of ice climbed up inside the tower, spanning the great stone well with spidery bridges, joining icy galleries. In some of those galleries, Stark vaguely glimpsed rigid, gleaming figures like statues of ice, but he could not see them clearly as he was carried on.

He was being carried downward. He passed slits in the wall, and knew that the pallid lights he had seen through them were the moving bodies of the creatures as they went up and down these high-flung, icy bridges. He managed to turn his head to look down, and saw what was beneath him.

The well of the tower plunged down a good five hundred feet to bedrock, widening as it went. The web of ice-bridges and the spiral ways went down as well as up, and the creatures that carried him were moving smoothly along a transparent ribbon of ice no more than a yard in width, suspended over that terrible drop.

Stark was glad that he could not move just then. One instinctive start of horror would have thrown him and his bearers to the rock below, and would have carried Ciara with them.

Down and down, gliding in utter silence along the descending spiral ribbon. The great glooming crystal grew remote above him. Ice was solid now in the slots of the walls. He wondered if they had brought Balin this way.

There were other openings, wide arches like the one they had brought their captives through, and these gave Stark brief glimpses of broad avenues and unguessable buildings, shaped from the pellucid ice and flooded with the soft radiance that was like eerie moonlight.

At length, on what Stark took to be the third level of the city, the creatures bore him through one of these archways, into the streets beyond.

BELOW HIM NOW was the translucent thickness of ice that formed the floor of this level and the roof of the level beneath. He could see the blurred tops of delicate minarets, the clustering roofs that shone like chips of diamond.

Above him was an ice roof. Elfin spires rose toward it, delicate as needles. Lacy battlements and little domes, buildings star-shaped, wheel-shaped, the fantastic, lovely shapes of snow-crystals, frosted over with a sparkling foam of light.

The people of the city gathered along the way to watch, a living, shifting rainbow of amethyst and rose and green, against the pure blue-white. And there was no least whisper of sound anywhere.

For some distance they went through a geometric maze of streets. And then there was a cathedral-like building all arched and spired, standing in the center of a twelve-pointed plaza. Here they turned, and bore their captives in.

Stark saw a vaulted roof, very slim and high, etched with a glittering tracery that might have been carving of an alien sort, delicate as the weavings of spiders. The feet of his bearers were silent on the icy paving.

At the far end of the long vault sat seven of the shining ones in high seats marvellously shaped from the ice. And before them, grey-faced, shuddering with cold and not noticing it, drugged with a sick horror, stood Balin. He looked around once, and did not speak.

Stark was set on his feet, with Ciara beside him. He saw her face, and it was terrible to see the fear in her eyes, that had never shown fear before.

He himself was learning why men went mad beyond the Gates of Death.

Chill, dreadful fingers touched him expertly. A flash of pain drove down his spine, and he could stand again.

The seven who sat in the high seats were motionless, their bright tendrils stirring with infinite delicacy as though they studied the three humans who stood before them.

Stark thought he could feel a cold, soft fingering of his brain. It came to him that these creatures were probably telepaths. They lacked organs of speech, and yet they must have some efficient means of communications. Telepathy was not uncommon among the many races of the Solar System, and Stark had had experience with it before.

He forced his mind to relax. The alien impulse was instantly stronger. He sent out his own questing thought and felt it brush the edges of a consciousness so uttely foreign to his own that he knew he could never probe it, even had he had the skill.

He learned one thing—that the shining faceless ones looked upon him with equal horror and loathing. They recoiled from the unnatural human features, and most of all, most strongly, they abhorred the warmth of human flesh. Even the infinitesimal amount of heat radiated by their half-frozen human bodies caused the ice-folk discomfort.

Stark marshalled his imperfect abilities and projected a mental question to the seven.

“What do you want of us?”

The answer came back, faint and imperfect, as though the gap between their alien minds was almost too great to bridge. And the answer was one word.

“Freedom!”

Balin spoke suddenly. He voiced only a whisper, and yet the sound was shockingly loud in that crystal vault.

“They have asked me already. Tell them no, Stark! Tell them no!”

He looked at Ciara then, a look of murderous hatred. “If you turn them loose upon Kushat, I will kill you with my own hands before I die.”

Stark spoke again, silently, to the seven. “I do not understand.”

AGAIN the struggling, difficult thought. “We are the old race, the kings of the glacial ice. Once we held all the land beyond the mountains, outside the pass you call the Gates of Death.”

Stark had seen the ruins of the towers out on the moors. He knew how far their kingdom had extended.

“We controlled the ice, far outside the polar cap. Our towers blanketed the land with the dark force drawn from Mars itself, from the magnetic field of the planet. That radiation bars out heat, from the Sun, and even from the awful winds that blow warm from the south. So there was never any thaw. Our cities were many, and our race was great.

“Then came Ban Cruach, from the south…

“He waged a war against us. He learned the secret of the crystal globes, and learned how to reverse their force and use it against us. He, leading his army, destroyed our towers one by one, and drove us back…

“Mars needed water. The outer ice was melted, our lovely cities crumbled to nothing, so that creatures like Ban Cruach might have water! And our people died.

“We retreated at the last, to this our ancient polar citadel behind the Gates of Death. Even here, Ban Cruach followed. He destroyed even this tower once, at the time of the thaw. But this city is founded in polar ice—and only the upper levels were harmed. Even Ban Cruach could not touch the heart of the eternal polar cap of Mars!

“When he saw that he could not destroy us utterly, he set himself in death to guard the Gates of Death with his blazing sword, that we might never again reclaim our ancient dominion.

“That is what we mean when we ask for freedom. We ask that you take away the sword of Ban Cruach, so that we may once again go out through the Gates of Death!‘

Stark cried aloud, hoarsely, “No!”

He knew the barren deserts of the south, the wastes of red dust, the dead sea bottoms—the terrible thirst of Mars, growing greater with every year of the million that had passed since Ban Cruach locked the Gates of Death.

He knew the canals, the pitiful waterways that were all that stood between the people of Mars and extinction. He remembered the yearly release from death when the spring thaw brought the water rushing down from the north.

He thought of these cold creatures going forth, building again their great towers of stone, sheathing half a world in ice that would never melt. He thought of the people of Jekkara and Valkis and Barrakesh, of the countless cities of the south, watching for the flood that did not come, and falling at last to mingle their bodies with the blowing dust.

He said again, “No. Never.”

The distant thought-voice of the seven spoke, and this time the question was addressed to Ciara.

Stark saw her face. She did not know the Mars he knew, but she had memories of her own—the mountain-valleys of Mekh, the moors, the snowy gorges. She looked at the shining ones in their high seats, and said,

“If I take that sword, it will be to use it against you as Ban Cruach did!”

Stark knew that the seven had understood the thought behind her words. He felt that they were amused.

“The secret of that sword was lost a million years ago, the day Ban Cruach died. Neither you nor anyone now knows how to use it as he did. But the sword’s radiations of warmth still lock us here.

“We cannot approach that sword, for its vibrations of heat slay us if we do. But you warm-bodied ones can approach it. And you will do so, and take it from its place. One of you will take it!”

They were very sure of that.

“We can see, a little way, into your evil minds. Much we do not understand. But—the mind of the large man is full of the woman’s image, and the mind of the woman turns to him. Also, there is a link between the large man and the small man, less strong, but strong enough.”

The thought-voice of the seven finished, “The large man will take away the sword for us because he must—to save the other two.”

Ciara turned to Stark. “They cannot force you, Stark. Don’t let them. No matter what they do to me, don’t let them!”

Balin stared at her with a certain wonder. “You would die, to protect Kushat?”

“Not Kushat alone, though its people too are human,” she said, almost angrily. “There are my red wolves—a wild pack, but my own. And others.” She looked at Balin. “What do you say? Your life against the Norlands?”

Balin made an effort to lift his head as high as hers, and the red jewel flashed in his ear. He was a man crushed by the falling of his world, and terrified by what his mad passion had led him into, here beyond the Gates of Death. But he was not afraid to die.

He said so, and even Ciara knew that he spoke the truth.

But the seven were not dismayed. Stark knew that when their thought-voice whispered in his mind,

“It is not death alone you humans have to fear, but the manner of your dying. You shall see that, before you choose.”

SWIFTLY, SILENTLY, those of the ice-folk who had borne the captives into the city came up from behind, where they had stood withdrawn and waiting. And one of them bore a crystal rod like a sceptre, with a spark of ugly purple burning in the globed end.

Stark leaped to put himself between them and Ciara. He struck out, raging, and because he was almost as quick as they, he caught one of the slim luminous bodies between his hands.

The utter coldness of that alien flesh burned his hands as frost will burn. Even so, he clung on, snarling, and saw the tendrils writhe and stiffen as though in pain.

Then, from the crystal rod, a thread of darkness spun itself to touch his brain with silence, and the cold that lies between the worlds.

He had no memory of being carried once more through the shimmering streets of that elfin, evil city, back to the stupendous well of the tower, and up along the spiral path of ice that soared those dizzy hundreds of feet from bedrock to the glooming crystal globe. But when he again opened his eyes, he was lying on the wide stone ledge at ice-level.

Beside him was the arch that led outside. Close above his head was the control bank that he had seen before.

Ciara and Balin were there also, on the ledge. They leaned stiffly against the stone wall beside the control bank, and facing them was a squat, round mechanism from which projected a sort of wheel of crystal rods.

Their bodies were strangely rigid, but their eyes and minds were awake. Terribly awake. Stark saw their eyes, and his heart turned within him.

Ciara looked at him. She could not speak, but she had no need to. No matter what they do to me…

She had not feared the swordsmen of Kushat. She had not feared her red wolves, when He unmasked her in the square. She was afraid now. But she warned him, ordered him not to save her.

They cannot force you. Stark! Don’t let them.

And Balin, too, pleaded with him for Kushat.

They were not alone on the ledge. The ice-folk clustered there, and out upon the flying spiral pathway, on the narrow bridges and the spans of fragile ice, they stood in hundreds watching, eyeless, faceless, their bodies drawn in rainbow lines across the dimness of the shaft.

Stark’s mind could hear the silent edges of their laughter. Secret, knowing laughter, full of evil, full of triumph, and Stark was filled with a corroding terror.

He tried to move, to crawl toward Ciara standing like a carven image in her black mail. He could not.

Again her fierce, proud glance met his. And the silent laughter of the ice-folk echoed in his mind, and he thought it very strange that in this moment, now, he should realize that there had never been another woman like her on all of the worlds of the Sun.

The fear she felt was not for herself. It was for him.

Apart from the multitudes of the ice-folk, the group of seven stood upon the ledge. And now their thought-voice spoke to Stark, saying,

“Look about you. Behold the men who have come before you through the Gates of Death!”

Stark raised his eyes to where their slender fingers pointed, and saw the icy galleries around the tower, saw more clearly the icy statues in them that he had only glimpsed before.

MEN, set like images in the galleries. Men whose bodies were sheathed in a glittering mail of ice, sealing them forever. Warriors, nobles, fanatics and thieves—the wanderers of a million years who had dared to enter this forbidden valley, and had remained forever.

He saw their faces, their tortured eyes wide open, their features frozen in the agony of a slow and awful death.

“They refused us,” the seven whispered. They would not take away the sword. And so they died, as this woman and this man will die, unless you choose to save them.

“We will show you, human, how they died!”

One of the ice-folk bent and touched the squat, round mechanism that faced Balin and Ciara. Another shifted the pattern of control on the master-bank.

The wheel of crystal rods on that squat mechanism began to turn. The rods blurred, became a disc that spun faster and faster.

High above in the top of the tower the great globe brooded, shrouded in its cloud of shimmering darkness. The disc became a whirling blur. The glooming shadow of the globe deepened, coalesced. It began to lengthen and descend, stretching itself down toward the spinning disc.

The crystal rods of the mechanism drank the shadow in. And out of that spinning blur there came a subtle weaving of threads of darkness, a gossamer curtain winding around Ciara and Balin so that their outlines grew ghostly and the pallor of their flesh was as the pallor of snow at night.

And still Stark could not move.

The veil of darkness began to sparkle faintly. Stark watched it, watched the chill motes brighten, watched the tracery of frost whiten over Ciara’s mail, touch Balm’s dark hair with silver.

Frost. Bright, sparkling, beautiful, a halo of frost around their bodies. A dust of splintered diamond across their faces, an aureole of brittle light to crown their heads.

Frost. Flesh slowly hardening in marbly whiteness, as the cold slowly increased And yet their eyes still lived, and saw, and understood.

The thought-voice of the seven spoke again.

“You have only minutes now to decide! Their bodies cannot endure too much, and live again. Behold their eyes, and how they suffer!

“Only minutes, human! Take away the sword of Ban Cruach! Open for us the Gates of Death, and we will release these two, alive.”

Stark felt again the flashing stab of pain along his nerves, as one of the shining creatures moved behind him. Life and feeling came back into his limbs.

He struggled to his feet. The hundreds of the ice-folk on the bridges and galleries watched him in an eager silence.

He did not look at them. His eyes were on Ciara’s. And now, her eyes pleaded.

“Don’t, Stark! Don’t barter the life of the Norlands for me!”

The thought-voice beat at Stark, cutting into his mind with cruel urgency.

“Hurry, human! They are already beginning to die. Take away the sword, and let them live!”

Stark turned. He cried out, in a voice that made the icy bridges tremble:

“I will take the sword!”

He staggered out, then. Out through the archway, across the ice, toward the distant cairn that blocked the Gates of Death.

ACROSS THE GLOWING ICE OF the valley Stark went at a stumbling run that grew swifter and more sure as his cold-numbed body began to regain its functions. And behind him, pouring out of the tower to watch, came the shining ones.

They followed after him, gliding lightly. He could sense their excitement, the cold, strange ecstasy of triumph. He knew that already they were thinking of the great towers of stone rising again above the Norlands, the crystal cities still and beautiful under the ice, all vestige of the ugly citadels of man gone and forgotten.

The seven spoke once more, a warning.

“If you turn toward us with the sword, the woman and the man will die. And you will die as well. For neither you nor any other can now use the sword as a weapon of offense.”

Stark ran on. He was thinking then only of Ciara, with the frost-crystals gleaming on her marble flesh and her eyes full of mute torment.

The cairn loomed up ahead, dark and high. It seemed to Stark that the brooding figure of Ban Cruach watched him coming with those shadowed eyes beneath the rusty helm. The great sword blazed between those dead, frozen hands.

The ice-folk had slowed their forward rush. They stopped and waited, well back from the cairn.

Stark reached the edge of tumbled rock. He felt the first warm flare of the force-waves in his blood, and slowly the chill began to creep out from his bones. He climbed, scrambling upward over the rough stones of the cairn.

Abruptly, then, at Ban Cruach’s feet, he slipped and fell. For a second it seemed that he could not move.

His back was turned toward the ice-folk. His body was bent forward, and shielded so, his hands worked with feverish speed.

From his cloak he tore a strip of cloth. From the iron boss he took the glittering lens, the talisman of Ban Cruach. Stark laid the lens against his brow, and bound it on.

The remembered shock, the flood and sweep of memories that were not his own. The mind of Ban Cruach thundering its warning, its hard-won knowledge of an ancient, epic war …

He opened his own mind wide to receive those memories. Before he had fought against them. Now he knew that they were his one small chance in this swift gamble with death. Two things only of his own he kept firm in that staggering tide of another man’s memories. Two names—Ciara and Balin.

He rose up again. And now his face had a strange look, a curious duality. The features had not changed, but somehow the lines of the flesh had altered subtly, so that it was almost as though the old unconquerable king himself had risen again in battle.

He mounted the last step or two and stood before Ban Cruach. A shudder ran through him, a sort of gathering and settling of the flesh, as though Stark’s being had accepted the stranger within it. His eyes, cold and pale as the very ice that sheathed the valley, burned with a cruel light.

He reached and took the sword, out of the frozen hands of Ban Cruach.

As though it were his own, he knew the secret of the metal rings that bound its hilt, below the ball of crystal. The savage throb of the invisible radiation beat in his quickening flesh. He was warm again, his blood running swiftly, his muscles sure and strong. He touched the rings and turned them.

The fan-shaped aura of force that had closed the Gates of Death narrowed in, and as it narrowed it leaped up from the blade of the sword in a tongue of pale fire, faintly shimmering, made visible now by the full focus of its strength.

Stark felt the wave of horror bursting from the minds of the ice-folk as they perceived what he had done, And he laughed.

His bitter laughter rang harsh across the valley as he turned to face them, and he heard in his brain the shuddering, silent shriek that went up from all that gathered company…

“Ban Cruach! Ban Cruach has returned!”

They had touched his mind. They knew.

HE LAUGHED AGAIN, and swept the sword in a flashing arc, and watched the long bright blade of force strike out more terrible than steel, against the rainbow bodies of the shining ones.

They fell. Like flowers under a scythe they fell, and all across the ice the ones who were yet untouched turned about in their hundreds and fled back toward the tower.

Stark came leaping down the cairn, the talisman of Ban Cruach bound upon his brow, the sword of Ban Cruach blazing in his hand.

He swung that awful blade as he ran. The force-beam that sprang from it cut through the press of creatures fleeing before him, hampered by their own numbers as they crowded back through the archway.

He had only a few short seconds to do what he had to do.

Rushing with great strides across the ice, spurning the withered bodies of the dead… And then, from the glooming darkness that hovered around the tower of stone, the black cold beam struck down.

Like a coiling whip it lashed him. The deadly numbness invaded the cells of his flesh, ached in the marrow of his bones. The bright force of the sword battled the chill invaders, and a corrosive agony tore at Stark’s inner body where the antipathetic radiations waged war.

His steps faltered. He gave one hoarse cry of pain, and then his limbs failed and he went heavily to his knees.

Instinct only made him cling to the sword. Waves of blinding anguish racked him. The coiling lash of darkness encircled him, and its touch was the abysmal cold of outer space, striking deep into his heart.

Hold the sword close, hold it closer, like a shield. The pain is great, but I will not die unless I drop the sword.

Ban Cruach the mighty had fought this fight before.

Stark raised the sword again, close against his body. The fierce pulse of its brightness drove back the cold. Not far, for the freezing touch was very strong. But far enough so that he could rise again and stagger on.

The dark force of the tower writhed and licked about him. He could not escape it. He slashed it in a blind fury with the blazing sword, and where the forces met a flicker of lightning leaped in the air, but it would not be beaten back.

He screamed at it, a raging cat-cry that was all Stark, all primitive fury at the necessity of pain. And he forced himself to run, to drag his tortured body faster across the ice. Because Ciara is dying, because the dark cold wants me to stop…

The ice-folk jammed and surged against the archway, in a panic hurry to take refuge far below in their many-levelled city. He raged at them, too. They were part of the cold, part of the pain. Because of them Ciara and Balin were dying. He sent the blade of force lancing among them, his hatred rising full tide to join the hatred of Ban Cruach that lodged in his mind.

Stab and cut and slash with the long terrible beam of brightness. They fell and fell, the hideous shining folk, and Stark sent the light of Ban Cruach’s weapon sweeping through the tower itself, through the openings that were like windows in the stone.

Again and again, stabbing through those open slits as he ran. And suddenly the dark beam of force ceased to move. He tore out of it, and it did not follow him, remaining stationary as though fastened to the ice.

The battle of forces left his flesh. The pain was gone. He sped on to the tower.

He was close now. The withered bodies lay in heaps before the arch. The last of the ice-folk had forced their way inside.

Holding the sword level like a lance, Stark leaped in through the arch, into the tower.

THE SHINING ONES were dead where the destroying warmth had touched them. The flying spiral ribbons of ice were swept clean of them, the arching bridges and the galleries of that upper part of the tower.

They were dead along the ledge, under the control bank. They were dead across the mechanism that spun the frosty doom around Ciara and Balin. The whirling disc still hummed.

Below, in that stupendous well, the crowding ice-folk made a seething pattern of color on the narrow ways. But Stark turned his back on them and ran along the ledge, and in him was the heavy knowledge that he had come too late.

The frost had thickened around Ciara and Balin. It encrusted them like stiffened lace, and now their flesh was overlaid with a diamond shell of ice.

Surely they could not live!

He raised the sword to smite down at the whirring disc, to smash it, but there was no need. When the full force of that concentrated beam struck it, meeting the focus of shadow that it held, there was a violent flare of light and a shattering of crystal. The mechanism was silent.

The glooming veil was gone from around the ice-shelled man and woman. Stark forgot the creatures in the shaft below him. He turned the blazing sword full upon Ciara and Balin.

It would not affect the thin covering of ice. If the woman and the man were dead, it would not affect their flesh, any more than it had Ban Cruach’s. But if they lived, if there was still a spark, a flicker beneath that frozen mail, the radiation would touch their blood with warmth, start again the pulse of life in their bodies.

He waited, watching Ciara’s face. It was still as marble, and as white.

Something—instinct, or the warning mind of Ban Cruach that had learned a million years ago to beware the creatures of the ice—made him glance behind him.

Stealthy, swift and silent, up the winding ways they came. They had guessed that he had forgotten them in his anxiety. The sword was turned away from them now, and if they could take him from behind, stun him with the chill force of the sceptrelike rods they carried…

He slashed them with the sword. He saw the flickering beam go down and down the shaft, saw the bodies fall like drops of rain, rebounding here and there from the flying spans and carrying the living with them.

He thought of the many levels of the city. He thought of all the countless thousands that must inhabit them. He could hold them off in the shaft as long as he wished if he had no other need for the sword. But he knew that as soon as he turned his back they would be upon him again, and if he should once fall…

He could not spare a moment, or a chance.

He looked at Ciara, not knowing what to do, and it seemed to him that the sheathing frost had melted, just a little, around her face.

Desperately, he struck down again at the creatures in the shaft, and then the answer came to him.

He dropped the sword. The squat, round mechanism was beside him, with its broken crystal wheel. He picked it up.

It was heavy. It would have been heavy for two men to lift, but Stark was a driven man. Grunting, swaying with the effort, he lifted it and let it fall, out and down.

Like a thunderbolt it struck among those slender bridges, the spiderweb of icy strands that spanned the shaft. Stark watched it go, and listened to the brittle snapping of the ice, the final crashing of a million shards at the bottom far below.

He smiled, and turned again to Ciara, picking up the sword.

IT WAS HOURS LATER. Stark walked across the glowing ice of the valley, toward the cairn. The sword of Ban Cruach hung at his side. He had taken the talisman and replaced it in the boss, and he was himself again.

Ciara and Balin walked beside him. The color had come back into their faces, but faintly, and they were still weak enough to be glad of Stark’s hands to steady them.

At the foot of the cairn they stopped, and Stark mounted it alone.

He looked for a long moment into the face of Ban Cruach. Then he took the sword, and carefully turned the rings upon it so that the radiation spread out as it had before, to close the Gates of Death.

Almost reverently, he replaced the sword in Ban Cruach’s hands. Then he turned and went down over the tumbled stones.

The shimmering darkness brooded still over the distant tower. Underneath the ice, the elfin city still spread downward. The “shining ones would rebuild their bridges in the shaft, and go on as they had before, dreaming their cold dreams of ancient power.

But they would not go out through the Gates of Death. Ban Cruach in his rusty mail was still lord of the pass, the warder of the Norlands.

Stark said to the others, “Tell the story in Kushat. Tell it through the Norlands, the story of Ban Cruach and why he guards the Gates of Death. Men have forgotten. And they should not forget.”

They went out of the valley then, the two men and the woman. They did not speak again, and the way out through the pass seemed endless.

Some of Ciara’s chieftains met them at the mouth of the pass above Kushat. They had waited there, ashamed to return to the city without her, but not daring to go back into the pass again. They had seen the creatures of the valley, and they were still afraid.

They gave mounts to the three. They themselves walked behind Ciara, and their heads were low with shame.

They came into Kushat through the riven gate, and Stark went with Ciara to the King City, where she made Balin follow too.

“Your sister is there,” she said. “I have had her cared for.”

The city was quiet, with the sullen apathy that follows after battle. The men of Mekh cheered Ciara in the streets. She rode proudly, but Stark saw that her face was gaunt and strained.

He, too, was marked deep by what he had seen and done, beyond the Gates of Death.

They went up into the castle.

Thanis took Balin into her arms, and wept. She had lost her first wild fury, and she could look at Ciara now with a restrained hatred that had a tinge almost of admiration.

“You fought for Kushat,” she said, unwillingly, when she had heard the story. “For that, at least, I can thank you.”

She went to Stark then, and looked up at him. “Kushat, and my brother’s life…” She kissed him, and there were tears on her lips. But she turned to Ciara with a bitter smile.

“No one can hold him, any more than the wind can be held. You will learn that.”

She went out then with Balin, and left Stark and Ciara alone, in the chambers of the king.

CIARA SAID, “The little one is very shrewd.” She unbuckled the hauberk and let it fall, standing slim in her tunic of black leather, and walked to the tall windows that looked out upon the mountains. She leaned her head wearily against the stone.

“An evil day, an evil deed. And now I have Kushat to govern, with no reward of power from beyond the Gates of Death. How man can be misled!”

Stark poured wine from the flagon and brought it to her. She looked at him over the rim of the cup, with a certain wry amusement.

“The little one is shrewd, and she is right. I don’t know that I can be as wise as she… Will you stay with me, Stark, or will you go?”

He did not answer at once, and she asked him, “What hunger drives you, Stark? It is not conquest, as it was with me. What are you looking for that you cannot find?”

He thought back across the years, back to the beginning—to the boy N’Chaka who had once been happy with Old One and little Tika, in the blaze and thunder and bitter frosts of a valley in the Twilight Belt of Mercury. He remembered how all that had ended, under the guns of the miners—the men who were his own kind.

He shook his head. “I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.” He took her between his two hands, feeling the strength and the splendor of her, and it was oddly difficult to find words.

“I want to stay, Ciara. Now, this minute, I could promise that I would stay forever. But I know myself. You belong here, you will make Kushat your own. I don’t. Someday I will go.”

Ciara nodded. “My neck, also, was not made for chains, and one country was too little to hold me. Very well, Stark. Let it be so.”

She smiled, and let the wine-cup fall.

RETURN TO THE STARS

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.

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.

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."

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.

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!"

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."

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."

All the way to Canopus, Gordon spent his waking time in the bridge of the fast scout. Through the windows that were not really windows, he watched the star-groups rise up and change and fall behind. After the arid years on little Earth, he could not get enough of stars.

The titanic jumble of suns that was Hercules Cluster, the seat of power of those mighty barons who looked on star-kings as mere equals, dropped past them to the west. The vast mass of faintly glowing drift that was known as the Deneb Shoals, they skirted. They plunged on and now they were passing through the space where, that other time, the space-fleets of the Empire and its allies had fought out their final Armageddon with the League of the Dark Worlds.

Gordon looked and dreamed. Far, far off southward lay the sprawling blotch of deeper darkness that was the Cloud, from which the armadas of the Dark Worlds had poured in their prideful menace. He remembered Thallarna and he remembered Shorr Kan, the master of the League, and how he had surrendered to defeat.

"You think too much of past things and not enough of the present ones," said Korkhann, watching him shrewdly.

Gordon smiled. "If you know as much about me as I think you know, can you blame me? I was an impostor. I hardly knew what I was doing in that battle, but I was there, and who could forget that?"

"Power is a heady wine," said Korkhann. "You had it once, the power of a universe in your hand. Do you long for it again?"

"No," said Gordon, startled by the echo of Lianna's accusation. "I was scared to death of it when I had it."

"Were you, John Gordon?"

Before Gordon could frame an irritated answer to that, Korkhann had gone away from the bridge.

His irritation faded and was forgotten as, in the time that followed, the heart-worlds of the mighty Mid-Galactic Empire brightened far ahead.

The stunning blue-white flare of Canopus was arrogant in its hugeness and intensity. And as the scout rushed on, there came into view the planets that circled that truly royal sun. Gordon's eyes clung to one of those planets, a gray, cloud-wrapped sphere. Throon . . .

He was remembering how he had first seen it, amazed and bewildered by this future universe, playing a part for which he had no preparation, a pawn in the hands of cosmic political powers whose purposes he could not dream.

Was he anything more than that right now? Wasn't he brought here to Throon so that Korkhann might exploit his supposed influence with Jhal Arn, sovereign of the Empire? Yes, he thought, it's true. But it's not just for Fomalhaut policies, it's for Lianna and against whatever mysterious, menacing things was hatching out in the Marches that threatened her most immediately.

The planet rose up to meet him, its gray-green bulk immense, the sprawling continents starred with glittering metropoli that flared in the white sunlight. Then a mighty ocean, and then, far head, what his gaze leaped to meet, the dazzling radiance that almost blinded the eye, the Glass Mountains of smooth silicates flinging back the sunset light in shaking spears and fans and banners of glory. They went over that radiance, through it, and ahead of them there loomed the cluster of fairylike glass towers that was the greatest capital of the galaxy.

Over its starport, the traffic was of tremendous volume. Gordon had forgotten how many ships came and went to this center of the Empire. Clocked smoothly in by the director-computers, the bulky arrogant liners from Deneb and Aldebaran and Sol came down to the inport like a parade of giants, while the smaller craft poured like a cataract of shining midges. But their own craft, being official, skirted all this and descended toward the naval port, where the giant warships of the Empire loomed like dark thunderclouds above their docks.

An hour later, they stood in the huge building that was the seat of dynasty and the administrative center of the Empire.

Zarth Arn came to meet them, a tall figure, his dark face breaking into a smile and then becoming serious as he took Gordon's hand.

"I could wish your return to Throon had been on another occasion than this," he said. "Yes, my brother knows why you have come. You're not the first on this errand."

Korkhann asked quickly, "The others are worried about the Marches, Highness?"

Zarth Arn nodded. "They are. But that's to be talked of later. To hell with diplomacy, Gordon and I have some drinking to do!" He led Gordon to a smoothly gliding motowalk. It carried them on into another hall, a vast chamber whose glass walls were adorned with flattened reliefs of dark stars, burned-out cindery suns, ebon cosmic drift, and overpowering impression of gloom and majesty. Gordon remembered this somber magnificence, and he remembered also the equally splendid hall beyond it that seemed encompassed by the glow of a flaming nebula. The motowalk bore them upward on a smooth slant.

Everywhere, courtiers and chamberlains bowed deeply to Zarth Arn. It seemed to Gordon that they looked a little askance at him, walking familiarly with a prince of the Empire.

"Does it seem strange to you?" he asked Zarth Arn. "To walk with me, knowing that once we inhabited each other's bodies?"

Zarth Arn smiled. "Not to me. You must remember that I crossed many times before, and dwelt in many other bodies on those occasions. But I suspect it is very strange to you, indeed."

They came to Zarth Arn's chambers, that Gordon so well remembered, high-ceilinged and austerely white except for their silken hangings. The racks of thought-spools still stood at one side of the room. He went to the tall open windows and out onto the balcony that was like a small terrace jutting from the side of the huge, oblong palace. He looked again across Throon City.

It might have been that other time all over again, he thought. For Canopus was setting, flinging a long, level radiance across the fairylike towers of the metropolis, and the heaving green ocean, and the Glass Mountains that now were a rampart of dazzling glory.

Gordon stared bemused, until Zarth Arn's voice woke him from the spell.

"Do you find it the same, Gordon?" he asked, handing him a tall glass of the brown liquor called saqua.

"Not quite," muttered Gordon.

Zarth Arn understood. "Lianna was here that other time, wasn't she? I hadn't meant to ask yet, but now . . . tell me, what of you two?"

"We haven't quite quarreled," Gordon answered. "But we seem to go on being strangers, and . . . she seems to think it wasn't for her I came, but for . . . this."

And his gesture took in the whole vista of the magnificence of the great city, the flashing radiance of the mountains, the majesty of the starships rising from the distant starport.

They were interrupted by the opening of the door. The man who entered was tall and stalwart, dressed in black with a small blazing insignia on his chest. His eyes were level and searching as he came toward Gordon.

Gordon knew him. Jhal Arn, the elder brother of Zarth Arn, and the sovereign of the Mid-Galactic Empire.

"It is strange," said Jhal Arn. "You know me, of course, from that other time. But I see you . . . the physical you . . . for the first time."

He held out his hand. "Zarth has told me that this was the gesture of greeting in your time. You are welcome in Throon, John Gordon. You are very welcome."

The words were quiet and without emphasis, but the handgrip was strong.

"But more of this later," said Jhal Arn. "You've brought a problem to Throon. And not you alone. We have important visitors from some of the Empire's strongest allies, and they too are troubled."

He went over and looked thoughtfully out at the city, whose lights were coming on as the sunset faded into dusk. Two moons shone out in the twilit sky, one of them warm golden and the other one ghostly silver in hue.

"A whisper has gone through the galaxy," said Jhal Arn. "A murmur, a breath, a sourceless rumor. And it says that in the Marches of Outer Space there is a mystery and a danger. Nothing more than that. But the very vagueness of it has disturbed some who are high in the star-kingdoms, while others scoff at it as mere fancy."

"It wasn't fancy that we encountered at Teyn," said Gordon. "Korkhann can tell you . . ."

"Korkhann has already told me," said Jhal Arn. "I sent for him, straight after you two arrived. And . . . I don't like what I heard."

He shook his head. "Later on, tonight, a decision will have to be taken. It is one that could shatter the political fabric of the galaxy. And yet we must make it, knowing so little . . ." He broke off, and turned to leave, and at the door he turned round and gave Gordon a crooked smile. "You sat in my place once, for a little while, John Gordon. I tell you that it is still a painful place."

When he had left, Zarth Arn said, "I'll take you to the suite assigned to you and Korkhann. I saw that it was close to this one. We have much to talk about."

He parted from Gordon at the door of the suite. Gordon went in, and was surprised by the luxury of the big room he entered. By comparison Zarth Arn's was spartan. But Zarth Arn had always been more the austere scholar-scientist than anything else.

He noticed the back of a feathered head above a metal chair, and saw that Korkhann sat by the open window looking out at the flashing panorama of lights, the brilliant lights of Throon City and the distant lights of great star-liners coming down across the star-decked sky.

Gordon walked toward the window and around the chair, saying, "I don't like what I've been hearing, Korkhann. I . . ."

Then Gordon stopped, and suddenly he shouted.

"Korkhann!"

The feathered one sat in unnatural immobility. And his face, the beaked face and wise yellow eyes that Gordon had first tolerated and then come to like, was strangely stony. The eyes were as opaque as cold yellow jewels, and they had not the faintest flicker of expression in them.

Gordon gripped Korkhann with his hands, feeling the astonishing slightness and fragility of the body beneath the feathers.

"Korkhann, what's happened to you? Wake up . . ."

After a moment, there was something in the eyes . . . a passing ripple of awareness. And of agony. A damned soul looking out for a split second from a place of everlasting punishment might have such an expression.

Sweat stood on Gordon's forehead. He continued to shake Korkhann, to call his name. The agony reappeared in the eyes, it was as though there was a mighty straining of the mind behind those eyes, and then it was as though something snapped and Korkhann huddled in Gordon's hands, sick and shaking, his wings quivering wildly. Inarticulate whistling sounds came from his throat.

"What was it?" cried Gordon.

It was a minute before Korkhann could look up at him, and how now his eyes were wild.

"Something that I, and you, have experienced before. But worse. You remember how the Gray One at Teyn hammered us with the power of his mind?"

Gordon shivered. He was not likely ever to forget.

"Yes," whispered Korkhann. "Whatever they are, one of them is here. Here, I think, in this palace."

The imperial palace of Throon throbbed and glittered in the night. Out of hundreds of windows poured soft light and drifting music and the hum of many voices. The arrival of dignitaries of other star-kingdoms was occasion for a state ball, and in the great halls a brilliant throng feasted and drank. Nor was that throng all human. Scale and hide and feather brushed against silken garments. Faces humanoid but not human, eyes slitted and saucer-like and pupil-less gleamed in the light. Gargoyle shapes walked the dark gardens in which glowed great plantings of luminous flowers of Achernar.

As though in grim reminder that the Empire was not all a matter of pleasure-making, the music and hum of voices were drowned by a vast, thunderous bellowing as a full score of warships went up into the starry sky. The smaller scouts and phantoms had already screamed heavenward and now the great battle-cruisers lifted, dark bulks against the constellations, out-bound toward the Pleaiades and the big fleet-bases there.

Gordon had seen little of the festive part of the palace. He had walked with Zarth Arn behind Jhal Arn as the sovereign made an appearance there, and then they had come up here to the private chambers of Jhal Arn.

He had noted the curious gaze that the throng below had directed against himself. They were wondering, he knew, why an untitled Earthman should accompany an emperor.

He said now, "I feel I should have stayed with Korkhann. He was pretty badly shaken."

"My own guards are watching over him," said Jhal Arn. "He'll be here soon for the meeting. And there's someone else I've sent for, whom I think you'll remember, Gordon."

Presently a man entered the chambers. He wore the uniform of a captain in the imperial space-fleet, and he was a big, burly man with bristling black hair and a craggy, copper-colored face. At sight of him, Gordon leaped to his feet.

"Hull Burrel!"

The big officer looked at him puzzledly "I can't remember that we've met . . ."

Gordon sank back into his chair. Of course Hull didn't recognize him. To both his best friend and the woman he loved he was a stranger. He felt bitterness at the impossible situation he had put himself in when he came to this age in his own physical body.

"Captain Burrel," said Jhal Arn. "Do you remember that when the League of the Dark Worlds attacked the empire, and attempted assassination had already stricken me down, so that my brother acted as ruling regent in that crisis?"

A glow came onto Hull Burrel battered coppery face. "Am I likely to forget it, Highness? It was Prince Zarth Arn we followed when we smashed the League, in that last battle of Deneb!"

Jhal Arn went on. "When Shorr Kan sent the armadas of the League to attack us, he broadcast a galaxy-wide propaganda message. I want you to see a tape of part of that."

As Zarth Arn touched a button beside his chair, against an opposite wall appeared a sterovision picture of lifelike vividness. The picture was of a man speaking. Gordon tensed in his chair. The man was tall and broad-shouldered, his black hair clipped short, his eyes keen and flashing. His voice cut like a sword blade, and the whole impact of that ruthless, amoral, mocking personality came through even in this reproduction.

"Shorr Kan," whispered Gordon.

He was not likely to forget the dictator of the League, the utterly cynical, utterly capable leader with whom Gordon had struggled for the fact of kingdoms.

"Listen." said Jhal Arn.

And Gordon heard it again and seemed transported back to that terrible moment. Shorr Kan was saying, "The Empire's regent, Zarth Arn, is not really Zarth Arn at all . . . he is an impostor masquerading as Zarth Arn. Star-kings and barons, do not follow this imposter to defeat and doom!"

The sterovision scene vanished. Hull Burrel turned, looking puzzled, and said, "I remember that, Highness. His accusation was so ridiculous that no one paid any attention to it."

"The accusation was true." Jhal Arn said flatly.

Hull Burrel stared at his sovereign with incredulity written large on his face. He started to speak, then thought better of it. He looked at Zarth Arn.

Zarth Arn smiled. "Yes. Shorr Kan spoke the truth. Few know it, but in past years I used scientific means to exchange minds with men of other worlds and times. One such experiment was with the man beside you . . . John Gordon of Earth. It was Gordon, in my body, who was regent of the Empire at the moment of crisis. And Shorr Kan had found it out."

He touched a control again and said, "You'll remember that after the League fleet was smashed, the men of the Dark Worlds admitted defeat and asked for truce. This was their telestero message of surrender, which you've seen before."

Another scene flashed into existence against the wall, one that was etched forever in Gordon's memory. In a room of Shorr Kan's palace appeared a group of wild-looking men, and one of them spoke hoarsely.

"The Dark Worlds agree to surrender on your terms, Prince Zarth! Shorr Kan's tyranny is overthrown. When he refused to surrender, we rose in rebellion against him. I can prove that by letting you see him. He is dying."

The scene switched abruptly to another room of the palace. Behind a desk sat Shorr Kan. Men around him had their weapons trained on him, and his face was marble-white as he clutched at a blackened wound in his side. His dulled eyes cleared for a moment and he grinned weakly.

"You win," he said. "Devil of a way to end up, isn't it? But I'm not complaining. I had one life and used it to the limit. You're the same way, at bottom." His voice trailed to a whisper. "Maybe I'm a throwback to your world, Gordon? Born out of my time? Maybe . . ."

And he sprawled forward across his desk and lay still, and one of the grim-faced men bent to examine him and then said, "He's dead. Better for the Dark Worlds if he'd never been born."

The reproduced scene snapped out. After a moment of stunned silence, Hull Burrel spoke in a voice that echoed his stupefaction.

"I remember that. I couldn't understand what he meant by addressing Prince Zarth as 'Gordon.' None of us could." He swung around until his dazed eyes stared into Gordon's face. "Then you were the one who was with me in that struggle? You . . . the one who defeated Shorr Kan?"

Zarth Arn nodded. "It is so."

Gordon drew a long breath, and then he held out his hand and said, "Hello, Hull."

The Antarian . . . for Hull Burrel was a native of a world of Antares . . . continued to stare dumbly, then seized Gordon's hand and began to babble excitedly. He was cut short by the entrance of Korkhann.

To a question from Jhal Arn, Korkhann answered, "Yes, Highness, I am quite recovered."

Gordon doubted that. The yellow eyes were haunted, and there was a fear in the beaked face he had not seen there before.

"The palace has been searched and no trace of this mysterious attacker has been found," Jhal Arn was saying. "Tell us exactly what happened."

Korkhann's voice dropped to a whisper. "There's little I can tell. It was the same sensation of overwhelming mental impact I felt at Teyn, but stronger, more irresistible. I could not fight it this time, not even for a second. I knew nothing, then, until Gordon's shouting and shaking of me brought me back to consciousness. But . . . I believe that while I was held in that grip, my mind was being examined, all my memories and knowledge ransacked, by a telepath compared to whom I am as a child."

Jhal Arn leaned forward. "Tell me, when this power seized you, was there a sensation as of mental cold?"

Korkhann looked astonished. "How could you guess that, Highness?"

Jhal Arn did not answer, but between him and his brother flashed a look that was grim and somber.

A chamberlain entered the room, announcing dignitaries whom Jhal Arn greeted with formal protocol. Gordon, hearing the names of some and recognizing others, felt a sharp wonder.

No fewer than three star-kings had come to this secret meeting . . . young Sath Shamar of Polaris, the aging long-regent of Cassiopeia, and the dark, crafty-looking sovereign of the Kingdom of Cepheus. There were chancellors of two other kingdoms present, and also one of the mightiest of the powerful Hercules Barons, Jon Ollen. His domain stretched so far from the Cluster to the edge of the Marches that it was actually bigger than some of the smaller kingdoms.

He now looked like a worried man, his cadaverous face gloomy in expression. Gordon remembered his galactography well enough to realize that every realm represented here lay near the Marches of Outer Space.

Jhal Arn began without preamble. "You've all heard the rumors that certain of the counts of the Marches are preparing some mysterious and dangerous aggression. It threatens all of you but first it threatens Fomalhaut, which is why Korkhann and my friend John Gordon have come here."

Jhal Arn emphasized the word "friend," and the men who had ignored Gordon until this moment, glanced at him sharply.

Jhal Arn went on, "Tell them what happened at Teyn, Korkhann."

Korkhann told them. When he finished, there was a silence. Then young Sath Shamar said troubledly, "Of mysterious cowled strangers we have heard nothing. But lately the counts of the Marches have become highhanded with us at Polaris, and have threatened us with powers they say could destroy us."

The tight-faced ruler of Cepheus added nothing, but the old regent of Cassiopeia nodded confirmation. "There is something in the Marches . . . never have the counts been so insolent with us."

Korkhann looked at the baron and said softly, "You have something more than this, Jon Ollen? It seems to me that you are withholding something from us."

Jon Ollen's cadaverous face flushed dull red with anger and he exclaimed, "I will not have my mind read, telepath!"

"And how," asked Korkhann deprecatingly, "could I do that when you have kept a guard upon your thoughts since you entered this chamber?"

Jon Ollen said sullenly, "I don't want to hunt for trouble. My barony is close up against the Marches, closer than any of your domains. If there is danger, I am most vulnerable to it."

Jhal Arn's voice rang decisively. "You are an ally of the Empire. If danger attacks you, we come in with you at once. If you know anything, say it."

Jon Ollen looked undecided, worried, troubled. It was a minute before he spoke.

"I know but little, really. But . . . inside the Marches, not far from our frontier, is a world known as Aar. And mysterious things have happened that seem to focus on that world."

"What kind of things?"

"A merchant ship returned to my barony from the Marches, traveling on an insane course. Our cruisers could not understand its behavior. They ran it down and boarded it. Every man aboard it was raving mad. The automatic log-recorder showed that the ship had touched down last at Aar. Then another ship that passed near Aar sent off a distress call that was suddenly smothered. And that ship was never heard from again."

"What else?"

Jon Ollen's face lengthened. "There came to my court Count Cyn Cryver of the Marches. He said that certain scientific experiments had made Aar dangerous and suggested we order all ships to avoid it. But "suggested" is hardly the word . . . he ordered me to do this."

"It would seem," muttered Jhal Arn thoughtfully, "that Aar is at least one focal point of the mystery."

"We could send a squadron in there to find out quickly," said Zarth Arn.

"But what if there's nothing really there?" cried Jon Ollen. "The counts would hold me responsible for the incursion. You must understand my position."

"We understand it," Jhal Arn assured him. And to his brother, "No, Zarth. The baron is right. If there's nothing there we'd have angered the counts by an invasion of their domain, to the point of starting a border war all through the Marches. We'll slip a small unmarked scout into the Marches with a few men who can investigate the place. Captain Burrel, you can lead them."

Gordon spoke up for the first time in that meeting. "I will go with Hull. Look, I'm the only one except Korkhann, who's not fitted for this kind of mission, to have seen one of the counts' cryptic allies. At Teyn, remember."

"Why am I not fitted for such a mission?" Korkhann demanded, his feathers seeming to ruffle up with anger.

"Because no one else is so well fitted to be Princess Lianna's right-hand man, and she mustn't lose you," said Gordon soothingly.

"It's a risky thing," muttered Jon Ollen. "I beg of you one thing . . . if you are caught, please don't implicate me in this."

"Your concern for the safety of my friends is overpowering," said Jhal Arn acidly.

The baron disregarded the sarcasm. He got to his feet. "I shall return home at once. I don't want to be mixed up in this affair too much. Your Highnesses . . . gentlemen . . . good night."

When he had gone out, Sath Shamar uttered an oath. "It's what I'd have expected of him. In the battle with the Dark Worlds, when the other barons gave the galaxy an example of space-fighting it can never forget, he held back until sure that Shorr Kan was defeated."

Jhal Arn nodded. "But the strategic position of his domain makes him valuable as an ally, so we have to put up with his selfishness."

When the star-kings and chancellors had left, Jhal Arn looked a little sadly at Gordon.

"I wish you were not set on going, my friend. Did you come back to us, only to risk your life?"

Gordon saw Korkhann looking at him, and knew what was in his mind. He remembered Lianna's bitter farewell, her accusation that it was the danger and wild beauty of this wider universe that had drawn him back here, and not love for her. He stubbornly told himself it wasn't true.

"You have said yourself," he reminded Jhal Arn, "that this danger most threatens Fomalhaut. And whatever threatens Lianna is my affair."

He was not sure that Jhal Arn believed him, and he was quite sure that Korkhann did not believe him at all.

Three days later a very small ship lay at the naval starport of Throon. It was a phantom scout, with all the insignia removed. The small crew did not wear uniforms, nor did Hull Burrell, who was to captain it.

In the palace, before he left, Gordon had a final word from Zarth Arn.

"We hope you come back with information, John Gordon. But if you don't . . . then in thirty days three full Empire squadrons will head for that world of Aar."

Gordon was surprised and a little appalled. "But that could lead to war in the Marches. Your brother admitted it."

"There are worse things than a border war," Zarth Arn said somberly. "You must remember our history that you learned before. You remember Brenn Bir?"

The name rang in Gordon's memory. "Of course. Your remote ancestor, the founder of your dynasty . . . the leader who repelled the alien invasion from the Magellanic Clouds outside the galaxy."

"And who wrecked part of the galaxy doing it," Zarth Arn nodded. "We still have his records, archives that the galaxy knows nothing about. And some detail in the description you and Korkhann gave of the cowled stranger at Teyn made us look into those archives."

Gordon felt a terrifying surmise, and it was verified by Zarth Arn's next words.

"The records of Brenn Bir described the Magellanian aliens as having a mental power so terrific that no human or nonhuman could withstand it. Only by disrupting space and hurling them out of this dimension were those invaders defeated. And now . . . it seems that after all these thousands of years, they are coming back again!"

The Marches of Outer Space had been, originally, an area only vaguely delimited. Early galactographers had defined it as that part of the galaxy which lay between the eastern and southern kingdoms, and the edge of the island universe. For when, in the twenty-second century, the three inventions of the faster-than-light sub-spectrum rays, the Mass Control, and the stasis-force that cradled men's bodies so that they remained impervious to extreme speeds and accelerations . . . when these made interstellar travel possible and the human stock poured out from Earth to colonize the galaxy, it had been toward the bigger star-systems they had gone, not the rim. Millennia later, when distant systems had broken away from Earth government and formed independent kingdoms, hardy adventurers in those kingdoms had gone into the starry wilderness of the Marches, setting up small domains that often were limited to one star and one world.

These counts of the Marches, as they called themselves, had always been a tough, insolent breed. They owed allegiance to no star-king, though they had a nominal alliance with the Empire which prevented the other kingdoms from invading their small realms. The place had long been a focus of intrigue, a refuge for outlawed men, an irritation on the body politic of the galaxy. But each jealous star-king refused to let his rivals take over the Marches, and so the situation had perpetuated itself.

"And that" thought Gordon, "is too damned bad. If this anarchic star-jungle had been cleaned up, it wouldn't harbor such danger now." He wondered how many of the counts were in the conspiracy with Cyn Cryver. There had to be others, because Cyn Cryver alone could not provide enough ships for any significant action. If a significant action was what they had in mind.

The little phantom scout was well inside the Marches now, moving on a devious course. By interstellar standards, the phantom's speed was slow. Its defensive armament was almost nonexistent and its offensive weapons were nothing more than a few missiles. But it possessed a supreme advantage for such a stealthy mission as this one . . . the ability to disappear. That was why there were phantoms in the fleet of every kingdom.

"It'd be safer to dark-out," said Hull Burrel, frowning. "But then we'd be running blind ourselves, and I don't like doing that in this mess."

Gordon thought that if it was a mess, it was an impressive one. Scores of stars burned like great emerald and ruby and diamond lamps in the dark gloom. The radar screen showed shoals of drift between these star-systems, and here and there the Marches were rifted by great darkness, loops and lanes of cosmic dust.

He looked back the way they had come, at the Hercules Cluster that blazed like bright moths swarming thick about a lamp, at the far dimmed spark of Canopus. He hoped they would live to go back there. He looked ahead and his imagination leaped beyond the stars he could see to those out on the Rim, the spiral, outlying arms of stars that fringed the wheeling galaxy, and beyond which there was nothing until the distant Magellanic Clouds.

"It's too far," he said to Hull. "Zarth Arn must be wrong; there can't really be Magellanians in the Marches. If they had come they wouldn't have come as stealthy infiltrators, but in a great invasion."

Hull Burrel shook his head. "They came that way once before, so the histories say. And they got annihilated, when Brenn Bir used the Disrupter on them. They might try a different way, this time." The big Antarian captain added, "But I can't believe it, either. It was so long ago."

For a long time the little phantom threaded its way into the Marches, skirting great areas of drift that flowed like rivers through space, tacking and twisting its way around enormous ashen dark stars, swinging far wide of inhabited systems.

Finally there came a time when, peering at the viewer, Hull Burrel pointed out a small, bright orange star glittering far away.

"That's it. The sun of Aar."

Gordon looked. "And now?"

"Now we dark-out," grunted the Antarian. "And from here on it'll be cursed ticklish navigation."

He gave an order. An alarm rang through the ship. The big dark-out generators aft began droning loudly. At that moment all the viewer-screens and radar-screens went dark and blank.

Gordon had been in phantoms before, and had expected the phenomenon. The generators had created an aura of powerful force around the little ship, which force slightly refracted every light ray or radar beam that struck it. The phantom had become completely invisible both to eye and to radar, but by the same token those in it could see nothing outside. Navigation now must be by the special sub-spectrum radar by which the phantom could slowly feel a way forward.

In the time that followed, Gordon thought it was remarkably like a twentieth-century submarine feeling its way through ocean depths. There was the same feeling of blindness and semi-helplessness, the same dread of collision, in this case with some bit of drift the straining radar might not catch, and the same half-hysterical desire to see sunlight again. And the ordeal went on and on, the sweat standing out in fine beads on Hull Burrel's forehead as he jockeyed the little ship closer toward the single planet of the orange star.

Finally, Hull gave an order and the ship hung motionless. He turned his glistening face toward Gordon.

"We should be just above the surface of Aar, but that's all I can say. I hope to God we don't come out of dark-out right over our enemies' heads!"

Gordon shrugged. "Jon Ollen said there wasn't much on this world, that it was mostly wild."

"One thing I love is an optimist who has no direct responsibility," growled the Antarian. "All right. Dark-out off!"

The droning of generators died. Instantly there poured into the bridge through the viewer screens a flood of orange sunlight. They peered out tensely, blinking in the brilliance.

"I apologize, optimist," said Hull. "It couldn't be better."

The little ship hung level with the top foliage of a golden forest. The plants . . . Gordon could not think of them as trees, although they were that big . . . were thirty to forty feet high, graceful clusters of dark-green stems whose branches held masses of feathery golden-yellow leaves. They bore a remote but disquieting resemblance to the trees of Teyn and Gordon shivered, hoping it was not an omen. As far as the eye could reach, there was nothing but the roof of the forest glittering in the light of the orange sun.

"Take her down fast," ordered Hull. "We could just be ranged by radar up here."

The phantom dropped through the masses of lacy gold and landed in a grove of clustered stems, upon soft ground covered with a copper-colored brush that bore black fruits.

Gordon, peering fascinated through the viewer, suddenly shouted. "Something!"

The Antarian jumped to his side. "What?"

"It's gone now," said Gordon. "Something small, almost invisible, that darted away under the brush."

The other looked doubtful. "In the star-log, this world Aar is listed as uninhabited. An attempt was once made to colonize it but the colonists were driven away from it by dangerous conditions. This could be some formidable creature."

Gordon was doubtful. "It seemed too small."

"Nevertheless, we'd better have a look around before we go thrashing through these forests," the Antarian said decisively. He spoke to the crewmen in the bridge. "You and I will go out, Varren. Full armor."

Gordon shook his head. "I'll go with Varren. One of us has to stay to complete the mission if something happens to the other . . . and the one who stays had better be the one who can navigate the ship back out of here."

When Gordon and Varren stepped out of the ship they wore the suits that did double duty as space suits and defensive armor, complete with helmets. They carried guns.

Looking uncertainly around, Gordon began to feel a bit foolish. Nothing moved except the golden foliage high above, waving in the breeze. His helmet sound-pickup brought no sounds except the faint sounds of a forest.

"Where was this thing you saw?" asked Varren. His voice was very polite.

"Over this way," Gordon said. "I don't know . . . it could have been a leaf blowing . . ."

He suddenly stopped, looking upward. Twelve feet above the ground, fastened solidly inside a crotch of one of the trees, was a curious structure vaguely resembling a squirrel's summer nest. Except that this was no ragged thing of twigs and leaves but a solid little box of cut wood, with a door in its side.

"It was going toward this place," said Gordon. "Look."

Varren looked. He looked up for a long time and then he remarked quietly that he would be damned.

"I'm climbing up there to take a look," said Gordon. "If it's what I thought I saw, it won't be too dangerous. If not . . . cover me."

The climb would not have been difficult if it had not been for the clumsy suit. But he was sweating by the time he reached a crotch on which he could stand with his face level with the little box.

Gently, Gordon pushed at the little door. A faint snapping told of a tiny catch breaking. He continued to push but it was difficult . . . something, someone, was holding the door on the inside.

Then the resistance gave way, and Gordon looked inside. At first he could see nothing but a purple gloom. But the hot orange sunlight pouring in through the open door revealed detail as his eyes adjusted.

Those who had been trying to hold the door against him now cowered in terror at the far side of a little room. They were not much more than a foot high and they were quite human in shape. They were naked, one man, one woman, and the only strange thing about them apart from their size was the fact that their bodies were semitransparent, as translucent as plastic. He could see details of the wall-surface right through them.

They cowered, and Gordon stared, and then he heard the man speaking in a tiny voice. He could hardly hear, but it was not a language he knew.

After a long moment he slid back to the ground. He pointed upward and said to Varren, "Take a look. Maybe you can understand their language."

"Their what?" said Varren. He looked at Gordon as though he doubted his sanity. Then he too climbed up.

It was a long time before Varren came back down. When he did, he looked sick.

"I talked with them," he said, and then repeated that as though he didn't quite believe it. "I talked with them. Oh, yes, I could understand them. You see, a few thousand years ago they were our own people."

Gordon looked at him incredulously. "Those creatures? But . . ."

"The colonists," said Varren. "The ones Captain Burrel read about in the log, who were driven away from here by harmful conditions. They didn't all go away. Some had already become victims of the danger . . . a chemical constituent in either the air or the water here which, after a few generations, makes the human body evolve toward smallness."

Varren shook his head. "Poor little beggars. They couldn't tell me that but I could guess it from the few scraps of legend they did tell me. It's my guess that they mutated toward that semi-transparency as a camouflage defense against other creatures here."

Gordon shivered. There was beauty and wonder in the stars, but there was also horror.

"One thing I learned." Varren added. "They're terribly afraid of something out there in the west. I got that out of them, but no more."

When they went back to the ship, it was the last statement that interested Hull Burrel the most.

"It checks," he said. "We've been making a sweep with the sub-spectrum radar and it definitely showed large metal constructions several hundred miles to the west. On this world, that can only be the place we're looking for."

The Antarian thought for a little, then said decisively, "We'd never make that distance on foot. We'll have to wait until night and move the ship closer. If we hug the treetops, it might fool their radar."

Night on Aar was a heavy darkness, for this world had no moon. The phantom purred along over foliage glistening in the light of the stars, the scattered, lonesome stars of the Marches. Hull Burrel had the controls. Gordon stood quiet and watched through the viewer-window.

He thought he saw something, finally, something far ahead that glinted a dull reflection of the starlight. He started to speak, but Hull nodded.

"I caught it. We'll go down."

Gordon waited. Instead of going down at once, the little ship slipped onward, he supposed in search for a clear opening for descent into the forest.

He put his eye to the 'scope and peered. The glint of metal ahead sprang closer, and now he could see that the vague metal bulks were the buildings of a small city. There were domes, streets, walls. But there was not a single light there, and he could see that long ago the forest had come into this city's streets, and its ways were choked with foliage. Without doubt, this would have been a center of that tragically doomed colony of many centuries ago.

But there were a few hooded lights beyond the city. He touched the 'scope adjustment. He could see little, but it appeared that the old spaceport of the dead city had lain beyond it, a dark flat surface that the forest had not yet been able to overwhelm.

Gordon could just descry the glint and shape of a few ships parked there. They were small Class Five starships, not much bigger than the phantom scout. But there was one ship that had something queer about its outlines.

He turned to say so to Hull Burrel, and as his eye left the 'scope, he saw that their craft was still gliding straight forward and had not begun to descend.

Gordon exclaimed, "What are you doing? Do you figure to land at their front door?"

The Antarian did not answer. Gordon took hold of his arm. Hull Burrel yanked it free and knocked Gordon sprawling.

But in that moment, Gordon had seen Hull's face. It was stony, immobile, the eyes vacant of all emotion or perception. In a flash, Gordon knew.

He bunched himself and launched in a desperate spring at the Antarian. He knocked Hull away from the controls, but not before the Antarian had managed to give them a hard yank in his desperate attempt to cling to them. The phantom scout stood suddenly on its head and then dived straight down through the foliage.

Gordon felt the metal wall slap him across the temple, and then there was only darkness in which he fell and fell.

In the darkness Gordon heard the voice of a dead man speaking.

"So that's what he looks like," said the voice. "Well!"

Whose voice was it? Gordon's pain-racked brain could not remember. Then how did he know that it was the voice of a dead man? He did not know how he knew, but he was sure that the man who spoke had died.

He must open his eyes and see who it was that spoke after death. He made an effort. And with the effort, the pain and blackness rolled back across his mind more strongly than before and he did not know anything.

When he finally awoke, he felt that it was much later. He also felt that he had one of the biggest headaches in galactic history.

He did get his eyes open this time. He was in a small metal room with a solid metal door. There was a very tiny window with bars, and orange sunlight slanting through them.

Across the room from him, Hull Burrel sprawled like one dead.

Gordon got to his feet. for a while he stood perfectly still, hoping that he was not going to fall. Then he moved painfully to the Antarian and knelt beside him.

Hull had a bruise on his chin, but no other perceptible injuries. Yet he lay like a man in deathly coma, his coppery face no longer like the side of a rough rock but gone all slack and sagging. His eyes were closed, but his mouth was open and spittle dribbled from it.

Gordon took him by the shoulders and said, "Hull," and all of a sudden the living log turned into a maddened wildcat. Hull scrambled up, thrusting Gordon away, glaring at him as if he were an attacking enemy.

Gradually Hull's eyes cleared. His muscles relaxed. He stared stupidly at Gordon and said. "What's the devil's the matter with me?"

"You were slugged," said Gordon. "Not with a club, but with mental force. You were taken under control when we were nearing this place."

"This place?" Hull Burrel looked around, at the small, dusty metal room. "I don't remember," he muttered. "This looks like a prison."

Gordon nodded. "We're in the dead town of the old colonists. And you can't have a town without a jail."

His head ached. And more than his head was hurt. His pride was severely bruised. He said, "Hull, I was a sort of hero back in that other time, when I lived in Zarth Arn's body . . . wasn't I?"

Hull stared. "You were. But what . . ."

"I was going to be a hero all over again," said Gordon bitterly. "To show that I could be good as John Gordon, too. I've done fine haven't I? Throon, Lianna . . . they'll be proud of me."

"You weren't leading this mission, I was," growled Hull Burrel. "It was I who fell on my face." He went to the little window and looked at the street choked with golden foliage. He turned around, his brows knitted. "Mental force, you said. Then there must be one of those damned Magellanians here."

Gordon shrugged. "Who else could do a thing like that? We've been taken like children. They were sitting here waiting for us."

Hull suddenly shouted loudly. "Varren! Kano . . . Rann. . . are you here?"

There was no answer from the crewmen whose names he had shouted.

"Wherever they are, they're not within earshot," muttered Hull, plainly worried. "What next?"

"Next, we wait," said Gordon.

They waited for more than an hour. Then the door opened without warning. Outside it stood a supercilious young man whose black uniform bore in silver the design of the Mace.

"The Count Cyn Cryver will see you now," said the young man. "You can walk, or be dragged."

"All right, we'll walk," said Gordon. "I've enough headache already."

They walked out into the hot sunlight, and along a street that had once been wide. But time and weather had cracked its pavement and seeds had lodged to grow into the feathery trees, so that now it was more like following a path in a forest.

The corroded metal fronts of buildings showed through the foliage, silent and dead. And Gordon glimpsed a statue, the figure of a man in space dress, looking proudly down from the middle of the street. It would be, he thought, the star-captain who had led the ill-fated colonists here, in the long-ago centuries.

Look and be proud, star-captain. All that you wrought died long ago, and the last descendants of your people are the furtive little hunted things in the forest. Be proud, star-captain, be happy, for your eyes are blind and cannot see . . . .

They were taken into a building that looked like a municipal center. In a shadowy big hall, Count Cyn Cryver lounged in a chair at a table, drinking a tawny-colored liquor from a tall goblet. He wore black, with his insignia arrogant on his breast, and he looked at Gordon with amused eyes.

"You kicked up quite a stir at Teyn, but it seems we have you safe now," he said. He drank and put the goblet down. "A word of advice . . . never trust a coward. Like Jon Ollen, for instance."

A light burst upon Gordon. "Of course. That's why you were waiting for us. Jon Ollen is one of you."

Nothing else could explain it. The cadaverous baron was a traitor, and it was a safe assumption that the super-telepath who had come to Throon had been hidden in Jon Ollen's ship.

Hull Burrel demanded harshly, "Where are my men?"

Cyn Cryver smiled. "We had no need of your men or your ship, so they have been destroyed. As you will be destroyed when we no longer have any use for you."

Hull's fist clenched. He looked as though he was about to spring at Cyn Cryver, but the men with the stunners stepped forward.

"You will be examined later," Cyn Cryver said. "You are here now only because an old friend of yours wishes to see you. Tell their old friend that they are here, Bard."

One of the men went through a door at the rear of the hall. Gordon felt his skin crawl as he heard steps returning a moment later. He thought he knew what was coming.

He was wrong. It was not the cowled shape he feared that came into the hall. It was a man, broad-shouldered and tall, black-haired, tough-faced and keen-eyed, who stopped and look at them, smiling.

"By God," said Hull Burrel. "Shorr Kan!"

"Oh, no," said Gordon. "Can't you see, it's an impersonation they've got up . . . Lord knows why. We saw Shorr Kan die, killed by his own men."

The man who looked like Shorr Kan laughed. "You thought you saw that. But you were deceived, Gordon. And if I do say so myself, it was a neat piece of deception, considering how little time we had in which to dream it up."

And it was the voice of Shorr Kan. It was also the voice of a dead man speaking in the darkness and saying, "So that's what he looks like!"

He came closer and spoke earnestly, as one explaining something to a friend. "I was in the devil of a spot, thanks to you. Your damned Disruptor had shattered our fleet, and you were coming on toward the Dark Worlds, and my faithful subjects had got wind of it and were rioting in the streets. It was my neck, if I didn't think of something pretty quick."

He grinned. "It took you all in, didn't it? I still had a few faithful officers, and when they sent out that stereo-vision message of surrender, they could show you poor old Shorr Kan, with a big fake wound in his side, putting on a death scene I'm really proud of."

He burst into laughter. Stupefied, because he did not want to believe this and was beginning to do so, Gordon exclaimed, "Shorr Kan's body was found in the ruins of his palace!"

The other shrugged. "A body was found. The body of a dead rioter, who was my size and wore my uniform and decorations. Of course there wasn't too much left to identify because we fired the palace before we got the devil out of there . . . which little incendiary feat was blamed on my rioting subjects."

Gordon could no longer disbelieve. He stared at Shorr Kan at this man who had made himself master of the Dark Worlds and then, with their power, had almost shattered the star-kingdoms.

"And you've been hiding here in the Marches ever since?" he cried.

"Let me say instead that I've been making an extended visit to certain of my old friends here, among whom I number first the Count Cyn Cryver," said Shorr Kan. "When I heard you were among us, the Gordon whom I had never physically seen but whom I had known only too well . . . well, I had to give you a greeting for old time's sake."

The insolent brass of the man, his complete, mocking, light-hearted cynicism, had not changed.

Gordon said, between his teeth, "Why, I'm glad you saved your neck . . . even though it's a comedown from master of the League of the Dark Worlds, to hang onto the coattails of a Cyn Cryver. Still, it's better than dying."

Shorr Kan laughed, in honest enjoyment. "Did you hear that, Cyn? Do you wonder I admired this chap? Here he is at the end of his rope, and he tries to slap my face in a way that'll make bad blood between you and me!"

"Look at him, Hull," said Gordon mockingly. "Isn't he the one to put a brave face on? Lord of the Cloud, master of the Dark Worlds, almost the conqueror of the Empire itself . . . and now that he's reduced to skulking in the Marches and mixing up in filthy plots with ragtag one-world counts, he still stays cheerful."

Shorr Kan grinned, but Cyn Cryver got up and came over, looking at Gordon with livid hatred.

"I've heard enough of this," he said. "You've seen your old enemy, Shorr, and that's that. Bard, shackle them to those pillars. The Lord Susurr will come this evening and examine their minds for what they may contain of value, and after that they can be tossed on a dunghill."

"The Lord Susurr," repeated Gordon. "That would be one of your creepy little allies from Magellan, would it? Like the one we so sadly disappointed when we foxed you at Teyn?"

The rage left Cyn Cryver's face and he smiled in a deadly fashion as Gordon and Hull Burrel were shackled each to one of the slender ornamental metal pillars that ran in two rows down the hall.

"Even for you," said Cyn Cryver, "I had still a spark of pity, considering what will happen to you soon. But now it is gone." He turned his back on Gordon and told the young captain, "Guard them until the Lord Susurr comes. It will be some hours, for the lord likes not the sunlight."

Shorr Kan said brightly, "Well, lads, I fear it's goodbye now. I can see you're going to meet your end like men of courage. I've always said, 'Die like a man . . . if you can't find any way of avoiding it.' And I don't think you can avoid it."

Hull Burrel continued to swear, using profanity from a dozen different worlds. "That devil-born fox! All these years the whole galaxy has thought him dead, and now he bounces up here to laugh at us!"

"It's all history now," said Gordon. "Of more concern is what happens tonight, when the Lord Susurr who does not like the sunlight comes to visit us."

Hull stopped swearing and looked at him. "What's the creature going to do to us?"

"I imagine you could call it mental vivisection. I think it will take our minds and turn them inside out for every scrap of information we possess, and that it'll be only two mindless wrecks who are killed later."

Hull shivered. After a little silence he said, with an age-old hatred edging his voice, "Small wonder that Brenn Bir blasted the Magellanian invaders out of the universe, that other time."

No more was said, for there was nothing to say. Gordon stood against the pillar, with the shackles cutting his wrists behind him, and looked out through the open doorway as the long hours of afternoon crept away. The orange rays of sunlight that cut down through the interstices of the branches slanted and shifted. The breeze ruffled the leaves like autumn aspens on faraway, long-ago Earth. Beyond the trees the metal star-captain stood stiff and valiant, staring forever across his ruined city.

The guards lounged and shuffled in the doorway, glancing in now and then at the two captives. But Gordon could hear no sound of any activity from the dead city around them. What was going on here at Aar? That it was a focus for the intrigue that had hatched between the counts and Narath Teyn and the aliens from outside, he had no doubt. But it could not be a vital center of their plot, or the treacherous Jon Ollen would not have named the place and baited them to it.

Had Jon Ollen been setting a trap, not just for Hull Burrel and himself and their little ship, but for the main squadrons of the Empire? Jhal Arn had said that those squadrons would come here, if they did not return with information. If that was so, he and Hull had really messed it up. Lianna would be proud of him when she heard of it.

He thought of Lianna, and how they had parted at Fomalhaut. He did not want to think of her, and he made his mind go blank, and in a kind of stupor watched the rippling golden leaves outside. The time slipped slowly by.

The gold dulled. Gordon woke from his stupor to see that twilight had replaced the sunlight. And the guards in the doorway were now looking nervously along the street. As the dusk deepened they stepped farther away from the doorway, out into the street, as though they were doing everything possible to keep from being too near this room when the Lord Susurr came to do what he would do to the captives.

The hall was darkening, faster than the outside street. Gordon suddenly stiffened against his shackles. He heard a sound approaching.

Something was in the shadowy hall with them, something that came softly toward them from behind.

The skin between Gordon's shoulders crawled. He heard the sound shift position as whoever had stealthily entered moved softly around in front of them.

Then, close in front of him and silhouetted against the last twilight of the open doorway, he saw the profile of Shorr Kan.

"Listen, and keep your mouths shut," whispered Shorr Kan. "You'll be dead, and worse than dead, before morning comes unless I get you out of here. There's a chance I can do it."

"And why would you do a thing like that?" asked Gordon, keeping his voice well down.

"He loves us, that's why," muttered Hull Burrel. "He's so full of loving kindness that he just can't bear to see us hurt."

"Oh, God," whispered Shorr Kan, "give me a smart enemy rather than a stupid friend. Look, I may have only minutes before the cursed H'Harn comes."

"H'Harn?"

"What you call the Magellanians. The H'Harn is the name they call themselves. The Lord Susurr is one of them and when he comes here, you're through."

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

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

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

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

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

"What way?" asked Gordon.

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

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

"But you don't?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes, but . . ."

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

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

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

"What course?" demanded the Antarian.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gordon was beginning to see the light.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gordon lunged.

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

Gordon yelled, "Hull, help me!"

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

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

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

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

"You keep it. I'll keep the charge-chamber, and that way neither one of us can use it if the H'Harn takes control of . . ."

He never finished the sentence. A bolt as of black lightning, the cold paralyzing force that he had felt before at Teyn, exploded with terrifying silence in his brain. There was no shield against it, no possibility of struggle. It was like death. And simply, he died.

Just as simply and suddenly, he lived again. He was on the deck and his hands were around Shorr Kan's neck, throttling him, and Hull Burrel was pulling him away with such force that he could hear the sinews cracking in the Antarian's back and shoulders.

"Let go," Hull was snarling. "Let go or I'll have to knock you out . . ."

He let go. Shorr Kan rolled over and slid away, his mouth wide and his chest heaving. "All . . . all right, now," Gordon stammered. Feeling sick and shaken, he started to get up. But instead of releasing him, Hull's grip abruptly tightened. His knee slammed into Gordon's back and Gordon fell hard forward and his skull rang on the steel deck.

The H'Harn had shifted its attention once more. Glassy-eyed and blank as a statue, the Antarian left Gordon and flung himself on Shorr Kan and tried earnestly to kill him. Shorr Kan managed to fight him off until Gordon could collect his wits and help. Together they got Hull down and held him, and then between breaths he went flaccid and lay looking at them, his eyes wild but quite sane.

"Me, too?" he said, and Gordon nodded. Hull sat up and put his head in his hands. "Why doesn't it just kill us and get it over with?"

"It can't kill us," said Shorr Kan. "Not with mental force. It could destroy our minds, one by one, but I don't think it wants to be flying through the Marches with three mindless maniacs. It seems to be trying to get two of us to eliminate each other so it'll only have one left to control. I expect it needs someone to help it fly the ship."

He stared at the closed door aft. "If we try to get back at it we'll never make it . . ."

Gordon glanced up at the view-screen, where the thronging stars and shoals of drift crept with such deceptive slowness. This was one of the most crowded regions of the Marches, and Shorr Kan had worried about their velocity. Perhaps . . . .

With desperate inspiration, so desperate that he did not pause a second to think about it, Gordon sprang to the control-board. He began at random to hit the enigmatic controls, punching, twisting, turning them this way and that.

The little ship went crazy. It flashed toward a great belt of drift, then veered wildly off toward a blue sun and its planets, then zoomed zenithward toward a double-double whose four suns yawned before them like great portals of flame. Hull Burrel and Shorr Kan were tumbled against the bulkheads, crying out their surprise.

The H'Harn hidden aft must have been startled, too startled for the moment to stop him.

Hull scrambled toward him. "You'll wreck us!" he cried. "Are you daft? Get your hand off those controls, for God's sake!"

Gordon shoved him aside. "It's our only chance to deal with that creature. Get it scared. Both of you, keep hitting the controls at random. If we all three do that, it can't stop all of us."

Hull stared at the view-screen and the dizzying whirl of suns and worlds and deadly drift. "But we'll crash. It's suicide!"

Shorr Kan had seen Gordon's point. "He's right, Hull. It's risking a crash, but it's the only way." He pushed Hull toward the control-board. "Do it!"

Dazed and only half-understanding, Hull obeyed. The three of them pushed and pulled at things like madmen. The ship corkscrewed, stood on its tail. The protective grav-stasis operating inside the ship shielded them from the worst accelerative effects, but the sheer insanity of flying in this mad fashion was terrifying.

"All right back there!" Gordon yelled. "You can read my mind, you know what I'm saying! If we crash and die, you die with us! Try to take control of any of us again and we will crash!"

He waited for the icy mental bolt to hit him, but it did not. And after a minute there came into his mind a telepathic feeler that was cold, alien, and . . . fearful.

"Stop!" thought the hidden H'Harn. "We cannot survive if you continue this. Stop it!"

Sweat stood out on Gordon's forehead. He saw in the view-screen that the ship was now heading with all its tremendous speed toward the irregular sprawl of a filamentary nebula. That nebula would be rotten with drift.

He took his hands off the controls. "Let be," he told the others. "But be ready to hit them again any moment."

An anxious thought came from the H'Harn. It could see quite clearly, Gordon knew, what was ahead of them, using his eyes as a viewer. "You must change course or we will perish."

"Change course to where?" said Gordon harshly. "To the Magellanic sub-galaxy? That's where you were taking us with your hypnotic suggestions."

"It is necessary for me to return there," came the sullen thought. "But we can make a bargain."

"What kind of bargain?"

"This," thought the hidden H'Harn. "Set a course toward an uninhabited world I know of that is not too distant, and land there. You may then leave the ship."

Gordon looked at the others, Hull's coppery face sweating and haggard, Shorr Kan's a mask of grim doubt.

"I got the thought." Shorr Kan nodded. "You too, Hull? Anyway, I don't think much of it for a bargain. The thing will try to trick us somehow."

"No!" came the sharp thought.

Gordon paused, undecided. He could see no other arrangement that might even possibly work. The situation was fantastic. The three of them in the racing ship, each of them vulnerable to the colossal mental power of the creature back there, but only one at a time.

A thought crossed his mind but he instantly suppressed it. It was nothing he wanted to think about even for one moment. He look at the other two and said, "I think we've got to risk it."

"Very well," came the quick, eager thought of the H'Harn. A little too quick, a little too eager. "I will direct your companion how to fly the ship to that world."

"As you did before?" jeered Gordon. "Oh, no. You're not putting Hull under again and then using him in some underhanded fashion."

"But how then . . . ?"

Gordon said, "You will explain to Hull the controls of the ship, by direct telepathic statements. He will repeat aloud to us each of your explanations. If at any moment Hull shows the slightest sign of being under your mental dominance, we'll hit the controls and keep on hitting them until we crash."

There was a long pause before any answer came. Hull was looking agonizedly at the screen, and Gordon saw in it that the filamentary nebula was terribly close, winding across space like a gigantic ragged serpent. The serpent was diamonded with points of light that came and went, bigger fragments of drift that caught the light of distant suns and then lost it.

He thought grimly that if the H'Harn did not make up its mind soon, there was not going to be any escape for any of them.

That thought pressured the H'Harn into hasty decision, as Gordon had hoped it would.

"Very well, it is agreed. But your companion must take over at once."

Hull Burrel seated himself at the controls. Gordon and Shorr Kan leaned on either side of him, watching his face for any sign of change, watching the controls, and watching each other.

"It says this is the main lateral-thrust lever," said Hull, putting his hand on a little burnished lever. "Fifty degrees east . . . seven of these little vernier marks to the left."

The gigantic snake of the nebula slid out of their view in the screen.

"Zenith and nadir thrust control," muttered Hull, touching still another of the small levers.

The star-fields changed in the screen. The ship, still running at a velocity far higher than that of any craft ever known in the galaxy, moved again with apparent sanity through the jungle of suns on a course parallel with the rim of the galaxy, arrowing slightly zenithward in the starry swarm.

Gordon felt a tension that was now unbearable. He knew that the H'Harn did not mean to let them escape, that the thing had something up its sleeve, some trap that would close directly they landed . . . .

Don't think of that, he told himself. Keep your mind on Hull and what he's saying about the controls.

After what seemed an endless time, a yellow sun very like Sol lay dead ahead, and its disc grew as the ship flew on. Presently they could see the planet that swung around it.

"Is this the world?" Gordon demanded.

"Yes," came the H'Harn's answering thought.

The creature then gave Hull further telepathic instructions, and Hull said, "Deceleration control . . . two notches," and touched another lever.

Gordon watched Hull closely. If the H'Harn meant suddenly to seize their pilot, it was likely to be fairly soon. So far, Hull's face remained normal. But he knew how swiftly the change could come, to that inhuman stiffness. And if that happened . . . . Don't think about it. Don't think!

The planet rushed toward them, a green-and-gray globe, its surface hidden here and there by belts of cloud. Gordon caught the glint of a sea, far around its curve.

"Deceleration . . . two more notches, to reach stationary orbit," repeated Hull, voicing the instructions of the H'Harn.

And after a few minutes, "Needle centered on third dial . . . orbit stationary. Trim lever, four notches . . ."

He touched the trim lever and the ship rotated, then began descending tail first toward the surface of the planet. Hull Burrel said, "Descent control . . . three notches." They went down through streaming clouds, and a little muted bell rang somewhere.

"Friction alarm," said Hull. "Reduce descent velocity by two notches." He moved the lever under his hand.

They looked downward, through the aft view-screen, and saw the planet rising toward them. There was a green landscape, with forests and plains, and the silver ribbon of a river. Gordon heard the quick breathing of Shorr Kan and thought, He's as keyed up as I am . . . . think about Shorr Kan . . . think whether you can trust him . . .

"One-half notch less," said Hull, and moved the lever again.

They were a thousand feet above the forest when Gordon struck. He did it with the abrupt ferocity of a man who will not have a second chance and knows it. Hull Burrel's hand still held the lever. Gordon hit it and smashed it downward. The lever went wide open and there was a shrieking roar of air.

Hull shouted something and the next moment the tail of the ship hit the ground. Gordon went flying, with the sound of the ship's collapsing fabric loud in his ears. He caromed into the control panel and the breath went out of him. There was a long falling cadence of grindings and crackings and metallic screamings. Gradually they ceased. By the time Gordon got his head cleared and his breath back, the ship was quite still, canted drunkenly over on one side.

Shorr Kan was picking himself up, streaming blood from a cut on the forehead. Hull Burrel lay on the deck, limp and motionless. In a panic, Gordon pawed at him, rolled him over and felt for the pulse in his throat.

"Dead?" asked Shorr Kan. He had opened his tunic and was tearing a strip of cloth from his undergarment.

Still gasping for breath, Gordon poked up one of Hull's eyelids and shook his head. "Unconscious. I don't think he's badly hurt."

Shorr Kan pressed the bit of cloth over the gash on his head. It rapidly became crimson. "Lucky," he said. "We could all be dead." He glared at Gordon. "Why in the name of hell did you crash us . . . ?"

He suddenly fell silent. Shorr Kan had one of the quickest minds that Gordon had ever met. He was now looking at the after part of the alien ship.

The bulkheads back there were crumpled like tin. The tail of the descending ship had taken the full force of the impact. Shorr Kan turned again to Gordon, with an arctic light in his black eyes.

He whispered, "Do you get anything now?"

Gordon too had been listening, straining not only with his ears but with his mind.

"Nothing," he said. "Not the faintest flicker. I think the H'Harn must have died in the landing."

"It would pretty well have to be dead, the way the ship is wrecked back there," said Shorr Kan. "Of course. That's what you were trying to do, kill the H'Harn in the landing."

Gordon nodded. He felt horribly shaky, a reaction from the ordeal of mental battle.

"It was never going to let us walk away free," he said. "That was sure. I took a chance on getting it first."

Shorr Kan refolded the sopping cloth. He nodded, and the gesture made him wince. "I'll say for you, Gordon, you have the courage of your convictions. But I think you were right. I think it would have blasted our minds . . . or at least two of our minds . . . before it let any of us go free. To coin a phrase, we know too much."

"Yes," said Gordon. "I only wish we knew more."

Hull Burrel remained unconscious so long that Gordon was beginning to worry. Finally he came around, grumbling that every bone in his body was broken, then adding that it was worth it to be rid of the H'Harn. He looked at Gordon with narrowed, appraising eyes.

"I'm not sure I'd have had the nerve to risk it," he said.

"You're a spaceman," Gordon said. "You know too well what might have happened." He nodded to the crumpled hull plates. "Drag your fractures over here and give us a hand."

Hull laughed and shook his head, and came. It took them a long time to lever the plates wide enough so that they could edge through, but was no other way out . . . the lock was hopelessly jammed . . . and the impact had already done most of the work for them. They climbed out at last into warm yellow sunshine and dropped to the green-turfed ground.

Gordon looked around wonderingly. This world, or at least this portion of it, had a startling similarity to Earth. The men stood at the edge of a green forest, and not far from them the forest thinned and they had glimpses of a rolling plain. The sky was blue, the sunshine golden, the air sweet and full of the dry fragrance of leaves and grasses. It was true that the individual shrubs, trees, and plants he saw were quite unlike terrestrial ones in detail, but the overall resemblance to a scene in the temperate zone of Earth was very great.

Hull Burrel had other thoughts. He was frowning gloomily at the wreck of the ship that had brought them so far across the void.

"That one will never fly again," he said.

"Even if it was undamaged, you couldn't handle it," said Gordon. "It was only through the H'Harn that you managed."

Hull nodded. "So here we are, without a ship, on an uninhabited world."

Gordon knew what he meant. Stranded.

"But is it uninhabited?" said Shorr Kan. The cut had now ceased to bleed. "I know the H'Harn said it was, but those creatures are the fathers of lies. Just before we crashed I thought I saw a distant something that might be a town."

"Mm," said Gordon uneasily. "If this world is inhabited, and the H'Harn was making for it, it's extremely likely to be one of the nonhuman worlds in this part of the Marches that follow Narath Teyn . . . and the counts."

Shorr Kan said, "I've considered that. I think we had better reconnoiter, and I think we had better be blasted careful about how we show ourselves." He pointed. "The town was off there somewhere."

They started along the edge of the forest, keeping a little way back within the trees for cover. The green plain out beyond them remained empty, rolling away to the horizon. There were a few odd birds and small animals in the forest, making small sounds, and the wind rustled the trees in a familiar way. But there was a quietness here that Gordon did not like. He handed the charge-chamber back to Hull.

"Put it back in the stunner," he said. "It isn't much, but it's something."

"What I don't understand," Hull said, while he did that, "is the why of it. Why did the H'Harn direct us into his ship by mental influence and then take us back with it to the Magellanic Clouds? What use would we be to it?"

"You and I would be no use at all," said Short Kan. "It dawns on me that the thing didn't just want a copilot. I think it wanted Gordon."

"Good Lord," said Gordon, and stared at him. In the stress of the moment he had not thought that far, but he knew what Shorr Kan was driving at. He broke out in a cold sweat. "But how would it . . . of course, it's attention was aroused when we killed the other H'Harn and started to escape. It would undoubtedly have probed our minds then, even though we were not conscious of it. That's how it came to be hidden in the ship."

"So . . . it probed your mind," said Hull. "What is there about you that would make it want you so badly?"

Shorr Kan smiled ironically. "Tell him, Gordon."

"Look, Hull," Gordon said. "You learned about me so recently, at Throon, that you haven't yet realized the implications of what you learned. The Emperor himself told you how I . . . that is to say, my mind . . . was in possession of the body of Prince Zarth Arn at the time of the star-king's great war against the League."

Hull said irritably, "I'm not likely to forget that. How it was really you who led the Empire fleet, and used the . . ."

He stopped abruptly. His mouth was still open and he forgot to close it.

"Exactly," said Gordon. "It was I, and not Zarth Arn, who used the Empire's secret weapon, the Disruptor."

"The Disruptor," said Shorr Kan, sharpening the point, "which was used by the Empire thousands of years ago, to repel the H'Harn when they first tried to invade this galaxy."

Hull closed his mouth and opened his eyes wider, looking at Gordon. "Well, of course. If the H'Harn could get their hands . . . or whatever they use in place of them . . . on anyone who knows the secret of the Disruptor, which only the Empire's royal family are supposed to know, they'd be awfully happy. Yes, I see. But . . ."

"I suggest," said Shorr Kan, "that you defer further discussion and take a look out there."

The edge of his voice cut them silent. They peered out of the trees at the great plain.

Miles out from the forest, and far away to their left, a group of specks moved across the surface of the plain. At first Gordon thought they were running game animals. But there was something wrong about their gait and pace and the way that they rose and fell a little above the ground.

The group swept along, not coming any nearer to the forest but heading in a straight line in the direction that Gordon thought of as north. As they passed by, he could see them more clearly. And he did not like what he saw.

The creatures were neither running nor flying, but doing a little of both. They were stubby-winged avian bipeds, much bigger than Korkhann's people, and lacking the civilized amenity of feathers. They had remained closer to the reptile; the equivalent, say, of the pterodactyl. Wings and body were leathery smooth, a gray or tan in color, and their heads were hideously quasi-human, with bulging skulls above long cruel beaks that seemed to have teeth in them. As with Korkhann's folk, the wings served also as arms, with powerful clawed hands.

Gordon got the impression that those hands were carrying weapons.

The yellow sunshine poured down, and a little breeze ruffled the green foliage of the trees around them, and it was all so much like a June day on Earth that Gordon could hardly believe he stood upon the planet of a distant star.

That was what made the winged bipeds out there so frightening. It was like encountering these grotesqueries in Ohio or Iowa.

"They're Qhallas," said Shorr Kan. "When Naath Teyn came to Aar to confer with Cyn Cryver, he brought a motley lot of his nonhumans along . . . and there were two of these brutes among them."

The men crouched and watched. The nightmarish group went on, looking neither right nor left, heading straight north. They became distant dots and vanished.

Shorr Kan shaded his eyes squinting. "There . . . in the distance," he said.

They could just see another group of flying, racing specks. They too were heading north.

In the same direction the men were taking. Not, Gordon thought, a comforting idea.

"At any rate," Shorr Kan said, "it confirms my belief that I saw a town of some kind. Probably a landing field there as well." He frowned, his eyes abstracted but very keen. "I think there'll be some of the count's ships arriving here soon, and the Qhallas are going to meet them. I think that this is part of the gathering of Narath's inhuman clans."

Something tightened painfully in Gordon's belly. "Gathering . . . for what?"

"For the long-planned attack," said Shorr Kan quietly, "by the counts of the Marches and Narath's hordes, on Fomalhaut."

Gordon sprang to his feet. He set his hands around Shorr Kan's neck. He was shaking, and his eyes were ferocious.

"Attack on Fomalhaut? You knew this and you didn't tell me?"

Shorr Kan's face remained calm. So did his voice, though it was difficult enough to get it out from between Gordon's throttling hands.

"Has there been one minute since I helped you escape from Aar when we didn't have all the trouble we could handle without borrowing more?"

His gaze met Gordon's steadily, and Gordon let go. But he remained tense, gripped by a terrible fear. And with the fear came an overpowering sense of guilt. He should never have left Fomalhaut, and the Princess Lianna.

He had known, from the time when Narath trapped them on Teyn, that this attack was inevitable. He should have stayed by her, to do what he could. She had reproached him once that he loved adventure more than he did her, and had been angry with her. But perhaps she had told the truth.

"How soon?" he asked. His voice was unsteady, so that he scarcely recognized it. He was aware that Hull was talking also, and that he looked agitated, but he could not spare attention for anything but Shorr Kan's answer.

And Shorr Kan shrugged. "As soon as the combined forces are ready . . . whenever that may be. Cyn Cryver didn't tell me all his plans. But the ships of the counts will go as a fighting escort for transports carrying the hordes of Narath Teyn."

"I see," said Gordon, and clenched his hands hard and forced himself to think. Panic now was not going to help either Lianna or himself. "What part are the H'Harn going to play in this?"

Shorr Kan shook his head. "I can't answer that. Cyn Cryver was very secretive about his relations with the H'Harn." He paused, and then said soberly, "My own feeling is that the H'Harn are using Cyn Cryver and all the others as cats'-paws, in some fashion. As, of course, I had planned to do myself."

"Have you ever played straight with anyone in your whole life?" demanded Hull Burrel.

Shorr Kan nodded. "Oh, yes. Often. In fact, I never use deceit unless there's something to be gained by it."

Hull made a sound of disgust. Gordon hardly heard them. He was walking back and forth, his mind whirling.

"We've got to get back to Fomalhaut," he said.

"That," said Shorr Kan, "will not be easy. The people of this world do not have space travel. You saw them. They're a pretty squalid lot."

Gordon's face set and tightened. "You said that some of the counts' ships would likely land here soon, to take off these Qhallas for the campaign?"

"Ah," said Shorr Kan. "I think I see what's in your mind. We'll steal one of those ships when they come and take off to warn Fomalhaut Good God, man. Be sensible!"

Hull said, "He's a blackhearted rascal, but he's right, John Gordon. Those winged devils will be swarming where the ships land."

"All right," said Gordon. "All right. The fact still remains. We need a ship. Tell me how we get it."

Hull's big coppery face reflected nothing but baffled anger and distress. But Shorr Kan said, after a minute, "There is one way it just might be done."

Both Gordon and Hull kept quiet, afraid to break the tenuous thread of hope. Shorr Kan stood biting his lip and thinking. They waited. Suddenly Shorr Kan said to Gordon, "Suppose we swing it. Suppose we get to Fomalhaut. If I know the Princess Lianna, she'll want to hang me at the earliest possible moment."

Gordon answered, "I'll see to it that she doesn't."

That was a large promise. Shorr Kan smiled, with a certain unpleasant humor.

"Can you guarantee that?" he demanded. "Can you guarantee that if she doesn't, someone else . . . say the emperor . . . won't do it for her?"

It was no good lying and Gordon knew it, much as he wanted to. "No, I can't guarantee it. But I'm almost sure that, if you've earned it, I have enough influence to save your neck."

"Almost is cold comfort," said Shorr Kan. "However . . ." He studied Gordon for a moment, and Gordon knew that he was mentally going over all the alternatives, checking them swiftly once more before he committed himself. Finally he shrugged and said, "It'll have to do. Will you give me your word of honor that you'll do everything in your power to save me from execution or punishment?"

"Yes," said Gordon, "If you get us to Fomalhaut, I'll do that."

Shorr Kan considered. "I'll accept that. If I hadn't known from the past that you're a bit stupid about always keeping your word, I wouldn't trust you. As it is, I do."

Hull Burrel gave a grunt. Gordon ignored him and asked quickly, "Now . . . how do we get away from here?"

Shorr Kan's black eyes sparkled. "There's only one possible way and that's the ships of the counts that will be coming to pick up the Qhalla warriors."

"But you said yourself we could never capture a ship . . . ."

Shorr Kan grinned. "That's right. But I have a certain talent for these things, and I've thought of a way."

He talked rapidly. "Listen. I helped you escape from Aar, and together we killed the H'Harn Susurr there. But nobody on Aar, none of the counts, really knows what happened. All they know is that a H'Harn was found dead, the two prisoners-you and Hull Burrel-were missing, and that I also was missing."

"What are you getting at?" demanded Hull.

"This," said Shorr Kan. "Suppose I reappear here on the Qhalla world. Suppose I tell the counts, when they come, that it was you two who killed the H'Harn, and that when you escaped you took me along as a captive?"

"Would they believe that?" asked Gordon. "Wouldn't they want to know where we are and how you got away from us?"

"Ah, but that's the beauty of my idea," said Shorr Kan. "I'd have the two of you right with me, you see . . . your wrists bound, me covering you with the stunner. I'd tell them that when you wrecked the ship on this world, I turned the tables on you and overpowered you, and how could they doubt it with the proof right before their eyes? Isn't it ingenious?"

Hull Burell let out a sound that was like a roar. He jumped for Shorr Kan, got him between his hands, and started trying to break him in two.

"Hull, stop it!" Gordon cried.

The Antarian turned a flaming, raging face toward him. "Stop it? You heard the bastard, didn't you? He's the same Shorr Kan as ever!"

Shorr Kan was a strong man but the big Antarian shook him like a terrier shaking a rat. "He's got a beautiful idea, surely. He'll march us in as prisoners, and since his escape didn't work he'll claim he never tried it, and he'll throw us to the wolves!"

"Wait a minute," said Gordon, pulling at Burrel's arm. "Let him go. Too much depends on this, Hull! Let's talk about it." But the seeds of suspicion were flourishing in Gordon's own mind, and he looked very coldly at Shorr Kan, as the latter stepped quickly back and away from Hull's reluctantly opened hands.

"It does," said Gordon, "sound exactly like the kind of clever double cross you've always been good at."

"Doesn't it, though," said Shorr Kan, and smiled. "And I'll have to admit that I considered doing it just that way."

Gordon watched him narrowly. "But you changed your mind?"

"Yes, Gordon, I did." There was an odd note of patience in his voice now, as though he were explaining something to a very small child. "I've told you this before and I'll repeat it again. I could stay with the counts and deceive them all down the line, but I cannot deceive the H'Harn, and one stray thought would be the end of me. So I prefer to take my chances at Fomalhaut. It's simple arithmetic."

"With you, my friend," said Gordon sourly, "nothing is simple. That's why I find this difficult to believe . . . because it is simple."

"Then let's find something else to pitch it on," said Shorr Kan brightly. "Friendship, for example. I've always rather liked you, Gordon. I've said so in the past. Doesn't that count for anything?"

"Oh, my God," said Hull Burrel softly. "Here's the biggest scoundrel in the galaxy, and he asks you to believe in him because he likes you. Let me kill him, John Gordon."

"I'm tempted," Gordon said. "But wait a bit." He paced up and down, trying to force himself to think clearly against the doubts and the agonizing apprehension that filled his mind. Finally he said, "It comes down to one thing. The only starships that will be coming to this world are the counts' ships. And this is the only possible way we could hope to get one of those ships. We have to gamble, Hull. Give him the stunner."

Hull Burrel eyed him incredulously.

Gordon said, "If you can think of another way, tell me."

Hull stood a moment with his head down like an angry buffalo. Then he swore and handed the weapon to Shorr Kan.

Instantly Shorr Kan leveled the stunner at them.

"Now you are my captives," he said, smiling. "Hull was absolutely right, I am going to turn you over as prisoners to the counts."

Hull's fury went quite beyond reason. He rushed forward bellowing, in the face of the stunner, his hands raised for a killing blow.

Shorr Kan stepped agilely aside and let him blunder past. Then he laughed, a laugh of pure and wicked delight.

"Look at him," he said. "Isn't he lovely?" Hull had turned around and was standing uncertainly, his big hands swinging, staring in dumb amazement as Shorr Kan laughed again. "Sorry, Hull, I had to do it. You were so sure. I didn't have the heart to disappoint you." He tossed the stunner in the air, caught it again expertly, and shoved it into his belt. "Come along now. Before we encounter anyone, human or Qhalla, I'll have to bind your hands, but no need for that yet."

He gave Hull a friendly clap on the back. Hull turned dusky purple, but Gordon could not help grinning a little.

They started out across the rolling plain, headed northward in the direction in which the grotesque Qhalla bands had been hurrying. The sun sank down across the sky, and then as a rosy sunset darkened into twilight, there was a distant flashing and a rolling crack of thunder, thrice repeated in the clear evening, and they saw three shining starships come down.

Two hours later, they stood in the darkness of night and watched a scene that might have been lifted straight out of hell.

Red-flaring torches illuminated the crowded streets of what was less a town than a planless huddle of huts and shanties and ramshackle warehouses dumped haphazardly beside a ford of the river. The Qhallas were not civilized enough to need anything more than a meeting place and marketplace, and it was not a very big one. But it was thronged now with thousands of the winged bipeds, shuffling in the dusty lanes with such a press of bodies that the hut walls creaked at their shoulders. The shaking red light picked out their leather wings and glistening reptilian eyes. Their hoarse voices made an incessant squawking din. They made Gordon think of a horde of demons, and they stank beyond belief.

The focus of all this big crowd was the three starships that rested on the plain outside the wretched town. Two of them were big cargo ships whose gleaming sides loomed up far beyond the torchlight, into the darkness. The third ship was much smaller, a fast little cruiser. The Qhalla horde milled between the town and the two bigger ships.

"Transports," said Shorr Kan. "The smaller cruiser will be one of the counts directing his end of the operation."

Hull Burrell said contemptuously, "That mob couldn't do much against a modern star-world."

"Ah, but this is only part of it, a very small part," said Shorr Kan. "All through the Marches, on wild worlds like this, the same sort of gathering will be going on. All the nonhuman peoples will answer the call of Narath Teyn."

Remembering how the Gerrn had idolized him, Gordon had no doubt of that.

"The counts' fighting ships will take on Fomalhaut's navy," Shorr Kan added. "While they are engaged, the massed transports will go through and land these hordes for a direct assault on the capital."

The words conjured up a nightmare vision in Gordon's mind, and he felt again an agony of guilt for having left Lianna.

"The Empire is the ally of Fomalhaut," said Hull Burrel. "They'll have something to say about it."

"But this will be a surprise. By the time an Empire fleet can get there, Narath Teyn may sit on the throne of Fomalhaut. It won't be easy then to unseat him."

Shorr Kan did not go on to voice the inevitable corollary, though it was in all their minds . . . that Lianna might not then be alive to reclaim her throne, leaving Narath Teyn as the sole and rightful heir.

Gordon demanded harshly, "Are we just going to stand here and talk about it?"

Shorr Kan looked thoughtfully down from the low hill where they were hidden, above the town.

"If I take you two in as prisoners, I can convince whatever official of the counts is in charge that I'm still Cyn Cryver's ally. But there's another problem." He indicated the milling, squawking, stinking Qhallas. "The way they look, and from what I've heard of them, they'd tear us to pieces before we ever reached the ships."

"On that I believe you," said Hull. "They're a wild lot anyway, and they're worked up now to the point of madness."

Shorr Kan shrugged. "No use asking for a sticky end like that. We'll just have to wait until we see a better chance of getting through. But I'd better bind your hands now. When the chance does come, we'll have to move fast."

Gordon submitted to having his hands bound behind his back, though the prospect of being helpless among the Qhallas was not one he relished. He consoled himself with the realization that his hands wouldn't do him any good anyway. But Hull Burrel flatly refused.

"Oh, for God's sake," snarled Gordon. "What do you want to do, sit here and die?"

"I think we'll do that anyway," he muttered, looking at the Qhallas. But he put his hands behind him and let Shorr Kan tie them.

Then they sat in the grass and waited, hoping for some way to open for them to the ships.

The blazing stars of the Marches looked down from the sky. The wind brought the sound of hoarse shouting from where the torches flickered. Gordon smelled the pungent smell of the warm grasses on which they sat, and it was so familiar that it startled him.

Then he remembered. Long ago, when he was still John Gordon of New York, he had visited a friend who lived in the Ohio countryside. They had sat at night in a summer-warm meadow, and there had been fireflies, and the smell of the sun-scorched grasses had been just the same.

Gordon felt a sudden shuddering pang of disorientation. Who was he and what was he doing here, in this wild strange place? The sweet grass smell tortured him with longing to be home, on his own familiar world, where the beasts of the field did not speak with the voices of nightmare, nor form themselves into uncouth armies; where there were no H'Harn and the stars were a long way off, and life held neither splendor nor gut-wrenching, soul-destroying fear.

But then a memory came to him. A memory of Lianna. His moment of hysteria passed. He knew that only one thing mattered now; he must live long enough to get to Fomalhaut with the warning.

Shorr Kan suddenly stood up. "There!" he said, gesturing toward the Qhalla town.

Gordon and Hull also stood up. Two men-two human men-had emerged from the milling crowd of Qhallas. They stood a little apart from the throng, as though they wanted air.

"One of them wears the insignia of the Mace," said Shorr Kan. "An aide or vassal of Cyn Cryver. We'll have to take this chance. Get going!"

He gave Gordon and Hull a hard shove, and they started down the grassy slope, Shorr Kan coming behind them with the stunner leveled at their backs.

"Hurry, damn it," snarled Shorr Kan. "Before they go back to the ship."

They staggered and stumbled down the slope. The light was bad and their bound hands made them clumsy. Now Gordon saw that the two men were turning around as though to go back through the swarming Qhallas to the ships.

Shorr Kan shouted, a loud call. The two men turned. And the uproar of the Qhallas quieted suddenly as they also turned to see.

"Run!" said Shorr Kan.

They ran, toward the two men. But the Qhallas had started running also, toward the strangers, their wings half-spread. They brandished weapons and their toothed beaks uttered barking noises of anger.

Shorr Kan triggered his stunner. The foremost Qhallas fell and rolled. The others held back for a moment.

The two men were staring in amazement. Now, by the torchlight, Gordon could make out their faces. One of them, who wore the emblem of the Mace, was a compact, stocky man with a dark, tight face. The other was younger, taller, and much less sure of himself.

Shorr Kan shouted at them. "Hold off your pets! I'm an ally of Cyn Cryver, bringing in prisoners."

Rather doubtfully, the older man turned and barked something at the Qhallas in their own harsh tongue. They began to gabble between themselves, confused and a little disconcerted by the stunner. The three went past them and pulled up, Gordon and Hull panting, in front of Cyn Cryver's men.

To the proud and haughty one, the man apparently in command, Shorr Kan demanded, "What is your name?"

"I am the Count Obd Doll," answered the stocky man, and stared at Shorr Kan as though he could not believe what he saw. "You . . . you are Shorr Kan. You disappeared from Aar with the Empire captives . . ."

"These same two," said Shorr Kan, "and not from choice, I assure you. They took me as a hostage. Fortunately, they crashed their ship not far from here and in the confusion I was able to turn the tables on them."

"Why didn't you kill them?" asked Obd Doll. "Why bring them here?"

"Because Cyn Cryver wants them alive. Especially alive and able to talk. Where is he?"

Hesitantly, Obd Doll answered, "At Teyn."

Shorr Kan nodded. "Of course. The gathering place of the horde. Take us there at once."

"But," said Obd Doll, "I am on orders here." He went on with other objections, and Gordon sweated in an agony of impatience. The count appeared to be not too bright, and consequently unable to adjust to, or evaluate, a set of unexpected circumstances.

"Besides," said the count, sticking his jaw out farther in a show of strength, "how am I to know . . . ?"

Shorr Kan's face darkened and his voice sank to a kind of tigerish purring.

"Little man," he said, "these two captives may hold the key to the whole campaign. Cyn Cryver is waiting for them. Just how long do you think it wise to keep him waiting?"

Obd Doll looked shaken. "Well," he said. "Well, in that case, yes, of course. May I suggest, sir . . . call the Count Cyn Cryver from our cruiser . . . ."

So far, so good, thought Gordon . . . but it was just a little late. The Qhallas had got over their first shock and settled their confusion. They wanted the prisoners to play with, and they were closing in.

Shorr Kan had made a good try. But it was not much of an epitaph for them.

Only it seemed that Obd Doll had also made up his mind. He roared at the Qhallas, obviously ordering them to stop. Apparently they had some rudiments of discipline, for they fell back a little, and Obd Doll said hurriedly, "We had better go to the cruiser at once. These Qhallas . . . savage . . . unreliable . . . hate all humans except Narath Teyn . . . ."

It came to Gordon that the man was worried about his own skin. He didn't blame him. Narath Teyn might have calmed the Qhallas' bloodlust, but not these two men of the Marches. In fact, the younger one practically invited attack, staring with unconcealed loathing at the bird-things, and he reeked so of fear that even Gordon could smell it.

They began to move toward the cruiser. The Qhallas pressed after them, hopping, shuffling, flapping, edging a little closer with every step. They squawked among themselves, their unlovely voices edged with mounting anger. Their eyes were bright with brainless fury, watching their prey move closer to sanctuary. They had a simple desire to tear these man-creatures into small pieces and peck at them like robins at chunks of suet. Gordon thought that their shaky discipline was not going to hold out another ten paces. And now the reek of his own fear was acrid in his nostrils.

The younger of the two men had frankly given way to panic. He drew a small gray egg out of his pocket and said in a high voice, "I'd better use the numb-gas."

"No!" said Obd Doll. "Put that thing away, you idiot. We could numb a few but the others would be on us in a minute. Just move on, we're almost there."

The men staggered, buffeted by stubby wings, grabbed at by wicked hands. Obd Doll kept up a barrage of orders and Gordon guessed that he was reminding them of their allegiance to Narath Teyn and their duty to obey, disperse, and load themselves into the transports. Whatever he said, it stopped their making up their minds to take the prisoners, at least until the men had reached the cruiser. The air lock door slammed shut on the horde outside, and Obd Doll mopped his brow with his hand, which was visibly shaking.

"A difficult lot to handle," he said. "Without Narath Teyn around, it's not a job I care for."

"You did well," said Shorr Kan. "Now call Teyn at once, and inform the Count Cyn Cryver that I have recovered the captives and will bring them to him there at once."

The ring of authority in his voice was such that Obd Doll all but saluted, "At once." Then he looked at Gordon and Hull Burrel, oppressed by a fresh doubt. "What'll we do with them? We have no brig . . . this is a dispatch and command cruiser . . . ."

"Put them in one of the air locks," said Shorr Kan. "Take all the spacesuits out of the lock first. Then if they want to break out into space, they're welcome."

He laughed. Obd Doll laughed. The younger man laughed. Gordon did not laugh, and neither did Hull Burrel. They looked at Shorr Kan, but Shorr Kan's back was turned and he was already on his way, a man with important matters to attend to, a man in a hurry with no time to spare for two dupes he had deceived for his own purposes. Maybe.

Hull started to curse, but smothered it. They were shoved along by Obd Doll's men. toward an air lock on the other side of the cruiser. They were kept waiting until the helmets and suits were taken out of the lock, and then were thrust into the small coffinlike chamber. The inner door closed hermetically upon them, with a soft hissing sound that was very like mocking laughter.

Hull Burrel looked heavily at the immovable door. "Neat," he said. "They've got us nicely cooped up, and any time they decide to execute us, all they have to do is use the remote control to open the outer door of this lock." There was a manual control as well, almost suicidally handy. They carefully avoided leaning on it.

Gordon shook his head. "They won't do that. You heard Shorr Kan tell them that Cyn Cryver wants us alive."

"Yes, I heard him," said Hull. "I also know we're the only living beings who can tell the truth about how he got away from Aar. Of course, if he's really on our side, that's not important. But if he isn't . . . I don't think he'd want Cyn Cryver to hear it. Because of course the H'Harn would move in and examine him. I think he'd just blow us out into space and say we did it ourselves, two loyal Empire men choosing death before dishonor." Hull's face was set and very hard. "Do you honestly believe Shorr Kan is on your side, John Gordon?"

"Yes. Not out of nobility, but because we're his own best chance."

Hull remained standing for a time, frowning at Gordon. Then he sat down on the floor and leaned wearily against the bulkhead. "I wish," he said, "I had your simple faith."

The cruiser throbbed and hummed, flying through the Marches at highest speed. To Gordon, prisoned with the Antarian in the lock, it seemed to have been flying thus for interminable period. Several times the inner door had been opened and a scant ration of food and water thrust in to them by armed and careful men. But nothing else had happened, and they had not seen Shorr Kan again.

Gordon began increasingly to share Hull Burrel's skepticism about the reliability of Shorr Kan as an ally. So much so, that each time he heard the sound of a lock door opening he looked quickly at the outer one to see if this was not the moment that Hull had predicted, when they two would be catapulted on a blast of decompressed air into space and eternal silence. So far, it had always been the inner door that opened.

So far.

Agonized worry about Lianna and his own gnawing sense of guilt added to Gordon's personal torment.

"Gordon, I understand, but will you please shut up?" flared Hull Burrel finally. "There's not a damn thing we can do about it now, and you're getting on my nerves."

Gordon's own temper flared, but he refrained from uttering the words that came to his tongue. Instead he shut his jaw hard and went and sat with his back against the wall of the lock chamber . . . a posture that had now become practically permanent . . . and thought what the hell of a man of action he had turned out to be.

A thin, almost undetectable odor roused him from his brooding. It was pungent, unfamiliar, and it had to be coming into the lock from the air-vent connected with the main life-support system of the ship.

Gordon jumped up and approached the vent and sniffed. And that was the last thing he remembered before he fell on his face on the hard deck and never even felt the impact.

He awoke vaguely to a thin hissing noise and the sensation of being shaken. Somebody was calling his name.

"Gordon! Gordon, wake up!"

The somebody sounded urgent. There was a tickling in Gordon's nostrils. He shook his head and coughed, trying to get away from it, and the effort caused him to open his eyes.

Shorr Kan was bending over him, holding a small tube that hissed and tickled as it released gas into Gordon's mouth and nose.

"Oxygen," said Shorr Kan. "It should clear the cobwebs. You've got to come out of it, Gordon. I need you."

Gordon still felt remarkably stupid, but his mind was beginning to function again.

"Gas . . . from the air duct," he mumbled. "Knocked me out . . ."

Shorr Kan nodded. "Yes. Numb-gas. I managed to slip some canisters of it out of the ship's armory and drop them into the main air-supply of the life-support system."

Gordon stumbled up to his feet, hanging on to Shorr Kan for support. "The officers . . . the crew . . . ?"

"Out like lights," said Shorr Kan, grinning. "Of course, I thoughtfully put on a spacesuit beforehand, and then vented and replaced the air supply before I took it off. Feeling better?"

"I'm all right."

"Good The officers and crew are sleeping like babies, but they won't sleep much longer. I need your help to secure them, and I need Hull to pilot the ship while we're doing it. I've got the cruiser on automatic now, but the Marches are a risky place for that."

He went over to Hull, who was still sprawled unconscious on the deck, and held the oxygen tube under his nose. Then he looked up at Gordon and showed his teeth in a smile.

"Didn't I tell you I'd get you free?"

"You did." Gordon shook his head, which ached blindingly. "And you have. I congratulate you. The only trouble is, my head is going to fall off from being saved."

When Hull Burrel opened his eyes and saw Shorr Kan bending over him, his reaction was almost comically instinctive. He blinked once, and then put up his big hands and closed them around Shorr Kan's throat. But he was still weak as a kitten. Shorr Kan slapped his hands away and stood up.

"A grateful pair you two are," he said.

Gordon helped the Antarian to his feet, speaking urgently as he did so, explaining. He wasn't sure how much Hull understood until he said, "The ship's on autopilot, and you're needed in the bridge."

First and last a spaceman, Hull pulled himself together by main force, forgetting everything else.

"On auto-pilot? Here in the Marches?" he thrust Gordon aside and went with violent, if unsteady, haste out of the lock and down the companionway to the bridge.

Shorr Kan took a roll of tough wire from stores, and then he and Gordon set to work securing the officers and men.

Obd Doll, who lay in his own small cabin, was the last of them, and when they had him bound Shorr Kan looked thoughtfully down at him.

"I think I'll bring him round now with oxygen," he said. "He'd know the schedule that Cyn Cryver and Narath Teyn have set up for the attack on Fomalhaut, and that's something we've got to know."

"What," said Gordon, "if he won't talk?"

Shorr Kan smiled. "I think I can persuade him. You go on up to the bridge. You're the high-minded type and you'd only get in my way."

Gordon hesitated. It sounded like torture to him. But he thought of Lianna and what could be going to happen to her, and hardened his heart. He turned and went out of the cabin.

When he entered the bridge, Hull Burrel spoke without turning from the controls.

"I've laid as direct a course as possible for Fomalhaut. It'll take us too close to Teyn for comfort."

Gordon peered at the viewplate. The little cruiser was edging along the coast of a gigantic cloud of glowing dust, whose minute particles were so excited by the radiation of the stars drowned in it that it looked like a great mass of flame.

To Gordon, it seemed that the ship was merely crawling. He tried to contain his impatience. He also tried not to think of what Shorr Kan was doing.

After a while Shorr Kan came into the bridge. He took one look at Gordon's face and said seriously, "Could you hear the cries all the way up here?"

Gordon started for the door. "What did you do to him?"

Shorr Kan caught his arm. "I wouldn't go down there, Gordon. Not unless you . . ."

"Not unless I what?"

Shorr Kan's brows went up and his eyes laughed at Gordon. "Unless you want to be frightfully disappointed. Obd Doll has nothing worse the matter with him than a severe case of fright."

"You mean," said Gordon skeptically, "that he talked just because you threatened him?"

Shorr Kan nodded. "He did. You see the value of a reputation of ruthlessness. He believed I'd do exactly what I said I would, and so he told me all he knew without my having to do it. We'd soon find out if he lied, so I think he told the truth."

"When does the fleet leave Teyn?" Gordon asked.

"Obd Doll couldn't narrow that down too definitely. He said it would depend on when the last contingents of nonhumans came in . . . and they've been coming in, from all over the Marches, in answer to Narath Teyn's summons."

The words evoked in Gordon's mind a swift, ominous vision . . . of those alien hordes from worlds that had no human tradition at all, the scaled ones, the winged ones, the hairy ones, streaming through the Marches to foregather for an assault on a great star-kingdom. Yes, they would come at the call of Narath Teyn. Narath was mad. Gordon was sure of that. But there was some quality in him that had made him a leader of not-men such as the galaxy had never seen before.

"But from what Obd Doll told me of the forces that have already gathered," Shorr Kan was saying, "I'd hazard a guess that they'll leave Teyn very soon, probably in the next few days, on their way to Fomalhaut."

"What about the H'Harn," asked Hull Burrel. "Where do they come into this?"

Shorr Kan shook his head. "Obd Doll swears he doesn't know. The H'Harn have no fleet in this galaxy. He says that only Cyn Cryver and one or two others know what part, if any, the H'Harn will play."

Gordon, desperate and tense, tried to clear his mind of emotion and think calmly.

"Hull, will the communication equipment of this ship reach as far as Fomalhaut?" he asked.

Hull Burrel went into the little communications room behind the bridge. After a few minutes he came out again.

"It'll reach, but the power is so limited it would have to be audio only, not telestereo."

Shorr Kan said sharply, "You're planning to warn Fomalhaut by communicator?"

"Of course," said Gordon. "You must see it yourself . . . the time element, and the very strong possibility that we won't make it to Fomalhaut."

"Before you leap to the transmitter, think of this. Teyn and the Count's fleet are between us and Fomalhaut. They will be bound to pick up our transmission. They'll have fast cruisers after us at once . . . ."

Gordon made a brusque gesture. "We'll just have to take our chances. Fomalhaut has got to be warned."

"You didn't let me finish," said Shorr Kan. "The counts are liable to hit Fomalhaut right away, before any strong defenses can be organized. In their position, that is what I would do."

Gordon had not thought of that possibility. He was racked by doubt.

Hull said, "I'm with Gordon. Warn them, and gamble. The counts, praise be, have neither your guts nor your gall."

"I am touched," said Shorr Kan softly. "But what about us?"

"Take your chances, as Gordon said."

"What chances? They'll have us cut off within minutes after they pick up our transmission."

"I have an idea about that," said Hull.

He touched a control. On the big chartplate a sectional chart of the whole region of the Marches slid into view.

"All right," said Shorr Kan. "Look here."

Even Gordon, unused to reading the charts, could see when Shorr Kan pointed out their relative position that they could hardly hope to get past the fleet at Teyn once it was alerted. Not even by a miracle.

But Hull put his finger on a massive swarm of red flecks-a great reef, as it were, marked in the color of danger. The reef lay equally between them and Fomalhaut, one curving wing of it reaching out almost to Teyn.

"We could take a short-cut," Hull said, "through here."

Shorr Kan stared at him astonished. "Through the Broken Stars?" Then he uttered a short laugh. "I revise my opinion of you, Hull."

"What," asked Gordon, "are the Broken Stars?"

Hull said, "Did you ever stop to think why the Marches of Outer Space are such a mess of debris?"

"I haven't had very much time to consider cosmic origins."

"The scientists tell us," said the Antarian, "that long ago two fairly large star-clusters were on a collision course. When they met, of course the looser parts of the swarms simply went through each other with only a minimum of actual hits. But even those few were enough to strew debris all along the Marches.

"However, in each cluster there was a much tighter, denser core of stars, and those high-density cores collided. The result was terrific. Stars tore each other up in such a high incidence of collisions that they formed a spinning mess of half-stars, bits of stars, shattered planets, whole planets . . . you name it. Scarcely anyone ever risks going into that jungle, but at least two scientific survey ships have in the past crossed through it. If they had a chance, so do we." As a sort of afterthought he added, "I don't have to tell you how thin it is."

Gordon said, "Take it."

"Do I have a vote?" asked Shorr Kan.

With one voice, Hull and Gordon answered, "No."

Shorr Kan shrugged.

Gordon said to the Antarian, "When you send your message, tell Fomalhaut what we know about the counts and the impending attack, but don't mention Shorr Kan. They'd never believe that story, and they might put the whole warning down as a fake."

Hull nodded. "Since you're persona grata at the court of Fomalhaut, I'll send it in your name. Have you any recognition signal, so they can be sure it's you?"

Gordon thought. "Tell them it's from the man who once called Korkhann, their Minister of Nonhuman Affairs, an overgrown mynah bird. Korkhann will know."

The little dispatch cruiser crawled on the chart until it was close to that ominous reef of red dots. Only then did Hull Burrel send his message.

That done, they plunged headlong into the Broken Stars.

The place was like a star-captain's nightmare.

To the eye, the Broken Stars would have seemed only a region where the points of starry light were somewhat denser, through which the small ship seemed to creep.

But the radar and sensor instruments saw it differently. They saw a region where the debris of shattered suns, long, cool, and dark, whirled in small ovaloids, in spinning little maelstroms, in cones and disks and nests of wreckage. Splintered stones and dust that had once been planets lay in drifts. And the many surviving suns of the wrecked star-clusters flared out fiercely as background.

The computers that took the radar impulses and directed the cruiser's flight along the chosen course were clacking like the chattering teeth of hysterical old women. Hull Burrel, hunched over the board, listened to that uproar and watched the rapidly changing symbols, only occasionally reaching out his hand to give the computers a new course. But when he did so, it was done with all the speed of which he was capable.

Gordon and Shorr Kan, standing behind him, looked at the viewplate which showed only the swarming points of light through which they seemed barely to move. They looked then at the flashing radar screen, and were awed.

"I was in Orion Nebula once, but that was child's play compared to this," said Gordon. "Have we got a chance at all?"

"We have," said Hull, "if we don't run into a bit of it too complicated for the radar to sense in time. But I'll tell you how you can improve our chances about a hundred percent."

"How?"

"By getting off my neck!" Hull roared, without turning. "Go and sit down. I can fly this damned suicide mission better without jawbone help."

"He's right," said Shorr Kan, and nodded to Gordon. They drew back. "There's nothing you and I can do now . . . but wait! Yes, there is one thing we can do. Back in a minute."

He went aft. Gordon sat down wearily in one of the chairs at the rear of the bridge that were intended for top-brass to sit in and harass worried pilots.

Hull had told them that radar showed no sign of pursuit at all. He had explained that when the counts saw them dive into the Broken Stars, they would write them off as finished. And, he had added, they were probably right.

Shorr Kan came back holding a couple of plastic flasks filled with a pale, slightly milky-looking liquor. He grinned sardonically at Gordon.

"I was pretty sure that Obd Doll would have something stored away. The counts of the Marches are a hard-drinking lot. Here, have one."

Gordon took the flask, but stared up at Shorr Kan in amazement. "A drink? Now? In this?" And he jerked his head toward the radar screen. "Any minute, one stray chunk of drift . . ."

Shorr Kan sat down. "Quite right. And can you think of a better time for drinking?"

Gordon shrugged. Maybe Shorr Kan made sense, at that. All Hull wanted them to do was to keep quiet and let him make his long-shot gamble for life. Very well, then. He would keep quiet. He lifted the flask and drank.

The liquor might look a little like milk and it was bland going down, but it was hellfire when it hit his insides.

"Better than anything we had in the Dark Worlds," said Shorr Kan.

"I remember," said Gordon, "when Lianna and I were your prisoners at Thallarna . . . how long ago that seems! . . . you said you'd offer us a drink but you didn't keep the stuff around because it would spoil your pose as the austere patriotic leader."

Shorr Kan smiled wryly. "And much good it did me in the end." He looked at Gordon with a kind of admiration. "I had the whole galaxy in my grasp, and then you came along. By God, I have to hand it to you. You really were a spoiler."

Gordon turned and looked, startled, toward the view-plate. Nothing there seemed to have changed but there was a new sound, a screeching and screeking along the hull.

"Relax, Gordon," said Shorr Kan. "Just tiny particles, probably no bigger than atoms. Nothing to get jumpy about." He added, "When I think about it, in spite of the remarkable things you've done, you've nearly always had the jumps."

Gordon said between his teeth, "It seems a natural reaction when one's life is in danger."

"Look at me," said Shorr Kan. "I'm in as much danger as you. More, because if we get out of this mess there's more trouble waiting for me. I'm flying for my life . . . the second time . . . me that was lord of the Dark Worlds. But do I get upset? Not a bit. If Shorr Kan has to go, he'll go with his head high."

He raised the flask with a theatrical gesture, but the smile on his dark face was mocking.

Gordon shook his head. There were times when Shorr Kan just reduced him to silence.

"So drink up and be of good heart," said Shorr Kan. "We'll get through, all will go well with you, and you'll save my neck when we get there . . . I hope!"

The computers were chattering even more wildly, and when Gordon glanced forward he saw that the symbols were flashing in a swift stream across the radar screen. It seemed to him that Hull Burrel, hunched over the board, had his head bent in resignation, bowing to the inevitable end. Gordon turned his own head quickly away.

He thought of Lianna. It was strange how, when everything was getting unreal to him in the slow freezing terror of approaching dissolution, she remained quite real. Even if he survived, he felt that she was lost to him. But he thought of her, and was glad.

"You know, I've had an idea for a long time," Shorr Kan was saying, "that you're sort of a grain of sand in the machine, Gordon. I mean, you take someone out of his own context, his own time-frame, and hurl him into the future where he's got no business to be, and you put everything out of kilter. See how your coming, from the very first, has upset things all across the galaxy."

Gordon said dryly, "What you mean is that I upset the private plans of one Shorr Kan, that's all."

"Possibly," said Shorr Kan, with a courtly wave of his hand. "But tell me, what the devil was it like, that past time you came from? I asked you that before, but then you were lying to me and I couldn't believe a word of it."

"To tell you the truth," said Gordon, "it's getting just a little vague in my own mind." He drank and considered. "There was a man named Keogh who told me that this future I had been in before was all a dream. I just hated the Earth as it was, he said, so I made up fantasies about star-kingdoms and great wars beyond the suns. Of course at that time we didn't have anything approaching star-flight, so it must have all seemed pretty wild to him."

"We have a name for people like that," said Shorr Kan. "Planet-huggers. Hang tight to your mother-world's apron strings, because if you get away from it you might find something awfully nasty and upsetting."

Gordon glanced forward again. "Right at this moment," he said, "I'm not so sure that people who take that view are so awfully wrong."

Seen past the dark, hunched silhouette of Hull Burrel, the scene in the viewplate had slowly changed.

The points of fire that were suns seemed to be closer together. It was as though the ship was moving toward a rampart of suns, and surely they were not going to try to go that way. Hull would surely change course soon.

But time went on and he did not. Gordon drank again. The mighty blazing rampart of suns seemed closer, and still Hull did not alter course. Gordon felt a growing impulse to go and pound on Hull's arm, to make him veer off, but he fought it down. He didn't know a bloody thing about piloting a starship, and they had put the ship and themselves into Hull's hands and there was nothing to do but wait.

Shorr Kan seemed to understand how he felt. He said, "Less drift between the suns. Their attraction tends to gather up a good bit of debris. That's why he's going that way."

"Thank you for reassuring the nervous novice," said Gordon. "It's good of you."

Shorr Kan smiled. "I'm an awfully sympathetic person. Have another."

They sat, and drank, and Gordon tried not to look at the viewplate again or listen to the computers clacking. Time seemed to run on forever and it was almost a painful shock of change when the viewplate showed that they were out of the star-swarm and into the dark, clear deeps of open space.

Hull Burrel's great paw slammed down on the automatic pilot control. The big Antarian turned to them and for the first time in that flight they saw his face.

It was wild, exalted, and his voice came to them as a kind of hoarse triumphant shout.

"By God, I did it! I ran the Broken Stars!"

And then, as he looked at them, sitting with the nearly-emptied flasks in their hands, the wildness and excitement left him. He came back and stood over them, towering.

"I'll be everlastingly damned." he said. "While I did it, you two have been sitting here and drinking your heads off!"

Shorr Kan answered calmly, "You asked us not to bother you. Well, have we?"

Hull's craggy face turned scarlet. His chest heaved, and then he roared with laughter.

"Now," he said, "now I've seen everything. Get me one of those flasks. I think I want to get a little drunk myself."

They were out of the Marches, and the pure white fire of Fomalhaut gleamed like a beacon ahead.

It was many hours before Hull Burrel came back to the bridge, stretching and yawning. He started laughing again as he looked at Gordon and Shorr Kan.

"Through the Broken Stars with two topers," he said and shook his head. "Nobody will ever believe it."

"The whole fleet of Fomalhaut is on alert," he told them. "We're to land at the royal port on Hathyr."

"Any message for me?" asked Gordon.

The Antarian shook his head.

So that, Gordon thought, was that.

The radar screen showed ships far out from Fomalhaut cruising in stand-by formation.

"It's a good fleet," muttered Hull. "It's awfully good, and proved it in the fight off Deneb. But it's not very big, and the counts will eat it up."

The diamond sun swept toward them, and then the growing sphere of its largest planet. Hull brought the ship down over the far-spread towers of Hathyr City, toward the vast hexagonal mass of the royal palace. They landed in the small port behind it.

It seemed very strange to Gordon to step out and breathe natural air again, and look at a sun without a filter window in between.

A party of officers awaited them. They bowed and escorted them toward the huge bulk of the palace. Others boarded the cruiser to take charge of Obd Doll and his crew.

The old kings of Fomalhaut coldly looked down once more at Gordon, and this time he felt like snarling up at them.

"I know my place now," he wanted to tell them. "So the hell with you!"

But Shorr Kan strode along with a approving smile on his dark face, as though he were a visiting royalty who found the palace small but rather nice.

Despite his despair, Gordon had cherished a little hope. He did not know he had until suddenly it died, and that was when they three came into a small room where Lianna and Korkhann waited for them.

She was as beautiful as ever and her face was cold and hard as marble when she looked at him.

He started to say something, but before he could speak Lianna had looked beyond him and her eyes went wide with shock.

"Shorr Kan!"

Shorr Kan bowed magnificently to her. "Highness," he said, "it gladdens me to see you again. True, you and I have had a few small bothers and fusses, but that's all in the past, and I can say that it's forgotten now."

Lianna stared at him, absolutely stunned. Gordon felt an unwilling but tremendous admiration for Shorr Kan at that moment. Raise up the armadas of the League of the Dark Worlds, smite the Empire and its allies, bring about an Armageddon of the whole galaxy, and then dismiss it all lightly as a few small bothers and fusses!

"I have to state," Gordon said, "that Shorr Kan . . . who, as you can see, did not die at Thallarna but escaped to the Marches . . . was the one who rescued us and enabled us to give warning of the counts' coming attack."

He added forcefully, "I have promised Shorr Kan, because we owe him our lives, that he is safe here."

She looked at him, quite without expression. Then she said tonelessly, "If that is so, you are welcome, Shorr Kan, as our guest."

"Ah, a return of hospitality," said Shorr Kan. "It was not so long ago that you were my guest at Thallarna, Highness."

This grandly-spoken reference to the time when Gordon and Lianna had been Shorr Kan's prisoners brought a cough from Hull Burrel, who sounded as though he were choking on suppressed laughter.

Lianna turned to him. "Captain Burrel, we have been in touch with Throon. Jhal Arn has told me that elements of the Empire fleet are already on their way here."

Hull shook his head. "I'm afraid that will do no good, Highness. The counts and Narath Teyn will know that they must strike at once."

All this time Korkhann had said nothing, peering at Gordon with those wise yellow eyes that seemed to pierce straight through to the brain. Now he stepped forward, feathers rustling as his wings swept up and the delicate clawed hands at their tips caught Gordon's arm.

"But the Magellanians?" he cried.

"The H'Harn?" said Gordon startled.

"Is that what they call themselves?" Korkhann had an intensity about him that Gordon have never seen before. "Listen, John Gordon. Before I left Throon, the emperor and his brother, Zarth Arn, let me read the old records of Brenn Bir's time, when the Magellanians came to this galaxy before. They must not come again. What I read . . ."

He stopped, his voice quavering out into silence. When he spoke again, it was in a low, carefully controlled tone.

"You know that I am a telepath. Not one of the strongest ones, but . . . I have felt a shadow over the galaxy . . . a shadow that deepens with each hour, dark, cold. . . ."

Gordon shook his head. "We met only two of the H'Harn. One we never even saw. Shorr Kan killed the other one, to free us . . . we were in deadly danger . . ." And I hope that guarantees your neck, Shorr Kan, he thought. "But apparently there are only a few of them in the galaxy."

"They will come," whispered Korkhann. "They will come."

Lianna spoke. "One thing at a time. Narath and his beasts, and the counts, are enough to deal with now. Korkhann, will you see that our guests are made comfortable . . ."

She emphasized the word "guests" but Shorr Kan never turned a hair. He made another courtly bow and said to her, "Thank you, Highness, for your welcome. I've always wanted to visit Fomalhaut, for I've been told it's one of the most beautiful of the minor star-kingdoms. Until later!"

And with that truly regal wipe in the eye, he turned and went out with Hull Burrel and Korkhann.

Gordon saw Lianna turn toward him. Her face was still stone-white and there was no expression at all now in her eyes.

She came closer to him and her small hand flashed and gave him a stinging slap across the mouth.

Then her face changed. It moved like that of a nasty little girl having a tantrum. She put her head on his shoulder, and she said, "Don't you ever leave me again, John Gordon. If you do . . ."

He felt the wetness of tears against his cheek.

Incredulous, caught by wonder, Gordon held her. Not Zarth Arn, he thought. John Gordon.

That long trip back across the ages had been worth it, after all.

The street was familiar. Gordon knew every one of the brownstone fronts. He walked on the gritty pavement toward the office building where he spent his days. In the doorway he met Keogh, who laughed at him and said, "I told you it was all a dream, that rubbish about star-kings and beautiful princesses. All a dream, and now you've awakened, you're back in the real world. The real world . . ."

In a panic, Gordon said, "No, no, I won't come back." And then he cried out, "Lianna!"

The cry seemed to echo down endless corridors, but it had an effect. Everything slid and tilted and flowed away, leaving him confused and giddy in a tumultuous nowhere. He floundered wildly, like a drowning swimmer, and called Lianna's name again, and suddenly he was looking in bewilderment around an unfamiliar room.

Through an open window he could see the vast orb of the setting sun, and the sun was Fomalhaut, not Sol. It threw a shaft of brilliant light into the room, and by it he saw Lianna sitting silently in a chair, watching him.

He sat up on the couch where he had fallen asleep, brushing beads of perspiration from his forehead. The echoes of that nightmare were strong in him, and for a moment he could not speak.

"You dreamed you were in that other time?" she said.

He nodded.

"I thought so. I was watching your face. I'm glad it was my name you called." She added after a moment, "I've talked to Captain Burrel. I have some idea what you two went through I'm not surprised you have bad dreams."

They were still, Gordon thought, just a little awkward with each other. He was sure now that she loved him, but the trouble was that they didn't quite know each other well enough yet.

"When the H'Harn touch you," he said, "it seems to leave a kind of mental scar. Twice I've dreamed that the one who held us there in the ship had actually carried us away to the Lesser Magellanic, and each time . . ."

Suddenly Gordon stopped. His mind, just aroused from sleep had abruptly perceived for the first time something that he had never thought about before.

He jumped to his feet. "There's no sign of the fleet of the counts coming out of the Marches?"

She shook her head gravely. It was not for the sovereign to Fomalhaut Kingdom to show fear, but he saw the strain in her eyes.

"Not yet," she said. "But Abro thinks that if they are going to attack they'll come soon. He agrees with Captain Burrel that they would alter their timetable in order to strike before help can get here."

Gordon said, "I think I've overlooked something that may be tremendously important. I've got to see Hull and Shorr Kan."

The softness left Lianna's eyes and little stormy lightenings gathered in them.

"Shorr Kan," she said. "The man who nearly destroyed us all . . . and yet you speak of him as though he were a friend!"

Patiently Gordon said, "He is not a friend. He is an ambitious opportunist who thinks only of his own ends. But since his only opportunities now lie with us, he threw in with us. He's going to try to use us, and we are going to try to use him, and time will tell who uses whom."

Liana answered nothing, but he saw the set of her small chin. He ignored it and asked, "Is there some place here where we can make some galactographic computations?"

"The royal chart room," she said. "It's linked directly with all the screens in the Defense Ministry."

"Will you take me there, Lianna? And will you have Hull and Shorr Kan brought there?"

The room was deep in the palace. It had screens on every wall, all of them dark now. An officer saluted Lianna when she entered with Gordon behind her.

Presently Hull Burrel and Shorr Kan came in, and the latter swept a deep bow to Lianna, wishing Her Highness a very good evening. She regarded him with lambent eyes and an arctic smile.

"Let me say at once, Shorr Kan," she told him, "that if I had my way you'd have been executed within five minutes after you landed here. I live in hope that you will yet do something to make that possible."

Shorr Kan grinned crookedly. He looked at Gordon, and said, "Women are realists, did you know that? If you hurt one or threaten to hurt one, she'll hate you forever. Only men can make a game of it."

"Will you for God's sake quit talking about games," said Gordon. "The counts are not playing a game. Narath Teyn is not playing a game, and for certain the H'Harn are not playing a game. Or if they are, it's a game that nearly crushed the galaxy back in Brenn Bir's day."

Shorr Kan shrugged. "I'll admit that, but there's no evidence that the H'Harn are here yet in any strength."

"Are you quite sure of that?" asked Gordon.

Shorr Kan's mocking air dropped from him like a cast-off garment. "What do you mean?"

Gordon turned to Hull Burrel, who was frowning in puzzlement. "Hull, you piloted that H'Harn ship."

"You don't have to remind me," said Hull irritably. "I remember well enough."

"All right. Now, can you remember whether or not, before we realized what was happening and began to fight the creature, you were flying at top acceleration?"

Hull frowned again. "I don't see what . . ."

"Were you?"

"I don't know, damn it. Everything I did was put into my mind by the H'Harn, and I . . ."

"Yes?"

"Well, just wait a minute. I'm trying to think . . . I did seem to know that I must move a certain lever to the farthest notch. I did that, and from the way the ship responded, of course it had to be the main thrust control." Hull's face cleared. He nodded, satisfied. "Yes, we were at top acceleration."

"And what would you guess that to be?"

Hull pondered a moment, then named a figure. The officer's mouth fell open, and Lianna said instantly, "But that isn't possible!"

"I'm sorry, Highness . . . it is. The H'Harn ships are faster than anything of ours." Hull shook his head regretfully. "I'd have given a lot to bring that ship back so we could study it. Because if we do ever have to fight them in space . . ."

Gordon turned to Lianna. "Can we see a detailed chart of the portion of the Marches that contains Aar?" In a belated remembrance of protocol, he added "Highness?"

She spoke to the officer, who went to a bank of witches. Presently a great screen broke into light and life, with the bewildering complexity of star, planet, and drift markers showing in their various colors.

Gordon shrugged. "It makes no sense to me, but you can tell me, Hull. How far did we go from Aar to that point where we became aware of the H'Harn presence, and changed course?"

"Oh, look, Gordon!" Hull said. "We've got enough troubles ahead of us without rehashing the ones we've left behind."

"Answer him," said Shorr Kan, and it was the hard, cold voice of the one-time master of the Dark Worlds who spoke. His face was grim with foreboding, and Gordon thought again that he had never met anyone with the lightning awareness and comprehension of this man. Shorr Kan had already guessed what he was driving at.

Hull sweated over the chart like a sulky schoolboy, grumbling. Finally he named a distance. "It's only a rough figure . . ." he began, but Gordon cut him off.

"Using that as an average, and with that approximate velocity, how long would it have taken us to reach the Lesser Magellanic?"

Hull looked a bit startled. "So that's it. Why didn't you tell me?" He went over to the computer and started punching keys. Presently he came back with the answer.

"Between four and five months," he said. "That's Galactic Standard, of course."

Gordon and Shorr Kan looked at each other, and Lianna said with regal impatience, "Could we perhaps be told the object of this discussion?"

"Four or five months to reach the Magellanic, and as much again to return," said Gordon slowly. "Eight to ten months before the H'Harn fleet could reach this galaxy, utilizing the information they hoped to get from us . . . It's too long. We know the H'Harn are behind the counts in this move against Fomalhaut . . . they must have had a hand in timing it. Whatever their plans are for their own strike against the galaxy, I don't believe they would include that much of a delay. Especially . . ."

"Especially," said Shorr Kan bluntly, "when their logical time to strike would be at that exact moment when the galaxy is already engaged in a massive civil war." He looked around the circle of faces. "The H'Harn have gone to a deal of trouble to foment that war. I doubt if they plan to throw away the fruits thereof."

There was a dead silence. When Gordon spoke again, he could hear his worlds dropping into it as stones drop into a cold still lake.

"I don't think the H'Harn was taking us to the Magellanic at all. I think it was taking us to somewhere a whole lot nearer. I think it was taking us to the H'Harn fleet, lying close outside our galaxy."

The silence became even deeper, as though even breathing and heartbeat had been suspended. Then Hull said almost angrily, "How could they be out there without the radar-sweeps of the Empire's warning system detecting them? Don't you realize how thoroughly we have monitored outer space ever since the time of Brenn Bir?"

"Yes," said Gordon, "but . . ."

Shorr Kan finished for him. "You've met the H'Harn, you have some idea of their powers. And you know they must realize how thoroughly outer space is monitored. So the first prerequisite of any large-scale invasion plan would be some means of evading radar search."

Hull Burrel thought about that, and he began to get a haunted look.

"Yes, I see that. But . . . but if they can evade radar, then the H'Harn fleet could be out there off the galaxy right now, waiting . . ."

"Waiting for the counts of the Marches to launch their attack," said Gordon.

"Good God," said Hull, and turned fiercely to the communications officer. "Call Throon. The Empire must be warned."

The officer looked at Lianna, who said quietly, "Do as he asks."

"Your pardon, Highness," said Hull, and the stark look of horror on his face was apology enough. "But when I think of those . . ."

"Yes," said Lianna. "Remember, I have had experience of them myself." She waved Hull on, to where the communications officer was busy at one of the screens.

Presently it sprang to life, and an officer in Empire uniform spoke to Hull Burrel.

His name, rank, and reputation got him switched through to the palace in record time. The aquiline face of Zarth Arn, brother to the Emperor, looked out of the screen at them.

"Captain Burrel . . . Gordon . . . you're safe, then. We were concerned . . . ."

He broke off sharply, looking beyond Gordon, with eyes that had suddenly become points of fire. He was looking at Shorr Kan.

"What kind of a masquerade is this?"

"No masquerade," said Shorr Kan. "Happily for me, the reports of my death were sheer fraud." He met Zarth Arn's bitter glare with calm amusement. "The bad penny has turned up, only this time I'm on your side. Doesn't that please you?"

Zarth Arn appeared to be too stunned to speak for the moment. Gordon seized the opportunity to make a swift explanation.

"Our lives, and quite possibly the life of the whole galaxy, may be saved because Shorr Kan got us free to bring a warning," he said. "Try and remember that, Highness."

Zarth Arn's face was perfectly white, his mouth set like a vise. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, mastering himself. Then he looked at Lianna and said, "Highness, my advice is to hang that man at once."

"Ah, but you must hang Gordon first," said Shorr Kan smoothly. "He gave his word to protect me."

Hull stepped closer to the screen. "Highness, with all due respect, the hell with Shorr Kan and what happens to him! The H'Harn . . . the Magellanians . . . may be at the throat of the galaxy!"

Zarth Arn's anger faded into something else. "You learned something in the Marches?"

Hull told him. Gordon watched Zarth Arn's face, saw the shadow that came there grow and deepen, and when Hull was through it seemed to Gordon that Zarth Arn had aged ten years in those few moments.

"Theory," he said. "Only theory, and yet . . . The H'Harn. Strange that we never had a name for them before." He looked at Gordon. "This is your considered opinion?"

"Yes," said Gordon, and Shorr Kan spoke up unbidden.

"Mine too. And whatever else I may be, Zarth Arn, you know that I am neither a fool nor a coward. I believe that this strike against Fomalhaut is nothing less than the spearhead of an attack by the H'Harn on the whole galaxy."

After a moment Zarth Arn said, "This must go to my brother at once, for his decision. And since this is a chance we dare not take, I think there can be only one answer. The Empire fleet must go outside the galaxy and use every possible means, either to locate the H'Harn fleet or make absolutely certain that it is not there. And I must be with it. For if we do find the H'Harn . . ."

A coldness came into Gordon's spine. "You'll take the Disruptor?" Gordon remembered how he himself had once unloosed the awful power of that weapon. He remembered how space had quaked, and how stars had trembled in their orbits; how the whole fabric of the universe had seemed to twist and tear.

Zarth Arn said, "I must." He turned his somber gaze to Lianna. "You know, of course, what this will mean to you?"

She nodded calmly. "You will need every ship to sweep the Rim . . . including those you were sending here. I understand that. But surely the H'Harn are the ultimate enemy. We'll fight our battle here alone." She even smiled. "It's no matter. Captain Burrel assures me your ships could not get here in any case until after our fate has been thoroughly settled."

The screen blanked out. They were turning to leave, Lianna silent and preoccupied, when another screen came to life. In it was a burly-browed, thickset man with scarred hands, whom Gordon had met before, Abro, Defense Minister of Fomalhaut. Abro wasted no time on protocol. "Highness, they've come out of the Marches. The counts' fleet. They're more than twice as strong as we expected . . . and they're coming full speed toward Fomalhaut!"

Gordon felt a chilling dismay. The counts of the Marches were throwing everything they had into this. And whether their gamble succeeded or not, in the dark background brooded the unguessable purpose and menace of the H'Harn.

"They outnumber our fleet by three to two, in heavies," Abro was saying. "Commander Engl has planned to draw back, to cover Fomalhaut and give time for the Empire squadron to arrive."

Lianna said calmly, "The plan is good. But tell him not to count on any assistance from Throon. There will be no squadron."

Abro looked stunned. "But Highness, I myself was present when . . ."

"I will not discuss this on a communicator," said Lianna. "I am summoning the council. Get to the chamber as quickly as you can, Abro."

The screen went dark. Lianna turned, her face icy and composed. But her eyes were tormented, and Gordon wanted to put his arm around her shoulders. He did not. He doubted that she wanted any of that kind of encouragement in public.

She smiled a little wanly at him and said, "I must go, John Gordon. Later."

When she had gone, Hull Burrel strode to the screens and activated those which showed the Marches and that whole region of space, studying them feverishly.

Shorr Kan shrugged. "It doesn't look good, Gordon. Other star-kingdoms will hold back when they hear that Throon isn't sending help. I'm worried."

"Nice of you to be concerned," said Gordon acidly. "About us, I mean."

Shorr Kan looked blank. "About you? Hell, I'm worried about myself! When I helped you and took that dispatch cruiser away from Obd Doll, I committed myself. No explanation will ever convince Cyn Cryver that I didn't betray him. If he wins out and gets his hands on me . . ."

He drew his fingers expressively across his throat.

Gordon admitted that this did seem to be one box that Shorr Kan couldn't talk his way out of.

"Damn right," said Shorr Kan, and added thoughtfully, "The transports will follow the counts' fleet, with Narath's army. They're the real danger. If the Fomalhaut commander-what's his name, Engl?-If Engl has sense enough to keep some of his heavies out of the battle, they can be used to hit the transports and cut them up as they try to land."

Gordon thought that made good sense, and said so. Shorr Kan grunted. "You try to propose it, Gordon. They'd never take any suggestion from me, even if it was a good one, and even though I know more strategy than any of them . . . as I once proved. They might take it from you."

"I doubt it," Gordon said. "But I'll try."

Hours later that night, when he had sat for a long time in an antechamber of the council room, the council broke up. When Lianna came out at the head of the worried-looking knot of men, she saw him and came to him.

"There was no need for you to wait all this time," she said, but he thought she was glad that he had.

"I just wanted to know what's happening. That is, if you can tell me."

Abro frowned all across his hard face, but Lianna ignored him. "You brought the warning, and you have the right to know. The main fleet of the Empire has already left Throon, on its way out of the galaxy. With it goes every possible sensory device that might enable them to locate a H'Harn fleet, including the Empire's finest telepaths."

Gordon did not think too hopefully of the chances of tracking the H'Harn by telepathy. The H'Harn were super telepaths, able to shield their minds from any probing.

Lianna continued, "We've appealed for help from the smaller star-kingdoms, but they're too far from here, most of them, to come in time. We did get a reply from the barons of Hercules . . . they're considering the matter."

Abro said brusquely, "Not for love of us. The great barons are afraid the counts of the Marches are getting too big. If they help us it will be for that reason only. And they're liable to be too late in any case."

Gordon said hesitantly, "A possibility occurred to me, but it seems out of place for me to suggest anything."

Lianna did not seem happy about it, but she said steadily, "You risked your life to help us, you have the right to speak."

Gordon outlined Shorr Kan's strategic idea of holding back a part of the fleet to hit the transports when they came.

To his surprise, Abro, who disliked him intensely, nodded thoughtful approval. "An excellent move . . . if we can manage to hold back any forces when we meet the counts. I'll pass it on to Engl."

When the others had gone, Lianna looked at Gordon with a faint smile.

"That was Shorr Kan's suggestion, wasn't it?"

Hours later, he sat with her on a terrace high on the vast wall of the palace. Soft darkness was about them, and the heavy scent of flowers. But there was no quiet in the great city that lay below them in the night.

The city flared with lights. Armed bodies of men were moving with swift precision, to and fro. Missile batteries were being set up in the palace grounds. In the distance, where the spaceport lay, huge, tubby space-monitors were rising up growling into the darkness to take their places in the network of defenses around the throne-world of Fomalhaut.

Gordon looked up at the starry sky. Out there two great star-fleets were drawing fatefully together, and what happened when they met would probably seal the fate of this whole star-kingdom, and possibly many more besides. There had been no further word from Hercules, and if the barons were moving to help, they were keeping it secret from everyone.

His mind reached farther out, beyond the edge of the galaxy, where the mighty Empire fleet would be searching for the H'Harn force that might or might not be hidden there. If they could find it, the Disrupter would unloose its cosmic power again and the threat from Magellan would disappear. But would they find it? Gordon felt a deep hopelessness, an almost prophetic certainty that they would not. The H'Harn would not have returned without the strongest kind of armor, offensive and defensive.

They would not have forgotten how they faced the Disrupter before.

It seemed that Lianna too was thinking of the H'Harn. She had been silent for a long time, but when she spoke it was about them.

"If Narath does invade, will he have any of those creatures with him?"

"I feel sure he will have."

"How can you be so sure?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Doomsday had come again, after these thousands of years.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"There," said Gordon. "How's that?"

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

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

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

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

"What's that?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No!" exclaimed Lianna angrily. "I will not leave here! Send them away . . . ."

"Look out!" yelled Shorr Kan. "Those aren't your men!"

Gordon saw that the men who came pouring out of the open hatch wore, not the insignia of Fomalhaut but the rearing symbol of the Mace. They ran across the balcony toward the little group.

They had not drawn their weapons, apparently counting on sheer physical numbers to overwhelm the three. But Shorr Kan, dropping into a sort of gunman's crouch, drew and fired, cutting down the front rank of the attackers with exploding atom-pellets.

Gordon pulled out his own weapon, cursing the unfamiliarity of the thing as he tried to thumb off the safety. It went off in his hand. He saw that he had fired high and he triggered again more carefully and saw the pellets explode among the men of the Mace.

Those who survived kept right on coming. They were still not shooting, and it dawned on Gordon that Lianna was their target and they wanted to take no chance of killing her.

They came fast, reinforced by more men from the hover-car. They spread out in a ragged half-moon that closed rapidly into a circle, and they were so close now that neither Gordon nor Shorr Kan dared to shoot because the back-flare of the pellets would engulf them and Lianna also. Gordon shortened his grip on the weapon and used it as a club, flinging himself at the men and laying about him furiously, shouting all the while to Lianna to run back into the palace. He heard Shorr Kan roaring, "Guards! Guards!" But Shorr Kan was smothered under a press of bodies, roughed and battered, wrestled to the ground, and Gordon found himself going the same way; there were too many hands, too many boots and bony knees. He could not see whether Lianna had made her escape, but he did see that from the great hall inside the balcony a file of Lianna's guards were running desperately toward them.

The men who remained in the hover-car had no compunction at all about shooting the guards, since that did not endanger Lianna. They shot them with stunning efficiency, using heavy-caliber mounted guns that swiveled and poured crashing fire, powdering the men to nothing, along with spouting dust and powdered glass. It got quiet again, and then the whole scene spun slowly around Gordon and flowed away into darkness, accompanied by the ringing of his skull as something struck it, hammer-like.

He woke, lying on the balcony. His head no longer rang, but simply ached. Nearby he saw Shorr Kan standing. His face was bloody. The men wearing the Mace stood around them, grim and tense.

"Lianna!" muttered Gordon, and tried to sit up.

Shorr Kan jerked his head toward the inner hall, beyond the tumbled bodies of the guards. "There. Not hurt. But the palace is theirs. That car was only the first of a fleet tricked out with the sign of Fomalhaut." One of the men struck Shorr Kan across the face, bringing more blood. Shorr Kan forbore to wince, but he stopped talking. Gordon became aware now, as his senses cleared, of a vague, inarticulate roaring, like the beating of the sea upon rocky cliffs. Then, as he was jerked to his feet, he looked out over the low rail of the balcony and saw the source of the sound.

The city had fallen. Fires still rose redly from many points, but there was no more firing, no more sounds of battle. The whole area around the palace seemed filled with the nonhuman hordes . . . the Gerrn, the Qhallas, the Andaxi, all the grotesque, nightmarish mobs, capering in triumph smashing the gardens, howling, roaring, gesticulating.

But the loudest roar came from a solid, tremendous mass of creatures making its way down the Avenue of the Kings. They voiced their frantic joy in hissing, purring, squawking voices. And they looked ever at one human man who rode ahead of them upon the black-furred back of a giant Gerrn-Narath Teyn, with his handsome head held high as he rode to claim his kingship.

The big hall, the one that opened onto the balcony, was quiet. Gordon stood, with guards behind him, and Shorr Kan stood beside him. The men who wore the Mace stood also, their weapons prominently displayed.

But Narath sat, as befitted a king.

He sat very straight, and there was a dreaming smile on his face. His brown hair fell to his shoulders, and he wore a glittering, close-fitting garment, He looked royal, and he looked mad.

Lianna sat a little distance from him. There was no expression at all on her face, except when she looked at Gordon.

"Soon," said Narath gently. "We will not have to wait much longer, cousin, for the Count Cyn Cryver and the others."

And Gordon knew who "the others" would be, and the skin crawled between his shoulders.

From the open doors that gave onto the great balcony, threads of acrid smoke drifted into the room. There came also from outside a distant, confused sound of voices, but not the roaring clamor of before. The bodies had been cleared away, both Lianna's men and Narath's. And now Gordon heard the soft hum of a hover-car descending.

Then Cyn Cryver came.

His bold, arrogant face blazed with triumph as he looked at them. He looked longest at Shorr Kan.

"It's well," he said. "I was afraid they might have killed you. And we don't want you to die too soon."

Shorr Kan made a derisive sound. "Do you have to be so damned theatrical? That was the most boring thing about my stay with you, listening all the time to your meaty, crashing statements."

Cyn Cryver's smile became deadly, but he did not answer. Narath had risen to his feet and was speaking in his gentle voice, "You are welcome, my brother of the Marches. Very welcome. And where are our friends?"

"They are here," said Cyn Cryver. "They are coming." He looked at Lianna and his smile deepened. "You're looking well, Highness. Remarkably well, considering that your world is in our fist and your fleet is being hammered to pieces in the Shoals."

He did not, Gordon thought, seem to know yet about the Hercules barons. Not that the barons' coming would make any difference to them now . . . .

Three shapes, robed and cowled, glided silently into the hall. The H'Harn had come.

It was curious, the different reactions to them, Gordon thought. Shorr Kan looked at them with frank open disgust. Lianna paled a little, and Gordon was pretty sure he himself did the same. Even Cyn Cryver seemed a trifle ill at ease.

But Narath Teyn bent toward the cowled figures with the same dreaming smile, and said, "You come in good time, brothers. I am to be crowned."

It was only then Gordon realized the depth of alienation in Narath's mind. He, whom the not-men worshipped, who greeted the Magellanians as brothers, was less human than anyone here.

The foremost of the H'Harn spoke in a sibilant whisper. "Not yet, Narath. There is something first to be done, and it is most urgent."

The H'Harn came, with its curiously limber, bobbing gait, to stand before Gordon. And it looked up at him from the darkness of its cowl.

"This man," it said, "possesses knowledge that we must have, at once."

"But my people are waiting," said Narath. "They must hear my cousin Lianna cede the throne to me, so that they can acclaim me king." He smiled at Lianna. "You will do that, cousin, of course. All must be right and fitting."

Cyn Cryver shook his head. "No, Narath, this must wait a little. V'ril is right. The H'Harn have helped us greatly, isn't that so? Now we must help them."

A bit sulkily, Narath sat down again. The H'Harn called V'ril continued to look up at Gordon, but Gordon could see nothing of the face that was hidden by the cowl and did not much want to see it. All he wanted was to be able to run away. With an effort he restrained himself from an hysterical attempt to do so.

"A while ago," said the H'Harn, "I went secretly to Throon in the ship of Jon Ollen, one of our allies. While I was there I probed the mind of one named Korkhann."

That was no news to Gordon, but it made him think of Korkhann for the first time since recovering consciousness. What had become of him? Dead? Probably . . . and probably Hull Burrel also, for they were not here.

"I learned," said the whispering voice, "that this man called John Gordon had in the past undergone a transfer of minds with Zarth Arn, so that for a time he dwelt in Zarth Arn's body. And during that time he operated the Disruptor."

Here it came again, Gordon thought. The damned Disruptor and the secret of it that everyone thought he knew . . . the curse that had dogged him all through both his visits to this future time, and was now about to drag him to his death.

Or worse. The H'Harn moved closer to him, a swaying of gray cloth.

"I will now," it whispered, "probe this man for the secret of the Disruptor. Be silent, everyone."

Gordon, in the clutch of ultimate terror, still tried to turn his head and give Lianna a look of reassurance, to tell her that he could not give away something he did not possess. He never finished the movement.

A bolt of mental force hit him. Compared to the mental attack of the H'Harn in the ship, this was a thunderbolt compared to an electric spark. Gordon passed into the darkness between heartbeats.

When he recovered, he was lying on the floor. Looking up dazedly, he saw Lianna's horrified face. Narath, sitting near her, looked merely bored and impatient. But Cyn Cryver and the H'Harn called V'ril seemed to be arguing.

The voice of the H'Harn had risen to a high, whistling pitch. Never before in his brief contacts with the creatures had Gordon seen one display so intense a passion, "But," Cyn Cryver was saying, "it may be that he just doesn't know any more."

"He must know more!" raged V'ril. "He must, or he could not have operated the mightiest weapon in the universe. And I will tell you what I did learn from his mind. The main fleet of the Empire is outside the galaxy, searching for our fleet. Prince Zarth Arn is with them . . . and the Disruptor."

That seemed to stagger Cyn Cryver a little. Presently he said, "But you told me they could never locate your fleet . . ."

"They cannot," said the H'Harn. "But now they are forewarned, and when we attack Throon and the key worlds, then they will know where we are! And they may use the Disruptor, even though in doing so they sacrifice some of their people. So now it is more important than ever that we know the range and working principles of that weapon before we move!"

Narath stood up and said firmly, "I have had enough of this. Settle this matter later. My people are waiting out there to acclaim me king . . ."

V'ril's cowled head turned toward Narath. Narath went gray, and suddenly sat down and was silent.

"An expert telepath could have hidden the key knowledge deep in this man's mind," said V'ril, looking at Gordon. "So deeply, so subtly, that he would not be consciously aware of it even though he used the knowledge . . . so deeply that even a powerful mental probe would not reveal it. But there is one way to search it out."

Gordon, not understanding, saw that for the first time, when they heard this, the other two H'Harn moved and wavered and tittered a little, as though in sudden mirth. Somehow that mirthfulness chilled him with a horror deeper than anything before.

"The Fusion," whispered V'ril. "The merging of two minds, so that nothing in either mind can be hidden from the other when they are twinned. No mental trickery can hide a secret from that."

The creature hissed a command to the guards, "Force him to his knees."

The men grabbed Gordon's arms from behind and forced him down. From their quick breathing, Gordon thought that even though they were men of the Mace and allies of the H'Harn, they did not like this.

The robed creature now stood with his head a little higher than Gordon's.

Then V'ril began to unwind his robes, and they came away, and also there came away the cowl which was part of them, and the H'Harn stood naked.

Glistening, moist-looking, like a small skinned man with gray-green flesh, and a boneless fluidity in the arms and legs. The damp gristly flesh seemed to writhe and flow of its own accord. And the face . . .

Gordon wanted to shut his eyes but could not. The head was small and spheroid and the face was blank and most horrible in its blankness. A tiny mouth, nauseatingly pretty, two holes for breathing, and big eyes that were filmed over, dull, obscurely opalescent.

The blank face came toward Gordon, bending slightly. It was as though the H'Harn bent to kiss him, and that completed the horrifying abnormality of the moment. Gordon struggled, strained, but was held firmly. He heard Lianna cry out.

The eyes were close to his, the cool forehead touched his forehead.

Then the eyes that had become his whole visible universe seemed to change, the dull opalescence in them deepened into a glow. Brighter and brighter became the glow until it was as though he looked into a fiery nebula.

Gordon felt himself falling through.

He was John Gordon of old Earth.

He was also V'ril of Amamabarane.

He remembered all the details of Gordon's life, on Earth and then in this future universe.

But he also remembered every detail of his life as one of the people of Amamabarane, the great hive of stars which the humans called the Lesser Magellanic.

Utterly bewildering, was this double set of memories, to the part of him that was Gordon. But the part of him that was V'ril was accustomed to it.

The memories came easily. Memories of his native world deep in the star-cloud Amamabarane. The cherished planet where the mighty and all-conquering H'Harn had first evolved.

But they had not always been mighty. There had been a time when the H'Harn had been only one of many species, and by no means the cleverest or the strongest. There were other races which had used them contemptuously, had called them stupid, and weak.

But where are those races now? Gone, dead, wiped out by the little H'Harn . . . a great and satisfactory vengeance.

For the H'Harn had found that deep in their minds they had the seed of a power. A power of telepathic force, of mental compulsion. They had not understood it and they had used it at first in petty ways, to influence others stronger and quicker than themselves, to protect themselves from predators.

But in time, they realized that the power could achieve much more if they could strengthen it. There began a secret, earnest attempt to bring about that goal. Those of them who had more of the power were allowed to mate only with those of a similar grade. Time went by, and their power grew and grew, but they kept it secret from others.

Until they were sure.

And then a great day came. A day when the despised H'Harn revealed their mastery of mental compulsion, using it on those they hated. Breaking them, mastering them, driving them mad, hurting and hurting them until they died.

The triumph of the H'Harn, the golden legend of our race! How good it was to see them writhe and scream as they died!

Not all of them. Some were spared to be the servants of the H'Harn. And among these were the clever ones who had built cities and starships.

They were used now, these clever ones and their starships, to take the H'Harn to other worlds. And so began the glorious saga of H'Harn conquest, that did not stop until all the desirable worlds of Amamabarane were under the H'Harn yoke.

But there were still other worlds, far off, in the great galaxy which was like a continent of stars, to which Amamabarane was merely an off-shore island. There were countless worlds there, where countless peoples lived who did not serve the H'Harn. This was intolerable to contemplate, so vast had become the H'Harn appetite for power. So the preparations for conquest were begun.

The subject peoples of Amamabarane were forced by the H'Harn to labor until they died, preparing an armada of ships. And after a time, that armada departed, to bring many H'Harn to the galaxy which was to be taught to accept its masters.

But then . . . the one great catastrophe, the dark and ugly scar that marred the glory of H'Harn history. The peoples of that galaxy, with incredible impudence, resisted the H'Harn. And with a weapon that disrupted the space-time continuum itself, they annihilated the H'Harn armada.

That had been long ago, but no H'Harn had ever forgotten it. The wickedness of men who dared to resist the H'Harn, who dared even to destroy them, must be punished. The black scar of defeat must be healed with their blood.

Through thousands on thousands of years, the subjects and servants of the H'Harn, in all Amamabarane, were driven to toil on this project. Their cleverest minds were set to devise new weapons, new ships of a swiftness hitherto unknown. But the project lagged. The servant peoples often preferred to die rather than to serve the H'Harn longer. They did not realize that they were mere tools which the masters used, and that it mattered not at all if the tool were broken.

But when thousands of years had passed, the time came when the H'Harn were ready again. Its mighty fleet of invasion had weapons and speeds and devices hitherto undreamed-of, including a shield of cunning force that hid the ships, and which no detection device could penetrate. Secret, unseen, the fleet approached the galaxy.

And secretly, unsuspected, it waited now outside the galaxy, beyond the end of what the humans called the Vela Spur. For the moment had not yet come.

Agents had gone ahead from Amamabarane, to foment war and trouble in the galaxy. War would bring the main forces of the Empire and the star-kings far from their capitals.

And when that happened, the H'Harn would strike.

Secret, unseen, unsuspected, their ships would land upon the greatest worlds of the star kings, upon Throon where the Disruptor was still kept against a day of adversity. Taken unaware and more or less defenseless, the people of Throon would fall an easy prey, and the Disruptor would be in the hands of the H'Harn. The Emperor could hardly use it in his own defense, since it would mean the destruction of Throon itself, with its sister planets and its sun.

Only now the picture had changed. This contemptible human had given a warning, and the Disruptor was in space, once more a threat of destruction to the H'Harn. It was vital to know the range and nature of the Disruptor's force, so that means could be found to neutralize or combat it.

But . . .

Astonishment and anger and a sudden ripping apart of the mental fusion, and John Gordon, again quite alone within himself, looked dazedly into the raging eyes of the H'Harn.

"It is true," hissed V'ril. "This man used the Disruptor without knowing anything of its nature. It is incredible . . . ."

Into Gordon's whirling mind came a remembrance of a time when Shorr Kan had said contemptuously that the H'Harn, for all their powers, were stupid.

He knew now, from sharing the mind of a H'Harn, that it was true. The race that sought to conquer galaxies was a low, stupid, detestable species which in the ordinary course of events would have come to nothing. But the possession of one key power, the telepathic power of mental probing, mental compulsion, had given these creatures dominance over races far superior to them.

Gordon had always feared the H'Harn. He began now to hate them with a bitter hatred. They were leechlike, unclean, intolerable. He knew now why long ago Brenn Bir of the Empire had taken the chance of riving space itself to destroy these creatures.

As his mind cleared, Gordon found that the guards had pulled him back to his feet. V'ril had put on the robe and cowl again and Gordon thanked God for that. He did not want to see that ghastly body. He felt defiled to the soul by the sharing of that creature's mind and memories.

V'ril raised a shrouded arm and pointed at Gordon. "This man must die at once," he said. "Because of the Fusion, he now knows where our fleet is hidden. Kill him!"

Cyn Cryver nodded and the guards stepped back and raised their weapons. Still hardly able to take it in, Gordon flashed at last a look at Lianna.

Lianna had sprung to her feet. "No!" she exclaimed. She swung around to Narath. "If this man is killed, I will not cede the throne to you, Narath Teyn!"

Cyn Cryver laughed harshly. "A lot of difference that will make! Narath will be king in any case."

But the dreaming smile left Narath's face and it became troubled. He raised a hand to the guards who were aiming their weapons at Gordon, and said, "Wait!" He spoke then to Cyn Cryver. "My cousin must formally cede the throne to me, before the people, or all will not be lawful. I must have this submission from her. I have waited so long for it. I must!"

His handsome face was quivering now, and storm clouds gathered in his eyes. Cyn Cryver looked at him narrowly, and then said to V'ril, "The ceremony is important to our brother Narath. We had better let the man live."

Looking at Cyn Cryver's flinty expression as he stared fixedly at V'ril, Gordon was absolutely sure that he was adding, in thought, "Until the ceremony is over. Then we'll kill him at once?"

For V'ril made no objection. He whispered, "Very well. But there are messages that must be sent to our brothers in the fleet."

V'ril looked toward the other two H'Harn. Gordon thought he could guess what the message would be. "Warn the fleet that the Empire armada is searching for them! Tell them to strike now at Throon!" The two H'Harn bobbed and glided away out of the hall.

Narath took Lianna by the hand, in as courtly a fashion as though he were leading her to a ball.

"Come, cousin. My people are waiting."

Lianna's face was stony, expressionless. She walked with Narath, out onto the great balcony.

The others followed, the four guards keeping their weapons trained upon Gordon and Shorr Kan. But when they were out on the balcony, Narath turned and spoke with sharp annoyance.

"Not beside me, Cyn Cryver . . . this is my triumph. Stay back."

A crooked smile crossed Cyn Cryver's face but he nodded. He and V'ril and the guardsmen remained at the back of the balcony.

Shorr Kan made as though to join them but Cyn Cryver shook his head. "Oh, no," he said. "Keep your distance, so that we can shoot you down without danger to ourselves."

Shorr Kan shrugged and fell back. And now Narath had led Lianna to the front of the balcony, and the white sun of Fomalhaut blazed down on his glittering figure. He raised his hand.

A tremendous roar went up. From where he stood at the back of the balcony, Gordon could see that the palace grounds were crammed with the grotesque hordes of the not-men, a heaving sea of them that lapped against the walls and swirled up onto the columns of the stone kings, where leather-winged creatures perched and screamed. Mingled with them were the lesser number of humans who wore the uniforms of the counts of the Marches.

He wondered what Lianna was thinking as she looked out on that roaring crowd. None of her own people were there; the people of Hathyr city were dispersed, hiding or slain. And the human and inhuman conquerors shouted and cheered, and the old kings of Fomalhaut looked down with calm faces upon the end of all that they had wrought.

Again Narath raised his hand, and the roaring acclaim swelled up in a greater cry than before. He had reached the summit of his life, and the not-men whose fanatical devotion he had won were hailing him, and his whole bearing expressed his joy and his pride, and his great love for these his people.

The wave of sound died down, and Narath said, "Now, cousin."

Lianna, her figure rigidly erect, spoke in a clear, cold voice that Gordon could hardly recognize.

"I, Lianna, Princess Regent of Fomalhaut, do now cede my sovereignty, and recognize and affirm that sovereignty to have passed from me to . . ."

The thin whistling of small missiles interrupted her, and then Gordon saw Cyn Cryver and his guardsmen reel and fall as tiny atomic pellets drove into their bodies and flared there, blackening flesh and garments.

Gordon swung around. In the otherwise empty hall behind the balcony stood Hull Burrel and Korkhann, and they held the weapons that had just been fired, cutting down all but the H'Harn. V'ril, warned by some telepathic flash at the last moment, had darted aside in time to escape.

Narath turned around angrily. "What . . . ?"

Korkhann fired, his yellowbird-eyes clear and merciless. The tiny missile went deep into Narath's side.

Narath swayed, but did not fall. It seemed that he refused to fall, refused to admit death and defeat. He turned with a strangely regal movement to face the crowd below . . . a crowd unable to see what was happening above them. He tried to raise his arm, and then fell forward across the balcony rail and hung there. A silence began to spread across the gardens and down the Avenue of Kings.

Hull Burrel cried abruptly, "No!"

Korkhann, his eyes now glazed and strange, was swinging his weapon around to point at the Antarian.

Gordon saw V'ril, and knew instantly what was happening. He rushed forward over the smoking bodies of the Mace-men. He grasped the robed H'Harn in his arms . . . and he ran forward and hurled it out over the rail, swiftly, before it could think to stop him. In the brief seconds of its fall, mental force, not directed this time, merely projected as an instinctive reflex, slammed at him. It was cut short with shocking finality, and Gordon smiled. The H'Harn, it seemed, feared most dreadfully to die.

Korkhann lowered his weapon, unfired.

Down below the silence had become complete, as though every throat held breath, and the crowd stared up at the glittering figure of Narath Teyn doubled over the low rail, his bright hair streaming, his arms outspread as though he reached down to them in an appeal for help.

In that frozen moment, Shorr Kan acted with a lightning swiftness that Gordon was never to forget.

Shorr Kan rushed to the front of the balcony. He threw his arms skyward in a wild gesture, and he shouted to that stunned crowd in the lingua-franca of the not-men of the Marches.

"The counts have killed Narath Heyn! Vengeance!"

Gerrn and Andaxi and Qhalla, all the nameless others, the inhuman faces, looked up toward him. And then it sank in.

Narath was dead. Narath of Teyn, he whom they worshipped, whose banner they had followed, had been slain. A heart-stopping cry of rage and sorrow went up from them the coming led cry of all those thousands of inhuman throats, growling, hissing, screeching.

"Vengeance for Narath! Kill the counts!"

The crowd exploded into violence. The not-men fell, with fang and talon, beak and claw, upon the men of the Marches who a moment before had stood beside them as allies.

The cry of sorrow and of vengeance went out from the palace, spreading until it seemed that from the whole city of Hathyr there came a great inhuman baying.

Hull Burrel had run forward, while Korkhann still stood a little dazed by the H'Harn assault that had almost made him kill his comrade.

"This way," cried Hull. "Quickly! They'll be up here in minutes. Korkhann knew all the secret passages in the palace and that's how we saved ourselves when the palace fell. Hurry!"

Gordon took Lianna by the hand and ran with her. Shorr Kan delayed long enough to pick up weapons from the dead guards, one of which he tossed to Gordon He was chuckling.

"That set them going, didn't it? They're not too bright, those nonhumans . . . begging your pardon, Korkhann . . . and they reacted beautifully."

A seemingly solid section of the wall at the side of the great hall had been swung open, revealing a passageway. They crowded through and Shorr Kan slammed shut the panel behind them.

Lianna was sobbing, but Gordon paid no attention to her. He cried to Korkhann, "Can you take us to a communications center. I must send a message . . . ."

Korkhann, unused to violence, seemed still a little dazed. "A message to the . . . the barons . . . ?"

"A message to Zarth Arn and the Empire fleet!" snapped Gordon. "I know where the H'Harn armada is, and I must get that word through!"

Korkhann led them down by narrow, twisting ways buried within the walls of the palace, illuminated dimly by an occasional bulb. He brought them at last through another concealed door, into a long corridor.

"The palace Communications Center," said Korkhann. "The fourth door ahead."

There was no one in the hallway, and they went down it rapidly, Gordon and Shorr Kan in the lead. And now, even through the massive partitions of the palace, they could hear a growing uproar above them.

"The horde is inside the palace," said Korkhann. "They will be killing all the counts' men . . ."

"And us too, if they find us," said Hull Burrel.

They flung open the fourth door. Beyond it was the large room filled with the instruments of galactic communication. They went in very fast. A man who wore the uniform of the Mace sat at the bank of controls, which he touched with a curious uncertainty. Behind him stood two robed H'Harn, the ones V'ril had sent with the message for the H'Harn fleet. The man froze with his hands in mid air. The H'Harn turned swiftly, and died with the motion uncompleted.

Gordon aimed his weapon at the frightened operator. "Did you send that message for the H'Harn?"

The man's face was greasy with sweat. He looked down at the small gray crumpled mounds and shivered. "I was trying to. But they use different frequencies . . . modulations . . . all different from ours, and that takes time. They told me they'd take me over and hurt my mind if I didn't hurry, but I couldn't . . . ."

The stupid H'Harn running true to form, thought Gordon. Use all other peoples simply as tools, and break them if they do not instantly perform.

He turned to Hull Burrel. "You were in touch with Zarth Arn's fleet until the attack came. Reach them now."

Hull threw the operator out of the chair and began punching buttons and turning vernier controls.

The uproar in the palace above them was penetrating more loudly to this level. Shorr Kan closed the door of the Communications Center and locked it.

"They'll get down here eventually," he said. "But it may hold them for a while."

Gordon watched the door, sweating, until Hull established contact with the fleet. Telestereo was not possible at such distances, but Gordon could hear the voices of the fleet communications officers as they acknowledged and cut through channels to the top, and presently the voice of Zarth Arn was speaking to him.

"Just beyond the end of the Vela Spur," said Gordon. "That's where the H'Harn fleet is lying. They've got some new form of radar-concealment." He went on to give every scrap his memory recalled, from the time his mind was twinned with V'ril's. "I don't know," he finished, "if even this will help you to pin them down, but at least it's something."

"I'll tell you, Gordon," said Zarth Arn, "we'll give it a damned good try!"

The contact was instantly broken.

So that was done. Everything was done that they could do. They looked at each other, not saying anything, and Gordon went over and took Lianna in his arms.

The uproar in the palace was louder and closer. They could hear doors being smashed in. There were screeching and yowling and barking voices, the flap of wings and the clatter of running hooves, always coming closer.

"It looks to me," said Shorr Kan, "as though we're getting near to all this heroic dying you've been dwelling on in such a morbid fashion." He shrugged. "Oh, well. At least Cyn Cryver got his. I could have forgiven the man his rascalities, but oh God, what a bore he was!"

Suddenly a new sound penetrated the palace. It was less a sound than a deep bass vibration, growing rapidly stronger, shaking the whole fabric of the great building, then passing overhead and away.

Shorr Kan's eyes flashed. "That was a heavy battle-cruiser! Now I wonder . . . ."

A second mighty ship went over the palace, shaking it till it trembled, and then a third.

Then, upon the telestereo plate, there appeared the image of a man . . . an elderly man, hard-faced and cold-eyed, wearing on his cloak the flaring emblem of the Hercules Cluster.

"The Baron Zu Rizal speaking," he began, and then saw Lianna and said, "Highness, I rejoice that you are safe!"

Shorr Kan had instantly turned his back to the tele-stereo, an action that did not surprise Gordon in the least.

"We smashed the counts' fleet in the Austrinus Shoals," Zu Rizal was saying, "and we are now over Hathyr with our full forces and what is left of the Fomalhaut Navy. Your city is obviously occupied by Narath's hordes . . . shall we blast them?"

"No, wait," said Lianna. "Narath Teyn and Cyn Cryver are dead, and I think . . ."

Korkhann stepped forward and spoke to her in a low voice. She nodded, and then spoke again to Zu Rizal.

"With Narath dead, I think the horde will return to its own worlds, if they know that destruction is their alternative. Korkhann has said that he will offer them the terms."

"Very well," said Zu Rizal. "We will cruise on standby until further word from you."

The image disappeared, and only then did Shorr Kan turn around again.

A sudden silence had fallen on the palace. The great warships were still thundering by overhead, but the screech and yowl and crying of the horde had faded away. It seemed that the coming of the ships had sent them scurrying outside, as though they felt that the palace had become a possible trap. They wanted running room.

"I think," said Korkhann, "that they will listen to me, because I am not human either." He pointed to the communicator panel. "Get word to the officers of the counts' transports, to be ready to receive these peoples and take them back to the Marches."

He started away and then stopped for a moment and said, "One more thing, Highness. I regret to say that Abro was killed in the attack on the palace."

Gordon felt a sense of loss. Abro had disliked him thoroughly, but he had respected the man even so.

Hull Burrel remained with his ear to the instrument on whose wave-length he had communicated with the faraway Empire fleet His face was gray and lined with strain.

"Nothing yet," he said. "There may be nothing for a long time."

If ever, thought Gordon. The H'Harn were powerful. If they should strike first, from their refuge of invisibility, and destroy the ship that carried Zarth Arn and the Disrupter . . .

He forced himself not to think of that.

The hours went by, and the great ships thundered past above, and Gordon and Lianna and Hull Burrel waited. At one point, Gordon realized that Shorr Kan had quietly disappeared.

Long later, Gordon would learn the story of what happened beyond the rim of the galaxy. Of the Empire fleet, with Zarth Arn's flagship in its van, racing toward the Vela Spur. And of how Zarth Arn had unloosed the terrible force of the Disruptor, time after time, bracketing with cold precision an area of space where there was nothing to be seen, until the continuum itself was bent and twisted and torn and all the stars along the rim quaked in their orbits, and the force that had concealed the H'Harn fleet was shattered. And still the Disruptor struck its vast invisible bolt, now aimed unerringly at the fleeing ships, until the H'Harn fleet had vanished forever from the universe.

All Gordon knew now was that these were the longest hours of his life, until the shaken voice of Zarth Arn came through.

"It's done. The H'Harn are smashed, and what's left of them are in flight, back to the Lesser Magellanic."

For a moment, none of them could speak. Then Gordon, remembering the foulness of the life he had briefly fused with, muttered a heartfelt, "Thank God!"

"They will not come again." Zarth Arn's voice, thready with distance, held an iron resolve. "We shall gather a force from all the star-kingdoms, to go after them and smash them on every world where they rule."

He added, "Gordon?"

"Yes?"

"I know now what you meant when you told me how using the Disruptor shook you. I've known about the thing all my life, but I never used it till now. I hope I never have to again."

When the contact was broken, they looked at each other, too exhausted to drained of emotion to feel much of anything. The relief, the joy, the triumph . . . all that would come later. In the meantime, it was enough to be alive and know that hope lived too.

Lianna led the way out of the room, up the ways of the palace, all empty now.

They came out onto the great balcony and in their faces was the diamond flare of Fomalhaut, setting toward the horizon. Across the ravaged city its brilliant rays struck down into the streets, and everywhere the hordes were moving out, out across the plain to where the transports waited.

Down the great Avenue of the Kings, away from the palace, went a little troop of the Gerrn, not running now but walking slowly. They went apart from the others, as a guard of honor, and across the back of their giant leader lay the body of a man in glittering garments. Narath of Teyn was going home.

Down from the sky rolled the massive thunder, as the barons continued their grim patrol. And, as she looked out over the scarred city with the forlorn smokes still rising from it, Lianna's fingers tightened on Gordon's.

"It will live again," she said. "The people will come back, and you and I will help them to rebuild. And . . . it's a small price to pay for the defeat of the H'Harn."

There was a discreet cough behind them. They turned and found Shorr Kan standing there, ignoring Hull Burrel's frown.

"Highness, I'm glad that all came well," said Shorr Kan blandly. "You will admit that I was of some help."

"I'll admit that your quick thinking about Narath's death saved us, yes," said Lianna, as though the words were wrenched from unwilling lips.

"Good. Now I have a small favor to ask." Shorr Kan came closer, speaking in a confidential voice. "It's the damned barons I'm thinking about. They're a tough lot, not like you and Gordon. No sense of humor at all. If they catch me, they'll hang me in a minute."

He added, "And there's Jhal Arn to think about as well. He must still believe that I was concerned in the assassination of his father, although I wasn't . . . that was all Corbulo's idea, and stupid as Corbulo's ideas always were. But I shouldn't care to fall into his hands, either."

Lianna looked at him coldly. "I quite see your point. Now what is this favor?"

"Well," said Shorr Kan, "you'll remember that I overpowered Obd Doll and the rest of the crew of that little cruiser and we brought them here? Yes. Obd Doll and his men are down in the palace dungeons . . . luckily for them, since the Horde couldn't get to them. The cruiser is still in the royal spaceport, and I have ascertained that it's undamaged."

"Go on."

"I've been talking to Obd Doll and his men. They're pretty disgusted at the mess Cyn Cryver led them into with his plotting. They'd like to go back home and start their world going again under new leadership . . . sane, conservative leadership."

"In other words," said Gordon ironically, "Shorr Kan's leadership."

He nodded. "It does so happen, that not only do they not hold it against me that I captured them, but they think I'd be just the man to bring things to order on their world. They think they can convince their people."

"Go on," said Lianna.

"The favor I ask, Highness, is simply that you let me take Obd Doll and his men with me in that cruiser, and send word to the barons . . . without mentioning me, of course . . . to let the ship through."

"So that you can start new trouble in the Marches?" cried Lianna. "You . . . !"

"Please, Highness!" said Shorr Kan, looking pained. "I'm all through with that now, an older and wiser man. All I want is a little planet where I can live at peace, nothing more."

"Oh, Lord!" said Gordon. "You ought to put that to music."

"I think," said Lianna, "that you will raise a racket in times to come, all through the Marches, and I will live to regret this day. But I am a queen, and a debt is a debt. Take your people and go."

Shorr Kan gallantly kissed her hand. He shook Gordon's, and turned away. He stopped when he saw Hull Burrel glaring at him. He went up to the Antarian and took him by the hand.

"It's hard to part this way, old friend," he said. "We've been through a lot together, and I know how you must feel to see me go."

Hull's coppery face flushed scarlet and he began to make inarticulate growling noises. But Shorr Kan wrung his unwilling hand and said, "Don't try to express your sorrow at my leaving, Hull. No tears, old friend, no weakness! Farewell."

He went away with a jaunty stride, heels clicking on the marble floor. Gordon, turning to Lianna, was amazed to see a half-smile on her face.

"At last I see what it is in that devil that attracts you," she said. "One hardly ever meets a man who is perfect at anything . . . but Shorr Kan is the perfect rogue."

In a short while, a small dispatch cruiser went skyward from the royal spaceport, and they watched it streak away across the flaring heavens.

And the white sun went down.

STARK AND THE STAR KINGS

The great Rift Valley runs southeast just below the equator, a stupendous gash across the dry brown belly of Mars. Two and a half thousand miles it runs in length, and as much as twenty thousand feet in depth, and all that enormous emptiness is packed and brimming over with the myths and superstitions of more thousands of years than even the Martians can count.

Along the nighted floor of the valley, Eric John Stark went alone.

The summons had been for him alone. It had reached him unexpectedly in the gritty chill of a Dryland camp. A voice of power had spoken in his mind. A quiet voice, as compelling as death.

"Oh, N'Chaka," the voice had said. "Man-Without-a-Tribe. The Lord of the Third Bend bids you come."

All Mars knew that the one who called himself Lord of the Third Bend had laired for many lifetimes in the hidden depths of the Great Rift Valley. Human? No one could say. Even the Ramas, those nearly-immortal Martians with whom Stark had once done battle in the dead city of Sinharat, had known nothing about him. But they feared his strength.

Stark had thought about it for perhaps an hour, watching red dust blow across a time-eaten land made weird and unfamiliar by the strangely diminished sunlight.

It was odd that the summons should come now. It was odd that the Lord of the Third Bend should know enough about him to call him by that name that few men knew and fewer still ever used; not his true patronymic but his first-name, given him by the sub-human tribe that had reared him. It was odd, in fact, that the Lord of the Third Bend should call him by any name, at any time, as though he might have need of him.

Perhaps he did.

And in any case, it was not often that one was invited into the presence of Legend.

So Stark was riding his scaly beast through the perpetual night of the valley, toward the Third Bend. Although that voice of power had not spoken again in his mind, he had known exactly how to reach his destination.

He was approaching it now.

Far ahead, to the right, a little light showed. The rays were as feeble as though strangled at birth, but the light was there. It grew slowly brighter, shifting in his view as the beast changed direction. They were rounding the Third Bend.

The ruddy glow of light strengthened, contracting from a vague glow into a discrete point.

The beast shied suddenly. It turned its ungainly head and hissed, staring through the darkness to the left.

"And now what?" Stark asked it, his hand going to the weapon at his belt.

He could see nothing. But it seemed to him that he heard a faint sound as of laughter, and not in a human voice.

He took his hand away from his weapon. Stark did not doubt that the Lord of the Third Bend had servants, and there was no reason that the servants need be human.

Stark cuffed his mount and rode on, looking neither to right nor left. He had been invited here, and he was damned if he would show fear.

The beast padded on reluctantly, and the far-off witch-laughter drifted through the darkness, now louder and again soft and far away. The point of ruddy light ahead expanded and became an upright rectangle, partly veiled by mists that seemed to curl through it from beyond.

The glowing rectangle was a great open door, with a light beyond it. The door was in the side of a building whose shape and dimensions were unguessable in the shrouding darkness. Stark got the impression of a huge sombre citadel going up into the perpetual night of the abyss and showing only this one opening.

He rode up to the portal and dismounted, and went through into the curling mists beyond. He could see nothing of whatever hall or cavern he had entered, but there was a feeling of space, of largeness.

He stopped and waited.

For a time there was no sound at all. Then, from somewhere in the mist, whispered the sweet and evil laughter that was not quite human.

Stark said to it, "Tell your master that N'Chaka awaits his pleasure."

There were hidden titterings and scurryings that seemed to circle upon themselves, and then that quiet compelling voice he remembered spoke to him. He was not sure for a moment whether he heard it with his ears or with his mind. Perhaps both. It said,

"I am here, N'Chaka."

"Then show yourself," said Stark. "I bargain with no one whose face I cannot see."

No one appeared, and the voice said with infinite softness, "Bargain? Was there mention of bargaining? Does the knife in one's hand bargain with its owner?"

"This knife does," said Stark. "You must have need of me or you would not have brought me here. If you have need of me, you will not destroy out of mere annoyance. Therefore show yourself, and let us talk."

"Here in my remoteness," said the voice, "the winds have told me much of the Earthman with two names who is not of Earth. It appears that what I heard was true."

There came a sound of sandals upon the stone. The mists rolled back. The Lord of the Third Bend stood before Stark.

He was a young man, dressed in the very old High Martian costume of a toga-like garment whose ends brushed the floor. His smooth face was incredibly handsome.

"You may call me Aarl," he said. "It was my man-name once, long ago."

Stark felt the hairs lift on the back of his neck. The eyes in that young face were as black as space, as old, and as deep. They were eyes of knowledge and strength beyond anything human, eyes to steal a man's soul and drown it. They frightened him. He felt that if he looked full into them he would be shattered like flawed glass. Yet he was too proud to glance away. He said,

"Am I to understand that you have existed in this shape for all these ages?"

"I have had many shapes," said Aarl. "The outward semblance is only illusion."

"Perhaps for you," said Stark. "Mine is somewhat more integral. Well. I have come far and I am tired, hungry, and thirsty. Are wizards above the laws of hospitality?"

"Not this one," said Aarl. "Come with me."

They began walking through what Stark took, from the echoes, to be a high-roofed hall of some length. There was no more sound from the unseen servitors.

The mists drew farther back. Now Stark could see walls of dark stone that went up to a great height. Upon them were designs of fire, shining arabesques that constantly moved and changed shape. Something about them bothered Stark. After a moment he realised that the fiery designs were corroded, tarnished, like the sunlight of upper Mars.

"So," he said. "The darkness is here, too."

"It is," said Aarl. He glanced sideling at Stark as they walked. "How do the wise men of science explain this darkness to the people of the nine worlds?"

"You already know that, of course."

"Yes. Nevertheless, tell me."

"They say that the whole solar system has moved into a cosmic dust cloud that is dimming the sun."

"Do they believe that, these wise men with all their instruments?"

"I don't know. That is what they must say, of course, to forestall panic."

"Do you believe it?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"I have been among the tents of the Dryland nomads. Their wise men say differently. They say it is not an inert thing but an active force."

"They are wise indeed. It is not a dust cloud. It is more than that, very much more than that."

Aarl stopped walking and spoke with feverish intensity.

"Can you conceive of a vampire something that drinks energy, that steals it from across a great void . . . a greater void than you imagine? A thing that will, if it is not stopped, devour not only the light of the sun but even the force of gravity that holds this family of worlds together? That will literally destroy the solar system?"

Stark stared at him appalled, not wanting to believe yet knowing somehow that it was so.

The Lord of the Third Bend reached out and grasped Stark's wrist with an icy hand.

"I'm afraid, Stark. My powers are great, but against this they're useless without help. That is why I need you. Yes. Need you. Come, and I'll show you why."

* * *

They sat in a mist-bordered chamber high in the citadel. And Stark was remembering the words of an ancient bardic chant.

Fear the Lord of the Third Bend. Fear him, for he is the master of time.

"The great void of which I spoke," said Aarl, "is not only a dimension of space. Look."

Stark looked at the curtain of mist. And was caught by the incredible scene that formed within it.

A panorama of stars, the great glooms of the void a background for a wilderness of flaring suns. He felt himself drawn into that immensity, to rush through it at incredible speed. Chains of stars rose up before him, mountain-ranges of high-piled, shining nebulae loomed on either hand. He swept past them in all their glory and left them far behind.

The view shifted, changed perspective. And Stark beheld ships ahead of him, gleaming starships that raced through the celestial jungle.

He saw them brilliant and small as toys. With a vertiginous wrench he returned to the reality of his own body and the coldness of the stone he sat upon.

"You are adept," he said, "at putting all this into my mind. Which is what you're doing."

"True," said Aarl. "But it is not mere imagining. You see what I have seen across two hundred thousand years of time. You see the future."

Stark believed it. The Lord of the Third Bend had not acquired his stature in the minds of generations of men by means of fraud. The sort of shabby trickery known to any village thaumaturgist would not have stood the test. Aarl wielded the lost knowledge of forgotten Mars, a science that differed greatly from the science of Earth but was none the less a science.

He looked at the vision on the screen of mist. Two hundred thousand years.

"Those ships," said Aarl, "those very powerful ships that travel with such speed, are the ships of the Star Kings."

That name, heard for the first time, rang in Stark's mind like the strident call of a bugle.

"The Star Kings?"

"The men who rule that future umiverse, each in his own kingdom, principality, or barony."

"Ah," said Stark, and looked again. "That is right and fitting. The starlands are too bright for grubby clerks, and bureaucrats in rumpled suits each trying to be more common than the next. Yes. Let there be Star Kings."

"You must go there, Stark. Into the future."

A small pulse began to beat beneath the angle of Stark's jaw. "Into the future. Bodily? Your knowledge can send me bodily across two hundred thousand years?"

"Two years or two million. It is all the same."

"Can you bring me back? Bodily."

"If you survive."

"Hm," said Stark, and looked again at the vision. "How would I go? I mean, in what capacity?"

"As an envoy, a messenger. Someone must go and meet these Star Kings face to face." Aarl's voice was angry. "I have ascertained that this menace to our solar system exists in their time. I have attempted to contact them by mental arts, without success. They simply did not hear. That is why I sent for you, Stark."

"You sent for N'Chaka," Stark said, and smiled. N'Chaka, the Man-without-a-tribe who could not remember his real parents, naked fosterling of the beast-folk of wild sun-shattered Mercury; N'Chaka, who wore his acquired humanity like an uncomfortable garment and who still tended to use his teeth when angered. "Why N'Chaka as an ambassador to the courts of the Star Kings?"

"Because N'Chaka is an animal at heart, though he has a man's brain. Animals do not lie, they do not turn traitor because of greed for money or power, or because of that worse tempter, philosophical doubt." Aarl studied him with those space-deep eyes, "in other words, I can trust you."

"You think that if someone offered me a throne at Algol or Betelgeuse, I wouldn't take it?" Stark laughed. "The Lord of the Abyss overestimates the purity of the beast."

"I think not."

"And anyway, why a bastard Earthman? Why not a Martian?"

"We're too concerned with our past, too deeply rooted in our own sacred soil. You have no roots. You do have a devouring curiosity, and a rare capacity for survival. Otherwise you would not be here." He held up his hand to forestall comment. "Look."

The scene on the mist-curtain changed abruptly. Now a madman's dream of space appeared, a tangled nightmare of crowding suns, dead stars, filamentary nebulae. Stark seemed to be racing at blinding speed through this cosmic jungle.

"The region at the western limb of the galaxy," said Aarl. "it is called, in that future time, The Marches of Outer Space. It holds a number of the smaller star-kingdoms. It also holds this."

Two old red suns like ruby brooches pinned a ragged veil of darkness across the starfield. Stark plunged into the gloom of the dark nebula, past dim drowned stars dragging their nighted planets. The coiling dust seemed to tear like smoke with the wind of his passing. Out on the other side there was light again, but it was strangely bent, distorted around an area of blankness, of nothingness quite different from the dusty darkness of the nebula. He could not see into it. The vision seemed to recoil, as though struck back by a blow.

"Not even my arts can penetrate that blind area," said Aarl. "But it is from there that the force comes, leaping back through time, draining the energy from our solar system."

"And my task, if I go, will be a simple one," Stark said. "Find out what that force is, who is responsible for it, and put an end to it." He shook his head. "Your faith in my abilities is touching, but do you know what I think, Aarl? I think you've lived in this dark hole far too long. I think your senses have left you."

He stood up, turning his back to the screen of mist.

"The task is impossible, and you know it."

"Yet it must be done."

"If it's a natural phenomenon, some freak warping of the continuum . . ."

"Then of course we are helpless. But I don't think it is." Aarl rose. He seemed to have grown taller and his eyes were hypnotic in their intensity. "You have no love for Earth because of what Earthmen did to your foster-tribe, yet I think you would not truly wish all those millions dead and the planet with them, long before its time. And what of Mars, which has been something of a home to you? She too has a while to go before the night overtakes her."

The pulse hammered more strongly under Stark's jaw. "I wouldn't even know where to start. It could take a lifetime."

"We do not have a lifetime," said Aarl, "nor even half of one. The energy-drain is accelerating rapidly. And I can tell you where to begin. With a man named Shorr Kan, King of Aldeshar in the Marches. The most powerful of the petty kings, and wily enough for two. You will find him sympathetic."

"How so?"

"Because this strange force is causing him immediate trouble. You must find a way to enlist his help."

"You speak as though I've already made my decision."

"You have."

Stark turned and looked at the mist-curtain again. It was blank now, only mist and nothing more. Yet he could still see the ships of the Star Kings and the untamed jungle of the Marches. The future, undiscovered, unexplored. Could he have the chance to see it, and refuse?

He said, "I suppose you're right."

Aarl nodded. "You had no choice, really. I was sure of that before I summoned you."

Stark shrugged. Suppose he tried and failed; it was better than sitting helplessly. And he could make his own decision about coming back.

He followed Aarl out of the chamber.

They came at length into a long hall crowded with objects. Stark recognized several instruments of modern Earth science; there was a fine seismograph, spectroscopic equipment, an array of electronic items, the latest in lasers. There were other things that seemed to have survived out of ancient Mars, arrangements of crystalline shapes that had no meaning whatever for Stark. There were yet other objects that he surmised had been constructed by the Lord of the Third Bend himself.

One of these was a sort of helical cage of crystal ribbons whose upper part spiralled away toward the high-vaulted roof. It appeared to vanish up there. Stark attempted to follow its progressively blurring outlines and was forced to stop, overcome with vertigo.

Aarl took his place within the lower part of the cage. "This helix amplifies my mental powers and enables me to manipulate the time-dimension. Stand anywhere. I shall be able to retain contact with your mind, since we are now attuned to communication, but I shall not waste precious energy on conversation. When you are ready to come back, tell me."

He did something with his hands. The crystal ribbons began to run with subtle fires.

"When you awaken you will be in the future, and I shall have given you such knowledge of it as I possess."

Before the darkness took him, Stark felt an incongruous pang of hunger. Aarl's promised hospitality had not been forthcoming.

* * *

He had a strange dream. He was infinite. He was transparent. The spaces between his atoms were large enough to let whole constellations through. He moved, but his motion was neither forward nor backward; it was a sly sneaky sidelong slither through . . . what?

In his dream the motion made him very sick. He felt like vomiting, but there was nothing inside him and so he could only retch.

Perhaps that was why Aarl had not bothered to feed him.

Retching, he awoke.

And saw that he had stopped moving. There was solid ground beneath his feet. His stomach received this information gratefully.

The light was peculiar. It was greenish. He looked up and saw a green sun blazing in a blue-green sky flecked with minty clouds.

He recognized the sun. It was Aldeshar, in the Marches of Outer Space.

The planet whose solidity was so welcome to him must be Altoh, the throne-world.

He had appeared, materialized, reassembled . . . whatever it was he had done . . . on a low ridge above an alien city. It was a pleasant city, low-roofed and rambling, with here and there a tall fluted tower for variety. The people had done without the ugly cubism of functional building. A network of canals glittered in the sunlight. There was a profusion of trees and flowering shrubs. The wandering streets were thronged with people and the canals were busy with boats. There seemed to be no motorized traffic on the surface, so the air was blessedly clean.

All the movement in the streets seemed to be converging toward a point in the southwestern sector of the city, where he could see a clump of more imposing buildings, with taller towers and an enormous square. The city was Donalyr, the capital, and the buildings would be Shorr Kan's palace and the administrative center of the star-kingdom.

A vast deep-bass humming sound suddenly filled the heavens, drawing Stark's attention away from the city. Down across the sky, ablaze with light and roaring with the thunder of God, a colossal ship slanted into its landing pattern. Stark's gaze followed it down, to a starport far out beyond the northern boundaries of Donalyr. The ground trembled beneath him, and was still.

Stark went down to the city. In the time it took him to reach the outskirts, three more ships had landed.

He let himself be carried along with the flow of people toward the palace square. He found that Aarl had supplied him with a working knowledge of the language; he could understand the chatter around him. The folk of Altoh were tall and strong, with ruddy tan skins and sharp eyes and faces. They wore loose brightly-colored garments suitable to the mild climate. But there were many foreigners, in this place where the starships came and went, men and women and a sprinkling of non-humans, in all shapes and sizes and colors, wearing every sort of dress. Donalyr, apparently, was quite used to strangers.

Even so, the people he passed turned their heads to look at Stark. Perhaps it was his height and the way he moved, or perhaps it was something arresting about the harsh planes of his face and the peculiar lightness of his eyes, accentuated by a skin-color that spoke of long exposure to a savage sun. They sensed some difference in him. Stark ignored them, secure in the knowledge that they could not possibly guess the degree of his differentness.

Ships continued to drop in rolling thunder out of the sky. He had counted nine by the time he reached the edge of the great square. He looked upward to watch number ten come in, and he felt the tiniest movement close to him in the crowd, the lightest of touches as though a falling leaf had brushed him. He whipped his right hand round behind him, snapped it shut on something bony, and turned to see what he had caught.

A little old man stared up at him with the bright, unrepentant face of a squirrel caught stealing nuts from someone else's hoard.

"You're too fast," he said. "Even so, you'd never have had me if your clothing wasn't so unfamiliar. I thought I knew where every pocket and purse in the Marches is situated. You must come from way back in."

"Far enough," said Stark. The old man wore a baggy tunic of no particular color, neither light nor dark, brilliant nor dull. If you didn't look hard at him you wouldn't see him in the throng. Beneath the hem he showed knobby knees and pipestem shanks. "Well," said Stark, "and what shall we do with you, Grandfather?"

"I took nothing," said the old man. "And it's my word against yours . . . you can't prove that I even tried."

"Hm," said Stark. "How good is your word?"

"What a question to ask!" said the old man, drawing himself up.

"I'm asking it."

The old man shot off on another tack. "You're a stranger here. You'll need a guide. I know every stone of this city. I can show you all of its delights. I can keep you out of the hands of . . ."

" . . . of thieves and pickpockets. Yes." Stark pulled his captive around to a more comfortable position. "What's your name?"

"Song Durr."

"All right, Song Durr. There's no hurry, we can always decide later what to do." He kept a strong hold on the thin wrist. "Tell me what's going on here."

"The Lords of the Marches are gathering for a conference with Shorr Kan." He laughed. "Conference, my eye. What's your name, by the way?" Stark told him. "That's an odd one. I don't seem to place the world of origin."

"I am also called N'Chaka."

"Ah. From Strior, perhaps? Or Naroten?" He looked keenly at Stark. "Well, no matter." His voice dropped. "Perhaps that is your Brotherhood name?"

A brotherhood of thieves, of course. Stark shrugged and let the old man interpret the gesture as he would. "Why did you say, 'Conference, my eye'?"

"Some starships have been lost. The rulers of a dozen or so little kingdoms are hopping mad about it. They suspect that Shorr Kan is responsible." Song Durr cackled admiringly. "And I wouldn't be surprised if he were. He's the hell and all of a king. Give him a little more time and he'll rule all the Marches. Him, that didn't have a pan to cook in when he first came here." He added, "My hand will be quite ruined, Brother N'Chaka,"

"Not just yet. How were these ships lost?"

"They simply disappeared. Somewhere out beyond Dendrid's Veil."

"Dendrid's Veil. That would be a dark nebula? Yes. And who is Dendrid?"

"The Goddess of Death."

It seemed a fitting name. "And why do they blame Shorr Kan?"

Song Durr stared at him. "You must be from way back in. That's no man's land out there, and there's been a lot of pawing and picking at it . . . quarrels over boundaries, annexations, all that. A lot of it is still unexplored. Shorr Kan has been the most daring and ambitious in his activities, or the most unscrupulous, whichever way you want to put it, though they'd all do the same themselves if they had the courage. Also, we haven't lost any ships." He rubbed his skinny nose and grinned. "I'd like to be a fly on the wall when they have that conference."

Stark said, "Brother Song Durr, let us be two flies."

The old man's eyes popped. "You mean, get right inside the palace?" He pulled sharply against Stark's grip. "Oh, no."

"You mistake me," Stark said. "I don't mean to break in like thieves. I mean to walk in, like kings."

Or like ambassadors. Envoys, from another time and place. Stark wondered if Aarl were listening, in his misty Martian citadel two hundred thousand years ago.

Song Durr stood, rigid in all his stringy sinews, while Stark told him what he was going to have to do if he wanted to keep his freedom.

In the end, Song Durr began to smile.

"I think I would like that," he said. "Yes, I think that would be better than another stay in the convict pens. I don't know why . . . if it were anyone but you, Brother N'Chaka, I'd take the pens, but somehow you make me believe that we can get away with it." He shook his head. "You do have large ideas, for a country boy."

Cackling, he led the way toward the surrounding streets.

"We'll have to hurry, Brother. The Star Kings will be arriving soon, and we mustn't be late to the party!"

* * *

The procession of the Star Kings glittered its way from the landing place at the far end of the palace square, where the hover-cars came down, along the central space held open by rows of tough-looking guardsmen in white uniforms, toward the palace itself. There were jewels enough and royal costumes of divers sorts, and faces of many colors, four of them definitely non-human; a brilliant pageant, Stark thought, and suitable to the place, with the magnificent towers looming above in the fierce green glare of the sun, the vast crowd, the humming silence, the intricately carved and fluted portico where Shorr Kan, Sovereign Lord of Aldeshar, sat upon a seat of polished stone . . . a tiny figure at this distance, but somehow radiating power even so, a signal brightness among grouped and shining courtiers.

The brazen voice of a chamberlain echoed across the square, reproduced from clusters of speakers.

"Burrul Opis, King of the worlds of Maktoo, Lord Paramount of the Nebula Zorind. Kan Martann, King of the Twin Suns of Keldar. Flane Fell, King of Tranett and Baron of Leth . . . ."

One by one the Star Kings approached the seat of Shorr Kan and were greeted, and passed on into the palace with their retinues.

"Now," said Stark, and pushed Song Durr forward. From between two of the guardsmen the old man cried out,

"Wait! Wait, there! One other is here to confer with our sovereign lord! Eric John Stark, Ambassador Ex . . ."

His voice squeaked off as the guardsmen grabbed him. The chamberlain who was turning away from the last departing hover-car, looked with surprised annoyance at the commotion.

Stark stepped forward, thrusting the guardsmen apart. "Eric John Stark, Ambassador Extraordinary from the worlds of Sol."

He had shed his travel-stained garments, still patched with the red dust of Mars. He was clad all in black now, a rich tunic heavy with embroidery over soft trousers and fine boots. Song Durr had stolen them from one of the best shops catering to off-worlders. He had wanted to steal some jewels as well, but Stark had settled for a gold chain. For a moment everything went into a tableau as the chamberlain stared at Stark and the guardsmen hesitated over whether or not they should kill him where he stood.

Stark said to the chamberlain, "Tell your master that my mission is urgent, and deals with the subject of the conference."

"But you were not on the list. Your credentials . . ."

"I have travelled a very long way," said Stark, "to speak with your king. What I have to say concerns the death of suns. Are you a man of such courage that you dare turn me away?"

"I am not a brave man at all," said the chamberlain. "Hold them." The guardsmen held. The chamberlain sent an attendant scurrying toward the palace. Shorr Kan had paused in his rising, his attention drawn to the interruption. There was some hurried talk, and Stark saw Shorr Kan make a decisive gesture. The attendant came scurrying back.

"The Ambassador from Sol may approach, with an escort."

The chamberlain looked relieved. He nodded to the guardsmen, who stepped out of line, weapons at the ready, and positioned themselves behind Stark and Song Durr, who was now gloriously robed in crimson. The little man was breathing hard, holding himself nervously erect.

They strode through a rising babble as the crowd pushed and craned to see this new curiosity. They mounted the palace steps. And Stark stood before Shorr Kan, King of Aldeshar in the Marches of Outer Space.

King he might be, but he had not grown fat on it, nor unwatchful. He was still the hunting tiger, the cool-eyed predator with prey under his paw and his whiskers a-twitch with eagerness to get more. He looked at Stark with a kind of deadly good humor, baring strong white teeth in a strong hard face.

"Ambassador Extraordinary from the worlds of Sol. Tell me, Ambassador . . . where is Sol?"

That was a good question, and one Stark did not attempt to answer. "Very far away," he said, "but even so, of interest to Your Majesty."

"How so?"

"The problem facing you here in the Marches also affects us. When I heard of the conference, I didn't wait to present my credentials in the normal manner. It's vital that I attend." Was Shorr Kan ignorant of Sol because of its distance and unimportance, or because it no longer existed? In which case . . . Stark forced the thought resolutely away. If he let his mind become involved with time paradoxes he would never get anywhere.

"Vital," Shorr Kan was asking, "to whom?"

"This power beyond Dendrid's Veil, whatever it may be, is killing our sun, our solar system. Yours may be next. I would say it's vital to all of us to find out what that power is."

Deep in the tiger eyes Stark saw the stirring of a small shadow and recognized it for what it was. Fear.

Shorr Kan nodded his dark head once. "The Ambassador from Sol may enter."

The guardsmen stepped back. Stark and Song Durr followed the king and his courtiers through the great portal.

"I almost believed you myself," Song Durr whispered. His step was light now, his face crinkled in a greedy smile. "For a country boy, you do well."

Stark wondered how he would feel about that later on.

The conference was a stormy one, held in a huge high-vaulted hall that made kings and courtiers seem like dressed-up children huddled in the midst of its ringing emptiness. Some predecessor of Shorr Kan's had designed it most carefully. The dwindling effect of the architecture was deliberate. The throne-chair was massive, set so high that everyone must look up and become aware, not only of the throne and its occupant, but of the enormous winged deities that presided on either side of the dais. They had identical faces, very fierce and jut-nosed and ugly. Eyes made of precious stones glared down at the lesser kings. Stark surmised that the original of those unpleasant faces had been the builder's own.

Shorr Kan sat there now, and listened to his enemies.

Flane Fell, King of Tranett, seemed to be spokesman for the group, and the foremost in angry accusation. His skin was the color of old port, his features vulturine. He wore gray, with a diamond sunburst on his breast, and his bald skull, narrow as a bird's, was surmounted by a kind of golden tower. After a great deal of bickering and shouting he cried out,

"If you are not responsible for the loss of our ships, then who is? What is? Tell us, Shorr Kan!"

Shorr Kan smiled. He was younger than Stark had expected, but then youth was nothing against a conqueror.

"You believe that I am developing some great secret weapon out there beyond Dendrid's Veil. Why?"

"Your ambitions are well known. You'll rule the Marches alone, if you can."

"Of course," said Shorr Kan. "Isn't that true of every one of us? It's not my ambitions you fear, it's my ability. And I'd remind you that I've not needed any secret weapons so far." All their silken plumage rustled with indignation, and he laughed. "You have formed an alliance against me, I'm told."

"Yes."

"How do you propose to use it?"

"Force," said Flane Fell, and the others shouted agreement. "Overwhelming force, if you drive us to it. Your navy is powerful, but against our combined fleets Aldeshar couldn't stand for a week."

"True," said Shorr Kan, "but consider. What if I do in fact possess a secret weapon? What would happen then to your lovely fleets? I doubt if you'll take that chance."

"Don't be too sure, upstart," said Kan Martann furiously. "We've all lost ships, all but you, Shorr Kan. If you have no weapon, and you're truly ignorant of the force beyond Dendrid's Veil, why are you preserved from misfortune?"

"Because I'm smarter than you are. After the first ship disappeared, I kept mine out of there." He made a sweeping gesture, bringing Stark into the group. "I present to you Eric John Stark, Ambassador Extraordinary from the worlds of Sol. Perhaps we ought to hear what he has to say. It seems to have some bearing on our quarrel."

Stark knew from the beginning that he was talking against the barrier of completely closed minds. Still, he told them the meticulous truth, leaving out only the mention of time and characterizing Aarl simply as a scientist. They barely let him finish.

"What did you hope to gain by this?" asked Flane Fell, addressing the throne. "The fellow is an obvious imposter, intended to convince us that because some mythical system on the other side of the galaxy is being attacked by this menace, you could have nothing to do with it. Did you think we'd believe it?"

"I think you're a parcel of fools," said Shorr Kan, when the clamor had subsided. "Suppose he's telling the truth. If this thing can kill one sun, it can kill another . . . Aldeshar, Tranett, Maktoo, the Twins of Keldar."

"We're not that easily deceived!"

"Which simply means that you're frightened out of your royal wits. You want to believe in a weapon controlled by me because you feel you can do something about that. But suppose it's a weapon not controlled by me? Suppose it's some wild freak of nature not controlled, or controllable, by anyone? Wouldn't you be wiser to find out?"

"We've tried," said Flane Fell grimly. "We lost ships and gained no knowledge. Now it's up to you. This is our ultimatum, Shorr Kan. Dismantle your weapon, or give us proof that the thing is not of your making. In one month's time an unmanned vessel will be sent beyond the Veil. If it vanishes, and your proofs have not been forthcoming, it means war."

They lifted their clenched fists all together and shouted, "War!"

"I hear you, brother kings. Now go."

The group departed with a clatter of jewelled heels on the echoing floor.

"You, too," said Shorr Kan, and dismissed his courtiers. "Stay," he said to Stark. "And you, little thief . . ."

"Majesty," said Song Durr, "I am chamberlain to the Ambassador . . . ."

"Don't lie to me," said Shorr Kan. "I was one of the Brotherhood myself, before I became a king. You have my permission to steal, if you can do it without being caught, as much as will not bulge that borrowed finery. In one hour I shall send men to hunt for you, but they will not look beyond the palace doors."

"Majesty," said Song Durr, "I embrace your knees. And yours, country boy. We were well met indeed. Good luck to you." He scampered away, thin shanks twinkling beneath his robe.

"His worries are small," said Shorr Kan, and smiled.

"But you don't envy him."

"If I did, I would be in his place." Shorr Kan came down from the throne and stood before Stark. "You're a strange man, Ambassador. You make me uneasy, and you bring disturbing news. Perhaps I ought to have you killed at once. That is what my brother kings would do. But I'm not a born king, you see, I'm an upstart, and so I keep my eyes and ears and especially my mind wide open. Also, I have another advantage over my colleagues. I know I'm telling the truth when I say that. I have no secret weapon, and I do not know what force this is that eats up ships and stars. Do you believe me, Ambassador?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"If you controlled the force, you'd use it."

Shorr Kan Laughed. "You see that, do you? Of course you do. That pack . . ." He jerked his chin contemptuously at the doorway. "Their spite blinds them. Their chief hope is to be rid of me, no matter what else befalls them."

"You must admit they've mousetrapped you rather neatly."

"They think they have. But they are only petty kings, Ambassador, and there is nothing more petty than a petty king."

He looked up and around the great hall. "Hideous, isn't it? And those two fellows there beside the throne, with their ugly great faces. I've thought of putting hats on them, but they look silly enough already. Aldeshar was always a petty kingdom, always will be. But first steps must be small, Ambassador. There are larger thrones ahead."

Ambition, intelligence, energy, ruthlessness, shone in him like a brilliant light. They made him beautiful, with the beauty of things which are perfect in their design and flawless in their functioning.

"Now there is a problem to be solved, eh?" The tiger eyes came back to Stark, fixed on him. "Why did you come to me, Ambassador? All this long, long way from Sol."

"It seemed that we might help each other."

"You need help from me," said Shorr Kan. "Do I need help from you?"

"How can I answer that until we know what threatens us?"

Shorr Kan nodded. "I have a feeling about you, Ambassador Stark. We shall be great friends, or great enemies, and if it's the latter, I'll not hesitate to kill you."

"I know that."

"Good, we understand each other. Now, there is much to do. My scientific advisors will want to hear your story. Then . . ."

"Your Majesty," said Stark, "of your mercy . . . it's been a long time since I tasted food."

A scant two hundred thousand years.

* * *

Two old red suns like ruby brooches pinned a ragged curtain of darkness across the starfield. Dendrid's Veil, looking exactly as Stark had seen it in the mist of Aarl's citadel chamber. The view was still a projection, this time on the simulator screen of a Phantom scout, the fastest ship in Shorr Kan's fleet, loaded with special gear.

Stark and Shorr Kan stood together studying the simulator. Beneath Stark and around him, tormenting the whole of the ship's fabric and his own flesh, was the throb and hum of the FTL drive, a subliminal sense of wrenching displacement coupled with a suffocating feeling of being trapped inside a shell of unimaginable power like an unhatched chick in an egg. The image on the screen was an electronic trick no more genuine than Aarl's, except that the actual nebula was ahead.

The flight was no spur-of-the-moment thing. There had been endless hasslings with counsellors; scientific advisors, military and civilian advisors, all of whom pulled furiously in totally different directions. In the end, Shorr Kan had had his way.

"A king is made for ruling. When he ceases to have the courage and the vision necessary to perform that function, he had damn well better abdicate. My kingdom is threatened with destruction by two things, war and the unknown. Unless the unknown is made known, war is inevitable. Therefore it is my duty to find out what lies beyond Dendrid's Veil."

"But not in person," said his counsellors. "The risk is too great."

"The risk is too great to send anyone but myself," said Shorr Kan. Nobility radiated from him, illumined the throne and the ugly genies. It was easy to see how he drew his followers to him. "What is a king, if he does not think first of the safety of his people? Prepare a ship."

After all the orders were given and the counsellors sent off to deal with them, Shorr Kan grinned at Stark. They were alone then in the great hall.

"Nobility is all very well, but one must be practical too. Do you see my point, Ambassador?"

Stark's patience had worn somewhat with the wrangling and delay. He had been conscious of an increasing urgency, as though Aarl were putting a silent message into his mind; "Hurry!"

He said rather curtly, "At best you'll bait your brother kings to follow you because they'll be afraid to let you go alone. You may find a way to destroy them, or use them as allies, whichever seems advisable at the time. At worst, with a fast ship under you, you may hope to have a line of escape open if things go too far wrong. How can you be sure they won't simply blow you out of space, thus negating both possibilities?"

"They'll want me to lead them to the weapon. I think they'll wait." Shorr Kan put his hand confidently on Stark's shoulder. "And since you'll be with me, you had better hope that I'm right. I've made some enquiries about you, Ambassador."

"Oh?"

"I thought perhaps you might be a spy for my brother kings, or even an assassin. You do have the look of one, you know. But my agents could find no trace of you, and you don't seem to have sprung from any of our local planets. So I must believe you're what you say you are. There's only one small problem . . ." He smiled at Stark. "We still haven't been able to locate Sol. So I'm keeping you by me, Ambassador, close by, as an unknown quantity."

An unknown quantity, Stark thought, to be used or discarded. Yet he could not help liking Shorr Kan.

And now he stood in the bridge of the scout and wondered whether Shorr Kan had read his brother kings aright. Because the ships of the Kings of the Marches had followed them, were following, at a discreet distance but hanging stubbornly in their wake.

"We'll make planetfall in the nebula," said Shorr Kan. "Ceidri, the farthest inhabited world we know and the closest to the edge of this unknown power. They're strange folk, the Ceidrins, but the Marches are full of strange folk, the beginnings of new evolutions and the rags and bobtails of old ones driven out here by successive waves of interstellar conquest. Perhaps they can tell us something."

"They're scientists?"

"In their own peculiar way."

The chief of the scientists who had accompanied the battery of instruments mounted aboard made a derisive sound.

"Sorcerors. And not even human."

"And what have you been able to tell us?" Shorr Kan demanded. "That there is an area of tremendous force beyond the Veil, force sufficient to warp space around it, destroying everything that comes near it? We knew that. Can you tell us how to approach this force, how to learn its source without being destroyed ourselves?"

"Not yet."

"When you know, tell me. Until then, I'll take whatever knowledge I can get regardless of the source."

Time passed, time that was running out for all of them, here and now and for the nine little worlds of Sol two hundred thousand years in the past. The ship plunged into the dark nebula as into a cloud of smoke, and it was as Stark had seen it on Aarl's misty curtain, the coiling wraiths seeming to shred away with the speed of the ship's passing. An illusion, and then the ship dropped out of FTL into normal space. Here at the edge of the nebula the veil was thin and a half-drowned star burned with a lurid light, hugging one small planet close to it for warmth.

Through the torn openings of Dendrid's Veil, Stark could see what lay beyond, the area of blankness, secret and strange.

It seemed to have grown since last he saw it.

They landed on the planet, a curious shadowed world beneath its shrouded sun, a hothouse of pale vegetation. There was a town, with narrow lanes straggling off among the trees and houses that were themselves like clumps of vegetation, woven of living vines that bloomed heavily with dark flowers.

The people of Ceidri were dark too, and small, deep-eyed and shambling, with clever hands and coats of rich glossy fur that shed the rain. They received their visitors out of doors, where there was room for them to stand erect. Night came on and the sky glowed with twisting dragon-shapes of dull fire where the parent star lit drifts of dust.

Talk was through an interpreter, but Stark was aware of more than the spoken words. There were powerful undercurrents of both fear and excitement.

"It is growing," said the chief, "it reaches, grasps, sucks. It is a strong child. It has begun to think."

There came a silence over the clearing. A shower of rain fell lightly and passed on.

"You are saying," said Shorr Kan in a strangely flat voice, "that that thing out there is alive? Interpreter, make certain of the meaning!"

"It lives," said the chief. His eyes glowed in his small snubby face. "We feel it." And he added, "It will kill us soon."

"Then it is evil?"

"Not evil. No." His narrow shoulders lifted. "It lives."

Shorr Kan turned to his scientists. "Can this be possible? Can a force . . . a . . . nothing be alive?"

"It has been postulated that the final evolution might be a creature of pure energy, alive in the sense that it would feed on energy, as all life-forms do in one form or another, and be sentient . . . to what degree we can only guess, anything from amoeboid to God-like."

The chief of the scientists stared at the heavens, and then at the small brown creatures who watched with their strange eyes. "We cannot accept it. Not on this evidence. Such a momentous occurrence . . ."

" . . . ought to have been discovered by the proper authorities," said Shorr Kan, and added a short word. "It may be so, it may not be so, but let us keep an open mind." To the headman of the Ceidrins he said urgently, "Can you speak to the thing? Communicate?"

"It does not hear us. Do you hear the cry of the organisms in the air you breathe or the water you drink?"

"But you can hear . . . it?"

"Oh, yes, we hear. It grows swiftly. Soon we shall hear nothing else."

"Can you make us able to hear?"

"You are men, and men tend to be deafened by their own noises. But there is one here . . ." His glossy head turned. His eyes met Stark's. "One here is not like the rest, he is not quite deaf. Perhaps we can help him to hear."

"Very well, Ambassador," said Shorr Kan, "You came to learn what it is that eats your sun. Here is your chance."

They told him what to do. He knelt upon the ground and they formed a ring of small dark shapes around him, with the dark flowers shedding a heavy scent, and the dragon sky above. He looked into the glowing eyes of the chief, and felt his mind becoming malleable, being drawn out, a web of sensitive threads, stretching, linking with the circled minds.

Gradually, he began to hear.

He heard imperfectly with his limited human brain, and he was glad instinctively that this was so. He could not have supported the full blaze of that consciousness. Even the echo of it stunned him.

Stunned him with joy.

The joy of being alive, of being sentient and aware, of being young, thrusting, vibrant, strong. The joy of being.

There was no evil in that joy, no cruelty in the strength that pulsed and grew, sucking life from the cradling universe as simply and naturally as a blade of grass sucks nourishment from the soil. Energy was its food and it ate and was not conscious of life destroyed. That conception was impossible to it. In its view nothing could be destroyed, only changed from one form to another. It saw all of creation as one vast source of fuel for its eternal fires, and that creation now included all of time as well as space. The tremendous force gathering at the heart of the thing had begun to twist the fabric of the continuum itself, deforming it so fantastically that the Sol of two hundred thousand years ago was as accessible as the drowned sun of Ceidri.

It was very young. It was without sin. Its mental potential spanned parsecs. Already it had intimations of its own greatness. It would think, and grow, while the myriad wheeling galaxies swarmed like bees in the sheer beauty of their being, and in due course it would create. God knew what it would create, but all its impulses shone and were pure.

It was innocent. And it was a killer.

Yet Stark yearned to be a part of that divine strength and joyousness. He desired to be lost forever within it, relieved of self and all the petty agonies that went with human living. He felt that he had almost achieved this goal when the contract was broken and he found himself still kneeling with the Ceidrins round him and a soft rain falling. The rain had wet his cheeks, and he was desolate.

Shorr Kan spoke to him, and he answered.

"It is alive. A new species. And it means the end of ours, if we don't kill it. If it can be killed."

He stood up, and he saw their faces staring at him, the King of Aldeshar and his scientists and his experts in war and weaponry, doubtful and afraid. Afraid to believe, afraid not to believe.

And Stark added, "If it should be killed."

The voices began then, clamoring all at once, until they were silenced by a new sound.

Down across the dragon sky, the ships of the Star Kings came to land.

Shorr Kan said, "We'll wait for them here." He looked at Stark. "While your mind was straining at its tether to be gone, I had a report from my ship. The power cells are being drained. Only an infinitesimal loss so far, but definite. I wonder what my brother kings will make of it all."

His brother kings were jubilant. They had left their heavy cruisers standing off Ceidri, an overwhelming force against Shorr Kan's scout. They were delighted to have caught their fox so easily.

"If you have a weapon, you can't use it against us now without using it against yourself," Flane Fell told him. He had laid aside his silks and jewels, and his golden crown. Like the others, he was dressed for war.

"If I had a weapon," said Shorr Kan tranquilly, "that thought would have occurred to me. I imagine you're having the planet searched for hidden installations, possible control centers, and the like?"

"We are."

"And do you still suppose that any human agency could possibly create or control the force that lies out there?"

"All the evidence will be fairly evaluated, Shorr Kan."

"That gives me great comfort. In the meantime, have your technicians monitor the power cells of your ships with great care. Have them monitor mine as well. And don't be too long about your decision."

"Why?" demanded Flane Fell.

Shorr Kan beckoned to Stark. "Tell them."

Stark told them.

The Kings of the Marches, the human kings, looked at the Ceidrins and Flane Fell said, "What are these that we should believe them? Little lost brute-things on a lost planet. And as for this so-called ambassador . . ."

He did not finish. One of the non-human kings had stepped forward to confront him. This fellow's dawn-ancestor had bequeathed to him a splendid rangy build, a proud head with an aristocratic snout and only a suggestion of fangs, and a suit of fine white fur banded handsomely with gray. His smile was fearsome.

"As a brute-thing myself," he said, "I speak for my fellow kings of the minority, and I say that the hairless son of an ape is no less a brute-thing than we, and no more competent to judge truthfulness in any form. We ourselves will speak with the Ceidrins."

They went to do so. Shorr Kan smiled. "The King of Tranett has already given me allies. I'm grateful."

Stark had gone apart. He looked at the sky and remembered.

The morning came dark with drifting rain. When the clouds broke it seemed to Stark that the shrouded sun was dimmer than he remembered, but that of course was imagination. The four non-human kings rejoined the group. Their faces were solemn, and the chief of the Ceidrins was with them.

"The man Stark spoke truly," said the gray-barred king. "The thing has already begun to draw the life from this sun. The Ceidrins know they're doomed, and so shall we be in our turn if this thing is not destroyed."

Reports came in from the ships, those that had landed and those still free in space awaiting orders. All had unexplained losses of energy from the power cells.

"Well, brother kings," said Shorr Kan, "what is your decision?"

The four non-humans ranged themselves with the King of Aldeshar. "Our fleets are at your disposal, and the best of our scientific minds." The gray-barred king looked at Flane Fell with blazing golden eyes. "Leave your little spites behind, apeling, or all our kind, all things that breathe and move, are foredone."

Shorr Kan said, "You can always kill me later on, if we live."

Flane Fell made an angry gesture. "Very well. Let all our efforts be combined, to the end that this thing shall die."

* * *

"Let all our efforts be combined . . ."

Messages were flashed to the scientific centers of the far-flung star-worlds. Messages all asking the same question.

How can this thing be killed, before it kills us?

The ships had left Ceidri and returned to the hither side of the nebula, where they hung like a shoal of fingerlings against the Veil, catching palely the light of distant suns. They waited for answers. Answers began to come.

"Energy!" said Shorr Kan, and cursed. "The thing is energy. It devours energy. It lives on suns. How can it be destroyed with energy?"

Narin Har, chief of the joint scientific missions now aboard Flane Fell's flagship, that being the largest and possessed of the most sophisticated communications center, answered Shorr Kan.

"We have results from the three great computers at Vega, Rigel, and Fomalhaut. They all agree that we must use energy against energy, in the form of our most potent missiles."

Shorr Kan said, "Anti-matter?"

"Yes."

"But won't that simply feed its strength?"

"They're working on the equations now. But judging from the relatively slow rate at which it is presently absorbing energy from the stars it has attacked, we ought to be able to introduce the violent energy of anti-matter missiles into it in such quantities that it will be unable to assimilate rapidly enough. The result is expected to be total annihilation."

"How many missiles?"

"That is the information we're waiting for now."

It came.

Narin Har read the figures to the Kings of the Marches, assembled in the flagship. These figures meant little to Stark, who was present, but he could see by the faces of the kings that the impact of them was staggering.

"We must ask for every ship available from every ruler in the galaxy," said Shorr Kan. "Every available anti-matter missile, which may not be enough since the supply is limited, and a full complement of conventional atomics. We must beg for them, and with all speed."

The scout ship, sent back through the Veil, had brought word that the thing was growing now with frightening rapidity.

The message was sent, backed by all the scientific evidence they could muster.

Again they waited.

Beyond the Veil the thing fed contentedly and dreamed its cosmic dreams. And grew.

"If the Empire sends its ships," said Shorr Kan, "the rest will follow." He pounded his fist on the table. "How long does it take the fools to deliberate? If they insist on waggling their tongues forever . . ." He stood up. "I'll speak with Jhal Arn myself."

"Jhal Arn?" asked Stark.

"You are a country boy, Ambassador. Jhal Arn is ruler of the Mid-Galactic Empire, the most potent force in the galaxy."

"You sound as though you don't love him."

"Nor the Empire. That is beside the point now. Come along, if you like."

In the communications room, Stark watched the screen of the sub-space telecom spring to life.

"The Hall of Suns," said Shorr Kan, "at Throon, royal planet of Canopus and center of the Empire. Ah, yes. The Imperial Council is in session."

The hall was vast, splendid with the banners and insignia of a thousand star-kingdoms, Stark caught only a fleeting glimpse of that magnificence, and of the many alien personages . . . ambassadors, he thought, representing their governments at this extraordinary session, princes and nobles from worlds he did not know. The view narrowed in upon the throne chair, where a tall man sat looking into the apparatus before him so that he seemed to be staring straight at Shorr Kan. Which he was, across half a galaxy.

Shorr Kan wasted no time on regal courtesies.

"Jhal Arn," he said, "you have no cause to love me, nor I you, and you have no cause to trust me, either. Still, we are both citizens of this galaxy, and here we both must live or die, and all our people with us. We of the Marches are committed, but we have not the strength to fight this thing alone. If you do not lead the way for the Star Kings, if you do not send the ships we need, then you will have condemned your own Empire to destruction."

Jhal Arn had a fine strong face, worn with the strain of governing. There was wisdom in his eyes. He inclined his head slightly.

"Your feelings, and mine, are of equal unimportance, Shorr Kan. The lords of the Council have now understood that. We have conferred with all our scientists and advisors. The decision has been taken. You shall have the ships."

The screen went dark.

And they waited, watching the blank heavens where the far suns burned, while the great blazing wheel of the galaxy turned on its hub of stars, one infinitesimal fraction of a revolution so long that only a computer could comprehend it.

At last the ships came.

Stark watched them on the screens as they came, dropping out of the void. Shorr Kan told him what they were. The squadrons of Fomalhaut Kingdom, with the blazon of the white sun on their bows. The ships of Rigel and Deneb, Algol and Altair, Antares and Vega. The fleets of wide-flung Kingdoms of Lyra and Cygnus and Cassiopeia, of Lepus and Corvus and Orion. The ships of the Barons of Hercules, ensigned with the golden cluster. And on and on until Stark's head was ringing with star names and giddy with the sheer numbers of that mustering.

Last of all, huge sombre shadows of interstellar war, came the great battle-cruisers of the Empire.

The ships of the Star Kings, in massed rendezvous off Dendrid's Veil. The heavens were aglitter with them.

There was much coming and going of star-captains, discussions of strategy, endless pawings-over of data and clackings of on-board computers. The vast armada hung in the starshine, and Stark remembered the battle plans he had made in his own life, in a former time; the plotted charges of the men of Kesh and Shun in the Martian Drylands, the deadly tribal prowlings in the swamps and seas of Venus. Exercises for prattling babes. Here, on the screen, was magnificence beyond belief.

And on the other side of the Veil was an adversary beyond his former imagining.

He wondered if Aarl still waited and listened. He wondered if the worlds of Sol still lived.

At length Shorr Kan told him, "We are ready. The combined fleets will move In exactly six units, Galactic Arbitrary Time."

* * *

The fleets of the Star Kings moved. Rank on shining rank, they plunged into the gloom of the nebula, crashed headlong through the coiling clouds of dust to burst into open space beyond where the twisted enigma waited, sprawled carelessly across space and time.

Stark stood with Shorr Kan by the screens of the small scout, attached now to Shorr Kan's navy, three heavy cruisers and a swarm of lighter craft, everything that could carry a missile.

Aldeshar's fleet was in the first attack wave, with the other fleets of the Marches. The scout leaped away from the nebula, fired its conventional atomics into the looming blankness of the thing ahead, then spiraled upward and away, skirting the edges of destruction. It took up station where it could see, and if necessary, run. Shorr Kan was again being practical.

The first wave struck like a thunderbolt, loosing the full batteries of their missiles and swerving away a complicated three-dimensional dance of death, carefully plotted to avoid being swallowed by the enemy and to leave the way clear for the following wave.

And they came, the silver fleets with their proud insignia of suns and clusters and constellations; the might of the Star Kings against the raw power of creation.

They poured their salvos of unthinkable energy into the child of energy, lighting smothered flares across the parsecs, pounding at the fabric of the universe with which the creature was entwined until space itself was shaken and the scout ship lurched in the backlash as though upon a heavy sea.

The creature, roused, struck back.

Bolts of naked force shot from its blind face, spearing ships, wiping the heavens clean. Yet more ships came on, more missiles sped to seed the thing with deadly anti-matter. More dark lightnings flashed. But the thing still lived, and fought, and killed.

"It's defending itself," Stark said. "Not only itself, but its whole species, just as we are."

He could sense the bewilderment it felt, the fear, the outraged anger. Probably his previous contact through the Ceidrins had given him that ability, and he was sorry it had, dim though the echo was. The creature was still, he thought, unaware of living beings as such. It only knew that this sudden bursting of strange energy within it was dangerous. It had located the source of that energy and was trying to destroy it.

It appeared to have succeeded.

The fleets drew off. There was a cessation of all action. The lightnings ceased. The thing lay apparently untouched, undiminished.

Stark said, "Have we lost?" He was soaked with sweat and shaking as though he had himself been fighting.

Shorr Kan only said, "Wait."

The ships of the Barons of Hercules detached themselves from the massed ranks of the fleet. They sped away as though in flight.

"Are they running?" asked Stark.

Again Shorr Kan said, "Wait."

Presently Stark understood. Far away, greatly daring along the uncharted flank of this creature, the fleet of the Cluster struck. Annihilating lightnings danced and flared, and the creature struck out at those ships, forgetting the massed fleets that had now moved into a pattern of semi-englobement. It was after all a child, and ignorant of even simple strategies.

The fleets charged, loosing a combined shellfire of raving energies at a single area of the creature's being.

This time the fires they lit did not go out.

They spread. They burned and brightened. Great gouts of energy burst nova-like from out of that twisted blankness, catching ships, destroying them, but without aim or purpose. The savage bolts were random now, blind emissions of a dying force.

The fleets regrouped, pouring in all they had left to them of death.

And Stark heard . . . felt, with the atoms of his flesh . . . the last unbelieving cry of despair, the anguish of loss as strength and joy faded and the wheeling galaxies in all their beauty went from sight, a flight of brilliant butterflies swept away on a cruel wind.

It died.

The fleets of the Star Kings fled from the violence of that dying, while space rocked around them and stars were shattered, while the insane fury of total destruction blazed and roiled and fountained across the parsecs and the stuff of the universe trembled.

The ships took refuge beyond Dendrid's Veil. They waited, afraid that the chain-reaction they had set in motion might yet engulf them. But gradually the turbulence quietened, and when their instruments registered only normal radiation, the scout ship and a few others ventured to return.

The shape of the nebula was altered. Ceidri and its dim sun had vanished. Out beyond, there was a new kind of blankness, the empty blankness of death.

Even Flane Fell was awed by the enormity of what they had done. "It is a heavy thing to be God."

"Perhaps a heavier one to be man," said Shorr Kan. "God, as I recall, never doubted He was right."

They turned back then, and the fleets of the Star Kings, such as had survived that killing, dispersed, each one homing on its separate star.

Shorr Kan returned to Aldeshar.

In the hall of the ugly genie he spoke to Stark. "Well, Ambassador? Your little sun is safe now, if salvation didn't come too late. Will you return there, or will you stay with me? I could make your fortune."

Stark shook his head. "I like you, King of Aldeshar. But I'm no good running mate, and sooner or later we'd come to that enmity you spoke of. Besides, you're born for trouble, and I prefer to make my own."

Shorr Kan laughed. "You're probably right, Ambassador. Though I'm sorry. Let us part friends."

They shook hands. Stark left the palace and walked through the streets of Donalyr toward the hills, and through all the voices and the sounds around him he could still hear that last despairing cry.

He went up on the ridge above the city. And Aarl brought him home.

* * *

They sat in the mist-bordered chamber high in the ancient citadel.

"We ought not to have killed it," Stark said. "You never touched its consciousness. I did. It was . . . God-like."

"No," said Aarl. "Man is God-like, which is to say creator, destroyer, savior, kind father and petty tyrant, ruthless, bloodthirsty, bigoted, merciful, loving, murderous, and noble. This creature was far beyond mere godliness, and so perhaps more worthy than we to survive . . . but it did not survive. And that is the higher law."

Aarl fixed him with those space-black eyes.

"No life exists but at the expense of other life. We kill the grain to make our bread, and the grain in time kills the soil it grows in. Do not reproach yourself for that. In due course another such super-being may be born which will survive in spite of us, and then it will be our turn to go. Meanwhile, we survive, and that is our proof of right. There is no other."

He led Stark down the long and winding ways to the portal, where his saddled beast was waiting. Stark mounted and rode away, turning his back forever on the Third Bend.

And so he had seen the future, and touched beauty, and the thing was done, for better or worse. Beauty had died beyond Dendrid's Veil, and high above, where the walls of the Great Rift Valley towered against the sky, the sun was shining on the old proud face of Mars. Some good, some evil, and perhaps in the days to come Aarl's words would soothe his conscience.

And conscience or not, he would never forget the splendor of the ships of the Star Kings massed for battle.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Return to the Stars, Copyright © 1970 Edmond Hamilton. Some of the material in this work originally appeared in different form in Amazing Stories and Fantastic Stories. Copyright © 1964, 1965 Ziff-Davis Publications, for Amazing Stories, September 1964 and April 1965. Copyright © 1968, 1969 Ultimate Publishing Co. Inc., for Fantastic Stories, December 1968 and Amazing Stories, May 1969.

FIRST EDITION

2005

Stark and the Star Kings was published by Haffner Press, soon Crooks Road, Suite 35, Royal Oak, Michigan 48073-1239.

One thousand trade copies, and a limited edition of one hundred numbered and slipcased copies signed by John Jakes and Alex Ebel, have been printed on 6o# Natural Vellum from Adobe Bembo and Adobe Eurostile. The printing was done by BookMasters, Inc. of Mansfield, Ohio and the binding was done by Dekker in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The binding cloth is ICG Holliston Cialux Midnight Blue.