Return to the Stars

14

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.