Return to the Stars

17

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.