Return to the Stars

23

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.