The Star Kings

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?"