The Star Kings

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!"