The Star Kings

28: Star-Rover's Return

Gordon awoke slowly. His head was aching, and he had an unnerving feeling of strangeness. He stirred, and then opened his eyes.

He was lying in a familiar room, a familiar bed. This was his little New York apartment, a dark room that now seemed small and crowded.

Shakily, he snapped on a lamp and stumbled out of bed. He faced the tall mirror across the room.

He was John Gordon again! John Gordon's strong, stocky figure and tanned face looked back at him instead of the aquiline features and tall form of Zarth Arn.

He stumbled to the window and looked out on the starlit buildings and blinking lights of New York. How small, cramped, ancient, the city looked now, when his mind was still full of the mighty splendors of Throon.

Tears blurred his eyes as he looked up at the starry sky. Orion Nebula was but a misty star pendant from that constellation-giant's belt. Ursa Minor reared toward the pole. Low above the roof-tops blinked the white eye of Deneb.

He could not even see Canopus, down below the horizon. But his thoughts flashed out to it, across the abysses of time and space to the fairy towers of Throon.

"Lianna! Lianna!" he whispered, tears running down his face.

Slowly, as the night hours passed, Gordon nerved himself for the ordeal that the rest of his life must be.

Irrevocable gulfs of time and space separated him forever from the one girl he had ever loved. He could not forget, he would never forget. But he must live his life as it remained to him.

He went, the next morning, to the big insurance company that employed him. He remembered, as he entered, how he had left it weeks before, afire with the thrill of possible adventure.

The manager who was Gordon's superior met him with surprise on his face.

"Gordon, you feel well enough now to come back to work? I'm glad of it!"

Gordon gathered quickly that Zarth Arn, in his body, had feigned sickness to account for his inability to do Gordon's work.

"I'm all right now," Gordon said. "And I'd like to get back to work."

Work was all that kept Gordon from despair, in the next days. He plunged into it as one might into drugs or drink. It kept him, for a little of the time, from remembering.

But at night, he remembered. He lay sleepless, looking out his window at the bright stars that to his mind's eyes were always mighty suns. And always, Lianna's face drifted before his eyes.

His superior commended him warmly, after a few days. "Gordon, I was afraid your illness might have slowed you down, but you keep on like this and you'll be an assistant manager some day."

Gordon could have shouted with bitter laughter, the suggestion seemed so fantastic. He might be an assistant manager?

He, who as prince of the Empire's royal house had feasted with the star kings at Throon? He, who had captained the hosts of the Kingdoms in the last great fight off Deneb? He, who had unloosed destruction on the Cloud, and had riven space itself?

But he did not laugh. He said quietly, "That would be a fine position for me, sir."

And then, on a night weeks later, he heard once more a voice calling in his half-sleeping mind!

"Gordon! John Gordon!"

He knew, at once. He knew whose mind called to him. He would have known, even beyond death.

"Lianna!"

"Yes, John Gordon, it is I!"

"But how could you call-how could you even know-"

"Zarth Arn told me," she interrupted eagerly. "He told me the whole story, when he came back to Throon. Told me how it was you, in his body, whom I really loved!

"He wept when he told me of it, John Gordon! For he could hardly speak, when he learned all that you had done and had sacrificed for the Empire."

"Lianna-Lianna-" His mind yearned wildly across the unthinkable depths. "Then at least we can say goodbye."

"No, wait!" came her silvery mental cry. "It need not be goodbye! Zarth Arn believes that even as minds can be drawn across time, so can physical bodies, if he can perfect his apparatus. He is working on it now. If he succeeds, will you come to me-you yourself, John Gordon?"

Hope blazed in him, like the kindling of a new flame from ashes. His answer was a throbbing thought.

"Lianna, I'd come if it were only for an hour of life with you!"

"Then wait for our call, John Gordon! It cannot be long until Zarth Arn succeeds, and then our call will come!"

A blaring auto-horn-and Gordon awoke, the eager vibrations of that faraway thought fading from his brain.

He sat up, trembling. Had it been a dream? Had it?

"No!" he said hoarsely. "It was real. I know that it was real."

He went to the window, and looked out across the lights of New York at the great blaze of the galaxy across the sky.

Worlds of the star kings, far away across the deeps of infinity and eternity-he would go back to them! Back to them, and to that daughter of star kings whose love had called him from out of space and time.

THE END