The Star Kings

5: Weird Masquerade

Gordon felt a staggering shock. Could Arn Abbas suspect the weird impersonation he was carrying on?

But the next words of the giant ruler a little reassured Gordon, even though they were furious in tone.

"No son of mine would go straying off to the edge of the Empire to play scientific hermit for months, when I need him here! Your cursed science-studies have made you utterly forget your duty."

Gordon breathed a little more easily. "Duty, father?" he repeated.

"Duty to me and to the Empire!" roared Arn Abbas. "You know that I need you here. You know the game that's being played across the galaxy, and what it means to all our star-worlds!"

His big fist pounded his knee. "And see what burying yourself there on Earth nearly brought about! Shorr Kan nearly scooped you up! You know what that would mean?"

"Yes, I know," Gordon nodded. "If Shorr Kan had got hold of me, he could use me as a hostage against you."

Next moment, he realized that he had blundered. Arn Abbas stared at him, and Jhal Arn and Corbulo looked surprised.

"What in the name of all the star-devils are you talking about?" demanded the emperor. "You should know as well as I why Shorr Kan wanted his hands on you. To get the secret of the Disrupter, of course!"

The Disrupter? What was that? Gordon desperately realized that again his ignorance had betrayed him.

How could he keep going in this mad imposture when he didn't know the vital facts about Zarth Arn's life and background?

Gordon might have blurted out the truth then and there had not remembrance of his promise to Zarth Arn steadied him. He tried to look unruffled.

"Of course-the Disruptor," he said hastily. "That's what I was referring to."

"You certainly did not sound like it!" snapped Arn Abbas. He uttered a fierce exclamation. "By Heaven, at a time when I need sons to help me, I've got one real son and I've got another who's so cursed dreamy-eyed he doesn't even remember the Disruptor!"

The massive ruler leaned forward, anger dissolving momentarily into an earnestness that betrayed his deep anxiety.

"Zarth, you've got to wake up! Do you realize that the Empire stands on the verge of a terrible crisis? Do you realize just what that devil Shorr Kan is planning?

"He's sent ambassadors to the Hercules Barons, to the kingdoms of Polaris and Cygnus, even to Fomalhaut Kingdom. He's doing everything to detach our allies from us. And he's building every new warship and weapon he can, there inside the Cloud."

Grizzled Commander Corbulo nodded grimly. "It's certain vast preparations are going on inside the Cloud. We know that, even though our scanner-beams can't get through the screens that Shorr Kan's scientists have flung around their work."

"It's the dream of his life to crack the Empire and reduce the galaxy to a ruck of small warring kingdoms that the League could devour one by one!" Arn Abbas went on. "Where we are trying to unify the galaxy in peace, he wants to split and separate it.

"Only one thing holds Shorr Kan back and that is the Disruptor. He knows we have it, but he doesn't know just what it is or what it can do, any more than anyone else does. And because only you and Jhal and I know the secret of the Disruptor, that arch-devil has tried to get his hands on you!"

Light broke upon John Gordon's mystification. So that was what the Disruptor was-some mysterious weapon whose secret was known only to three men of the Empire's ruling house?

Then Zarth Arn knew that secret. But he didn't know it, even though he wore Zarth Arn's body! Yet he had to pretend that he did.

"I never thought of it that way, father," Gordon said hesitatingly. "I know the situation is critical."

"So critical that things may well come to a crisis within weeks!" affirmed Arn Abbas. "It all depends on how many of our allied kingdoms Shorr Kan is able to detach, and whether he will dare to risk the Disruptor."

He added loudly, "And because of that, I forbid you to go back to your hideout on Earth any more, Zarth! You'll stay here and do your duty as the second prince of the Empire should."

Gordon was appalled. "But father, I've got to go back to Earth for at least a short time-"

The massive ruler cut him off. "I told you I forbade it, Zarth! Do you dare to argue with me?"

Gordon felt the crash of all his desperate plans. This was disaster.

If he couldn't go back to Earth and the laboratory there, how could he contact Zarth Arn and re-exchange their bodies?

"I'll hear no more objections!" continued the emperor violently as Gordon started to speak. "Now get out of here! Corbulo and I have things to discuss."

Blindly, helplessly, Gordon turned back toward the door. More strongly than even before, he felt a dismayed consciousness of being utterly trapped and baffled. Jhal Arn went with him, and when they had reached the antechamber the tall elder prince put his hand on Gordon's dim.

"Don't take it too hard, Zarth," he encouraged. "I know how devoted you are to your scientific studies, and what a blow Vel Quen's death must have been to you. But father is right-you are needed here, in this gathering crisis."

Gordon, even in his dismay, had to choose his words. "I want to do my duty. But what help can I give?"

"It's Lianna that father is referring to," Jhal Arn said seriously. "You have dodged your duty there, Zarth."

He added, as though anticipating objections from Gordon. "Oh, I know why-I know all about Murn. But the Fomalhaut Kingdom is vital to the Empire in this crisis. You'll have to go through with it."

Lianna? Murn? The names had no meaning to John Gordon. They were mystery, like everything else in this mad imposture.

"You mean that Lianna-," he began, and left the words hanging in hope of provoking further explanation from Jhal Arn.

But Jhal only nodded. "You've got to do it, Zarth. Father is going to make the announcement at the Feast of Moons tonight."

He clapped Gordon on the back. "Buck up, it's not as bad as all that! You look as though you'd been condemned to death. I'll see you at the Feast."

He turned back into the inner room, leaving Gordon staring blankly after him.

Gordon stood, bewildered and badly worried. What kind of tangled complications was his involuntary impersonation of Zarth Arn getting him into? How long could he hope to carry it through?

Hull Burrel had gone into the inner room when Gordon came out. Now as Gordon stood frozenly, the big Antarian came out too.

"Prince Zarth, I owe you good fortune!" he exclaimed. "I expected to get reprimanded by Commander Corbulo for putting off my regular patrol course to touch at Sol."

"And he didn't reprimand you?" Gordon said mechanically.

"Sure he did-gave me the devil with bells on," Burrel grinned. "But your father said it turned out so lucky in giving me a chance to rescue you, that he's appointed me aide to the Commander himself!"

Gordon congratulated him. But he spoke perfunctorily, for his mind was upon his own desperately puzzling position.

He couldn't just stand here in the anteroom longer. Zarth Arn must have apartments in this great palace, and he'd be expected to go to them. The devil of it was he had no idea where there were!

He couldn't let his ignorance be suspected, though. So he took leave of Hull Burrel and walked confidently out of the anteroom by a different door, as though he knew quite well where he was going.

Gordon found himself in a corridor, on a gliding motowalk. The motowalk took him into a great circular room of shining silver. It was brilliantly illuminated by white sunlight pouring through high crystal windows. Around its walls marched black reliefs depicting a wilderness of dark stars, embers of burned out suns and lifeless worlds.

John Gordon felt dwarfed by the majesty and splendor of this great, somber chamber. He crossed it and entered another vast room, this one with walls that flamed with the glowing splendor of a whirling nebula.

"Where the devil are Zarth Arn's quarters in this place?" he wondered.

He realized his helplessness. He couldn't ask anyone where his own quarters were. Neither could he wander aimlessly through this vast palace without arousing wonder, perhaps suspicion.

A gray-skinned servant, a middle-aged man in the black livery of the palace, was already looking at him wonderingly across this Hall of the Nebula. The man bowed deeply as Gordon strode to him.

Gordon had had an idea. "Come with me to my apartments," he told the servant brusquely. "I have a task for you."

The gray man bowed again. "Yes, highness."

But the man remained there, waiting. Waiting for him to walk ahead, of course!

Gordon made an impatient gesture. "Go ahead! I'll follow."

If the servant found it strange he let none of that feeling appear in his masklike face. He turned and proceeded softly out of the great nebula room by another door. Gordon followed him into a corridor and onto a motowalk that glided upward like a sliding ramp. Swiftly and quietly the moving walk took them up through splendid, lofty corridors and stairs.

Twice they confronted groups coming downward by the return walk-two brilliantly-jeweled white girls and a laughing, swarthy naval captain in one; two grave gray officials in the other. All of them bowed in deep respect to Gordon. The motowalk switched off down a shimmery, pearl-walled passageway. A door ahead slid softly open of its own accord. Gordon followed through it into a high chamber with pure white walls.

The gray servant turned inquiringly toward him. "Yes, highness?"

How to get rid of the man? Gordon cut that problem short by taking the easiest method.

"I find I won't need you after all," he said carelessly. "You may go."

The man bowed himself out of the room, and Gordon felt a slight relaxing of his tension. Clumsy, his stratagem-but at least it had got him to the temporary refuge of Zarth Arn's apartments.

He found himself breathing heavily as though from exhausting effort. His hands were shaking. He had not realized the nervous effort his impersonation cost him. He mopped his brow.

"My God! Was any man ever in a position like this before?"

His tired mind refused to grapple with the problem now. To evade it, he walked slowly through the rooms of the suite.

Here was less splendor than he had seen elsewhere in the great palace. Apparently, Zarth Arn had not been of luxurious tastes. The rooms were comparatively austere.

The two living rooms had silken hangings and a few pieces of metal furniture of beautiful design. There was a rack of hundreds of thought-spools and one of the thought-spool: "readers." A side room held much scientific apparatus, was in fact a small laboratory.

He glanced into a small bedroom, then went on toward tall windows that opened on a terrace gay with green verdure and flooded by sunlight. Gordon went out onto the terrace, and then froze.

"Throon City! Good Lord, who ever dreamed of a place like this!"

The little garden-terrace of his suite was high in the west wall of the huge, oblong palace. It looked out across the city.

City of the great star-empire's glory, gathering in itself an epitome of the splendor and power of that vast realm of many thousand star-worlds! Metropolis of grandeur so great that it stunned and paralyzed the eyes of John Gordon of little Earth!

The enormous white disk of Canopus was sinking toward the horizon, flashing a supernal brilliance across the scene. In that transfiguring radiance, the peaks and scarps of the Glass Mountains here above the sea flung back the sunset in banners and pennons of wild glory.

And outshining even the stupendous glory of the glassy peaks shone the fairy towers of Throon. Domes, minarets, graceful porticoes, these and the great buildings they adorned were of shimmering glass. Mightiest among the structures loomed the gigantic palace on whose high terrace he stood. Surrounded by wondrous gardens, it looked out royally across the great metropolis and the silver ocean beyond.

In the radiant sunset out there over the glittering peaks and heaving ocean there flitted swarms of fliers like shining fireflies. From the spaceport to the north, a half-dozen mighty battleships rose majestically and took off into the darkening sky.

The full grandeur and vastness of this star-empire hammered into Gordon's mind. For this city was the throbbing heart of those vast glooms and linked stars and worlds across which he had come.

"And I am supposed to be one of the ruling house of this realm!" he thought, dazed. "I can't keep it up. It's too vast, too overpowering-"

The enormous sun sank as Gordon numbly watched. Violet shadows darkened to velvet night across the metropolis.

Lights came on softly all through the glittering streets of Throon, and on the lower terraces of this giant palace.

Two golden moons climbed into the heavens, and hosts of countless stars broke forth in a glory of unfamiliar constellations that rivaled the soft, throbbing lights of the city.

"Highness, it grows late!"

Gordon turned jerkily, startled. A grave servant, a stocky man with bluish skin, was bowing.

One of Zarth Arn's personal servants, he guessed. He would have to be careful with this man!

"Yes, what of that?" he asked, with an assumption of impatience.

"The Feast of Moons will begin within the hour," reminded the servant. "You should make ready, highness."

Gordon suddenly remembered what Jhal Arn had said of a Feast. A royal banquet, he guessed, to be held this night.

What was it Jhal had said of some announcement that Arn Abbas was to make? And what had been the talk of "Murn" and "Lianna" and his duty?

Gordon braced himself for the ordeal. A banquet meant exposing himself to the eyes of a host of people-all of whom, no doubt, knew Zarth Arn and would notice his slightest slip. But he had to go.

"Very well, I will dress now," he told the servant.

It was at least a slight help that the blue-skinned servitor procured and laid out his garments for him. The jacket and trousers were of silky black, with a long black cloak to hang from his shoulders.

When he had dressed, the servant pinned on his breast a comet-emblem worked in wonderfully-blazing green jewels. He guessed it to be the insignia of his royal rank in the Empire.

Gordon felt again the sense of unreality as he surveyed his unfamiliar figure, his dark, aquiline face, in a tall mirror.

"I need a drink," he told the servant jerkily. "Something strong."

The blue servant looked at him in faint surprise, for a moment.

"Saqua, highness?" he asked, and Gordon nodded.

The brown liquor the man poured out sent a fiery tingle through Gordon's veins.

Some of the shaky strain left his nerves as he drank another goblet of the saqua. He felt a return of reckless self-confidence as he left the apartment.

"What the devil!" Gordon thought. "I wanted adventure-and I'm getting it!"

More adventure than he had bargained for, truly! He had never dreamed of such an ordeal as was now ahead of him-of appearing before the nobility of this star-flung Empire as its prince!

All the mammoth, softly-lit palace seemed astir with soft sound and laughter and movement, as streams of brilliantly-garbed men and women moved along its motowalks. Gordon, to whom they bowed respectfully, noted their direction and went forward casually.

The gliding walks took him down through the lofty corridors and halls to a broad vestibule with wonderful golden walls. Here councilors, nobles, men and women high in the Empire, drew aside for him.

Gordon nerved himself, strode toward the high doors whose massive golden leaves were now thrown back. A silk-garbed chamberlain bowed and spoke clearly into the vast hall beyond.

"His highness, Prince Zarth Arn!"