The Star Kings

Chapter X. Flight into the Void

The secret of his identity trembled on Gordon's lips. He wanted with all his soul to tell Lianna that he was Zarth Arn only in physical body, that he was really John Gordon of the past.

He couldn't do it; he had to keep his pledge to Zarth Arn. And after all, what good would it do to tell her when he had to leave her eventually and go back to his own time?

Could any self-devised torment be more damnable? To be forced to separate himself by half a universe and two thousand centuries of time from the only woman he had ever really loved?

Gordon spoke huskily. “Lianna, you must not go with me. It's too dangerous.”

She looked up quickly with brilliant eyes. “Does a daughter of star-kings fear danger? No, Zarth, we go together.”

She added, “Don't you see, your father won't be able to send after you by force when you're with me in my little Fomalhaut kingdom. The Empire needs allies too much to estrange my people thus.”

Gordon's mind raced. Here might be his chance to get to Earth. Once away from Throon, he might by some pretext get Corbulo's men to take them first to Earth and the laboratory there.

There, he could manage to re-effect the mind-exchange with the real Zarth Arn without letting Lianna know what he was doing. And the real Zarth, on returning, could surely prove his innocence.

Corbulo interrupted by coming up to them. His hard face was deeply worried.

“We cannot wait longer here. The corridors will be clear now, and it is our only chance to go.”

Disregarding Gordon's protests against her accompanying him, Lianna seized his wrist and tugged him forward.

Corbulo had opened the massive sliding door. The corridors outside were softly lighted, silent, deserted.

“We go to a little-used branch of the tubeway,” Corbulo told them hastily. “One of my most trusted officers is waiting there.”

They hurried along the corridors, deep beneath the mighty palace of Throon. Not a sound came from the mammoth structure over their heads. These secret passages were soundproofed.

Nor did they meet anyone. But as they emerged into a wider corridor, Corbulo led the way with caution. Finally they stepped into a small room that was a vestibule to one of the tubeways. A car was waiting in the tube, and a man in naval uniform waited beside it.

“This is Thern Eldred, captain of the cruiser that will take you to Fomalhaut Kingdom,” Corbulo said quickly. “You can trust him absolutely.”

Thern Eldred was a tall Sirian, the faintly greenish hue of his face gave evidence. He looked a hard-bitten, rangy veteran of space, but his curt face lighted as he bowed deeply to Gordon and Lianna.

“Prince Zarth, Princess-I am honored by this trust. The Commander has explained everything to me. You can rely on me and my men to get you to any part of the galaxy.”

Gordon hesitated, troubled. “It still seems like running away.”

Corbulo swore a spaceman's oath. “Zarth, it's your only chance. With you gone, I'll have time to dig out evidence of your innocence and bring your father around. Stay here, and he's likely to have you shot as a traitor.”

Gordon might have stayed despite that danger had it not been for the potent factor which was wholly unknown to these others-the fact that this was his only chance to get to Earth and make contact with the real Zarth Arn.

He gripped Corbulo's band. And Lianna softly told the bluff Commander, “You're risking much for us. I shall never forget.”

They stepped into the car. Thern Eldred hastily followed them in and touched a lever. The car started racing headlong through the darkness.

Thern Eldred glanced tensely at his watch. “Everything has been scheduled to the minute, highness,” he told Gordon. “My cruiser, the Markab, is waiting in a secluded dock at the spaceport. Ostensibly we take off to join the Sagittarius patrol.”

“You're risking your neck for us too, captain,” Gordon said earnestly.

The Sirian smiled. “Commander Corbulo has been like a father to me. I could not refuse the trust when he asked me and my men.”

The car slowed and halted beside another little vestibule in which two naval officers armed with atom-pistols were waiting.

They saluted sharply as Gordon and Lianna stepped out. Thern Eldred quickly followed and led the way up a gliding ramp.

“Now muffle your cloaks about your faces until we get aboard the Markab,” he told them. “After that, you need fear nothing.”

They emerged onto a corner of the spaceport. It was night, two golden moons strung across the blazing starry sky, casting down a warm light in which the massive ships, cranes and machines glinted dully.

Towering from the docks, dwarfing all else, loomed the black bulks of the mighty first-line battleships. As they followed Thern Eldred along the side of one, Gordon glimpsed the portentous muzzles of its heavy atom-gun batteries silhouetted against the stars.

The Sirian made a signal and held them suddenly back, as a troop of noisy sailors swaggered past. Standing there in the dark, Gordon felt the pressure of Lianna's fingers on his hand. Her face, in the dim light, smiled at him undauntedly.

Then Thern Eldred motioned them on. “We must hurry!” he sweated. “We're behind schedule-”

The black, fishlike mass of the Markab rose before them in the golden moonlight. Lights glittered from small portholes, and there was a steady throbbing of power from the stern of the light cruiser.

They followed the Sirian and his two officers up a narrow gangway toward a waiting open door in the side of the ship. But suddenly, the silence was violently broken.

Annunciators about the spaceport screamed a loud siren alarm. Then a man's hoarse, excited voice shouted from the speakers.

“General alarm to all naval personnel!” yelled that wild voice. “Arn Abbas has just been assassinated!”

Gordon froze, wildly clutching Lianna's hand as they stopped there on the gangway.

The voice was shouting on. “Apprehend Prince Zarth Arn wherever he is encountered. He is to be arrested immediately!”

“Good God!” cried Gordon. “Arn Abbas murdered-and they think I escaped and did it.”

The whole great spaceport was waking to the alarm, the voice shouting its wild message over and over from a hundred annunciators. Bells were ringing, men yelling and running.

Far southward, over the distant towers of the city Throon, gleaming fliers were rushing up in the night sky and racing wildly across the heavens in half a dozen different directions.

Thern Eldred tried to urge the frozen Gordon and Lianna up the gangway. “You must hurry, highness,” said the Sirian. “Your only chance is to get away at once!”

“Run away and let them think I murdered Arn Abbas?” said Gordon. “No. We're going back to the palace at once.”

Lianna, her face pale, swiftly supported him. “You must return. Arn Abbas' murder will shake the whole Empire.”

Gordon had turned with her to start back down the gangway. But Thern Eldred, his green face wearing a hard, taut expression, suddenly whipped out and extended a little glass weapon.

It was a short glass rod on whose end was mounted a glass crescent that had two metal tips. He darted it toward Gordon's face.

“Zarth, it's a paralyzer. Look out!” cried Lianna, who recognized the menace of the weapon where Gordon did not. The tips of the glass crescent touched Gordon's chin. Lightning seemed to crash through his brain with a paralyzing shock.

He felt himself falling, every muscle frozen, consciousness leaving him. He had a dim sensation of Lianna's voice, of her staggering against him.

There was only darkness in Gordon's mind then. In that darkness he seemed to float for ages before finally light began to dawn.

He became aware that his body was tingling painfully with returning life. He was lying on a hard, flat surface. There was a steady, loud droning sound in his ears.

Gordon painfully opened his eyes. He lay on a bunk in a little metal cabin, a tiny lighted room with little furniture.

Lianna, her face colorless and her eyes closed, lay in another bunk. There was a little porthole window from which he saw a sky of blazing stars. Then Gordon recognized the droning sound as the throb of a star-ship's powerful atomic turbines and drive-generators.

“Good God, we're in space!” he thought. “Thern Eldred stunned us and brought us-”

They were in the Markab, and from the high drone of its drive the light cruiser was hurtling through the galactic void at its utmost speed.

Lianna was stirring. Gordon stumbled to his feet and went to her side. He chafed her wrists and face till her eyes opened.

The woman instantly became aware of their situation, with her first glance. Remembrance came back to her.

“Your father murdered!” she said to Gordon. “And they think you did it, back at Throon.”

Gordon nodded sickly. “We've got to go back. We've got to make Thern Eldred take us back.”

Gordon stumbled to the door of the cabin. It would not slide open when he tried it. They were locked in.

Lianna's voice turned him around. The woman was at the porthole, looking out. She turned a very pale face.

“Zarth, come here.”

He went to her side. Their cabin was near the bows of the cruiser, and the curve of the wall allowed them to look almost straight forward into the vault of stars into which the Markab was racing.

“They're not taking us toward Fomalhaut Kingdom!” Lianna said. “Thern Eldred has betrayed us.”

Gordon stared into the blazing jungle of stars that spread across the sky ahead.

“What's the meaning of this? Where is Thern Eldred taking us?” Gordon asked.

“Look to the west of Orion Nebula, in the distance ahead of us!” Lianna said.

Gordon looked as she pointed through the round window. He saw, far away in the starry wilderness ahead of their racing ship, a black little blot in the heavens. A dark, brooding blotch that seemed to have devoured a section of the starry firmament.

He knew instantly what it was. The Cloud. The distant, mysterious realm of semi-darkness within which lay the stars and planets of that League of the Dark Worlds of which Shorr Kan was master, and that was hatching war and conquest for the rest of the galaxy.

“They're taking us to the Cloud!” Lianna said. “Zarth, this is Shorr Kan's plot.”