The Star Kings

Chapter XI. Galactic Plot

THE truth flashed over Gordon's mind. All that had happened to him since he had taken up the impersonation of Zarth Arn had been instigated by the cunning scheming of that master plotter who ruled the Cloud.

Shorr Kan's plots had reached out to involve him in the gathering conflict between the giant galactic confederations, through many secret agents. And one of those agents of the powerful master of the Dark Worlds must be Thern Eldred.

“By Heaven, I see it now!” Gordon said, to the stunned woman. “Thern Eldred is working for the Cloud, and has betrayed Commander Corbulo.”

“But why should they do this, Zarth? Why implicate you in the murder of your own father?”

“To compromise me hopelessly so that I can't return to Throon!” gritted Gordon.

Lianna had paled slightly. She looked up at him steadily, though.

“What is going to happen to us in the Cloud, Zarth?” she asked.

Gordon felt an agony of apprehension for her. It was his fault that she was in this deadly danger. She had been trying to help him, and had incurred this peril.

“Lianna, I knew you shouldn't have come with me. If anything happens to you-”

He stopped and swung around, as the door slid open. Thern Eldred stood there.

At sight of the tall Sirian standing and regarding them with a cynical smile on his pale green face, Gordon started forward in an access of hot rage.

Thern Eldred quickly drew one of the little glass weapons from his jacket.

“Please note this paralyzer in my hand,” he advised dryly. “Unless you want to spend more time unconscious, you'll restrain yourself.”

“You traitor!” raged Gordon. “You've betrayed your uniform, your Empire.”

Thern Eldred nodded calmly. “I've been one of Shorr Kan's most trusted agents for years. I expect to receive his warmest commendations when we reach Thallarna.”

“Thallarna? The mysterious capital of the League?” said Manna. “Then we are going to the Cloud?”

The Sirian nodded again. “We'll reach it in four days. Luckily, knowing the patrol-schedules of the Empire fleet as I do, I am able to follow a course that will prevent unpleasant encounters.”

“Then Arn Abbas was murdered by you League spies!” Gordon accused harshly. “You knew it was going to happen. That's why you were in such a hurry to get us away.”

The Sirian smiled coolly. “Of course. I was working on a schedule of split seconds. It had to look as though you had murdered your father and then fled. We just pulled it off.”

Gordon raged. “By heaven, you're not to the Cloud yet. Corbulo knows I didn't commit that murder. He'll put two and two together and be out to track you down.”

Thern Eldred stared at him, then threw back his head in a roar of laughter. He laughed until he had to wipe his eyes.

“Your pardon, Prince Zarth, but that's the funniest thing you've said yet!” he chuckled. “Corbulo after me? Why, haven't you guessed yet that Corbulo himself planned this whole thing?”

“You're mad!” Gordon said. “Corbulo is the most trusted official in the Empire.”

Thern Eldred nodded. “Yes, but only an official, only Commander of the feet. And he has ambitions beyond that post, has had them a long time. For the last few years, he and a score of others of us officers have been working secretly for Shorr Kan.”

The Sirian's eyes gleamed. “Shorr Kan has promised that when the Empire is scattered, we shall each of us have a star-kingdom of our own to rule. And Corbulo is to have the biggest.”

Gordon's angry incredulity somehow faded a little, before the ring of truth in the Sirian's voice.

Horrified, Gordon realized that it might be true. Chan Corbulo, Commander of the Empire's great navy, might be a secret traitor for all he knew.

Evidence pointing that way rose swiftly in Gordon's mind. Why else had Corbulo broken his duty and helped him to escape? Why, at the very moment when Arn Abbas' assassination was imminent?

Thern Eldred read something of what passed in Gordon's mind, from his face. And the Sirian laughed again.

“You begin to realize now what a dupe you've been. Why, it was Corbulo himself who shot down Arn Abbas last night. And Corbulo will swear that he saw it done by you, Zarth Arn!”

Lianna was pale, incredulous. “But why? Why implicate Zarth? “

“Because,” smiled the Sirian, “it's the most effective way to split the Empire and leave it wide open to the Cloud's attack. And there's another reason that Shorr Kan will explain to you.”

The malice and triumph in Thern Eldred's eyes detonated the rage that had gathered in John Gordon's mind.

He plunged forward, heedless of Thern Eldred's warning shout. He managed by a swift contortion of his body to avoid the glass paralyzer that the other jabbed at him. His fist smashed into the Sirian's f ace.

Thern Eldred, as he sprawled backward, had Gordon atop him like a leaping panther. But the Sirian had managed to cling to his weapon. And before Gordon could carry out his intention of wresting it away, Thern Eldred desperately jabbed up with it again.

The crescent at the end of the glass rod touched Gordon's neck. A freezing shock smote like lightning through his body. He felt his senses darken swiftly.

When Gordon for a second time came back to consciousness, he was again lying in one of the bunks. This time, the freezing ache in his body was more painful. And this time, Lianna was sitting beside him and looking down at him with anxious gray eyes.

Her eyes lighted as he opened his own.

“Zarth, you've been unconscious more than a day. I was beginning to worry.”

“I'm all right,” he muttered. He tried to sit up, but her little hands quickly forced him back down onto the pad.

“Don't, Zarth-you must rest until your nerves recover from the electroshock.”

He glanced at the porthole window. The vista of blazing stars outside seemed unchanged. He could glimpse the black blot of the Cloud, looking only a little larger in the distant forest of suns.

Lianna followed his glance. “We are traveling at tremendous speed but it will still require a few days before we reach the Cloud. In that time, we may encounter an Empire patrol.”

Gordon groaned. “Lianna, there's no hope for that. This is itself an Empire cruiser and could pass any patrol. And if Corbulo is really leader of this treachery, he'd have his patrols arranged so that this ship could pass unseen.”

“I've thought and thought about it and I still can hardly believe it,” Lianna said. “Corbulo a traitor. It seems fantastic. And yet-”

Gordon himself no longer doubted. The evidence was too overwhelming.

“Men will betray any trust when ambition drives them, and Corbulo is ambitious,” he muttered. Then, as deeper realization came to him, “Good God, this means that if the League does attack the Empire, the Commander of the Empire forces will sabotage their defense.”

He rose painfully from the bunk despite Lianna's protestations.

“If we could only get word back to Throon somehow. That would at least put Jhal Arn on his guard.”

Lianna shook her ash-golden head a little sadly. “I fear there's no chance of that, once we're prisoners in the Cloud. Shorr Kan is not likely to let us go.”

It all spun in John Gordon's mind in a bewildering chaos of known and unknown factors, in the hours that followed.

A few things, though, stood out clearly. They all, everyone in this universe, thought that he was Zarth Arn. And thus it was believed that he knew the secret of the Disruptor, that mysterious scientific weapon known only to Arn Abbas and his two sons.

That was why Corbulo had risked the plot that was sending him and Lianna now as prisoners to the Cloud. Once Shorr Kan had that secret, mysterious weapon, he would have nothing to fear from the Empire whose fleet was commanded by his own man. He would attack them at once.

The Markab droned on and on. When the ship bells signaled evening of the arbitrary “day,” the aspect of the starry firmament had changed. Orion Nebula flamed now in all its titan glory far in the east.

Straight ahead, far in the distance against the remotest suns of the galaxy, brooded the black blot of the Cloud. It was visibly larger than before, and its gigantic dimensions were now becoming more clearly apparent.

Neither Thern Eldred nor any of his officers or men entered the cabin. There was no opportunity for a second attack. And after searching vainly through the room, Gordon conceded defeatedly that there was nothing in it that might facilitate escape.

Sick anxiety for Lianna's safety deepened in him. He reproached himself again for letting her accompany him on this flight.

But she did not seem afraid as she looked up at him. “Zarth, at least we're together for a little while. It may be all of happiness we'll get.”

Gordon found his arms instinctively starting to go around her, his hand touching her shining hair. But he forced himself to step back.

“Lianna, you'd better get some sleep,” he said uncomfortably.

Lianna looked at him with a wondering little smile. “Why, Zarth, what's the matter?”

Gordon had never in his life wanted anything so much as to reach forth to her. But to do so would be the blackest treachery.

Treachery to Zarth Arn, who had trusted his body, his life, to Gordon's pledge. Yes, and treachery to Lianna herself.

For if he were able to reach the Earth laboratory, it would be the real Zarth Arn who would come back to her-Zarth Arn, who loved Murn and not Lianna.

“That won't ever happen!” whispered a subtle, tempting voice in Gordon's mind. “You and she will never escape from the Cloud. Take what happiness you can, while you can.”

Gordon desperately fought down that insinuating voice. He spoke huskily to the puzzled woman.

“Lianna, you and I will have to forget all talk of love.”

She seemed stricken by amazement, unbelief. “But Zarth, at Throon that morning you told me you loved me!”

Gordon nodded miserably. “I know. I wish to God I hadn't. It was wrong.”

Little clouds began to gather in Murn's gray eyes. She was white to the lips.

“You mean that you are still in love with Murn, after all?”

Gordon forced the answer to that out of strained, desperate resolve. He spoke what he knew was the exact truth.

“Zarth Arn does still love Murn. You have to know that, Lianna.”

The incredulity in Lianna's white face gave way to a hurt that went deep in her gray eyes.

Gordon had expected stormy resentment, wrath, bitter reproach. He had steeled himself against them. But he had not expected this deep, voiceless hurt, and it was too much for him.

“To the devil with my promise!” he told himself fiercely. “Zarth Arn wouldn't hold me to it if he knew that situation-he couldn't.”

And Gordon stepped forward and grasped the woman's hand. “Lianna, I'm going to tell you the whole truth. Zarth Arn doesn't love you-but I do!”

He rushed on. “I'm not Zarth Arn. I'm an entirely different man, in Zarth Arn's body. I know it sounds incredible, but-”

His voice trailed off. For he read in Lianna's face her quick disbelief and scorn.

“Let us at least have no more lies, Zarth!” she flared.

“I tell you, it's true!” he persisted. “This is Zarth Arn's physical body, yes. But I am a different man.”

He knew from the expression on her face that his attempt had failed. He knew that she did not believe and never would believe.

How could he expect her to believe it? If positions had been reversed, would he have credited such a wild assertion? He knew he wouldn't.

No one in this universe would credit it, now Vel Quen was dead. For only Vel Quen had known about Zarth Arn's fantastic experiments.

Lianna was looking at him, her eyes now calm and level and without a trace of emotion in her face.

“There is no need for you to explain your actions by wild stories of dual personality, Zarth. I understand clearly enough. You were simply doing what you conceived to be your duty to the Empire. You feared lest I might refuse the marriage at the last moment, so you pretended love for me to make sure of me and of Fomalhaut's support.”

“Lianna, I swear it isn't so!” Gordon groaned. “But if you won't trust me to speak truth-”

She ignored his interruption. “You need not have done it, Zarth. I had no thought of refusing the marriage, since I knew how much depended on my kingdom supporting the Empire.

“But there's no further need for stratagems. I will keep my promise and so will my kingdom. I will marry you, but our marriage will be only a political formality as we first agreed.”

John Gordon started to protest, then stopped. After all, the course she proposed was the only one he could take.

If the real Zarth Arn returned, his marriage with Lianna could not be anything more than political pretense.

“All right, Lianna,” Gordon said heavily. “I repeat, that I never lied to you. But it all doesn't make much difference now, anyway.”

He gestured, as he spoke, toward the porthole. Out there in the star-blazing void ahead of the rushing cruiser, the monster blot of the Cloud was looming ever bigger and closer.

Lianna nodded quietly. “We do not have much chance of escaping Shorr Kan's clutches. But if a chance does present itself, you will find me your ally. Our personal emotions mean little compared to the urgent necessity of getting back with a warning to the Empire.”

Gordon saw less and less chance of that, in the hours that followed. For now the Markab, its velocity at great heights, was rushing ever nearer the Cloud.

That “night” when the ship lights dimmed, he lay in his bunk thinking bitterly that of all men in history he had had the most ironic joke played upon him.

The woman across the cabin loved him, and he loved her. And yet soon a gulf of space and time incredible might forever separate them, and she would always believe him faithless.