The Star Kings

Chapter XIV. Dark-World Menace

GORDON came slowly to awareness of a throbbing headache. All the devil's triphammers seemed to be pounding inside his skull, and he felt a sickening nausea.

A cool glass was held to his lips, and a voice spoke insistently in his ear.

“Drink this.”

Gordon managed to gulp down a pungent liquid. Presently his nausea lessened and his head began to ache less violently.

He lay for a little time before he finally ventured to open his eyes. He still lay on the table, but the metal cone and the complicated apparatus were not now in sight.

Over him was bending the anxious face of one of the two Cloud scientists. Then the strong features and brilliant black eyes of Shorr Kan came down in his field of vision.

“Can you sit up?” asked the scientist. “It will help you recover faster.”

The man's arm around his shoulders enabled Gordon weakly to slide off the table and into a chair.

Shorr Kan came and stood in front of him, looking down at him with a queer wonder and interest in his expression.

He asked, “How do you feel now, John Gordon?”

Gordon started. He stared back up at the League commander.

“Then you know?” he husked.

“Why else do you think we halted the brain-scanning?” Shorr Kan retorted. “If it weren't for that, you'd be a complete mental wreck by now.”

He shook his head wonderingly. “By Heaven, it was incredible. But the brain scanner can't lie. And when the first minutes of its reading drew out the fact that you were John Gordon's mind in Zarth Arn's body, and that you did not know the Disruptor secret, I stopped the scanning.”

Shorr Kan added ruefully. “And I thought I had that secret finally in my grasp. The pains I've taken to fish Zarth Arn into my net, and all for nothing. But who'd dream of a thing like this, who'd guess that a man of the ancient past was inside Zarth's body?”

Shorr Kan knew. John Gordon tried to rally his dazed faculties to deal with this startling new factor in the situation.

For the first time, someone in this future universe was cognizant of the weird imposture he had carried out. Just what would that mean to him?

Shorr Kan was striding to and fro. “John Gordon of ancient Earth, of an age two hundred thousand years in the past, here inside the brain and body of the second prince of the Empire. It still doesn't make sense.”

Gordon answered weakly. “Didn't your scanner tell you how it happened?”

The League commander nodded. “Yes, the outlines of the story were clear after a few minutes' scanning, for the whole fact of your imposture was uppermost in your mind.”

Ht uttered a soft curse. “That young fool Zarth Arn. Trading bodies with another man across time. Letting his crazy scientific curiosity about the past take him ages away, at the very moment his Empire is in danger.”

He fastened his gaze again on Gordon. “Why in the devil's name didn't you tell me? “

“I tried to tell you, and got nowhere with it,” Gordon reminded him.

Shorr Kan nodded. “That's right, you did. And I didn't believe. Who the devil would believe a thing like this, without the brain-scanner's proof of it?”

He paced to and fro, biting his lip, “Gordon, you've upset all my careful plans. I was sure that with you I had the Disruptor secret.”

John Gordon's mind was working swiftly now as his strength slowly returned. The discovery of his true identity changed his whole situation.

It might give him a remote chance of escape. A chance to get away with Lianna and warn the Empire of Corbulo's treachery and the imminent danger. Gordon thought he dimly saw a way.

He spoke a little sullenly to Shorr Kan. “You're the first one to discover the truth about me. I deceived all the others-Arn Abbas, Jhal Arn, Princess Lianna. They didn't dream the truth.”

Shorr Kan's eyes narrowed a little. “Gordon, that sounds as though you liked being prince of the Empire?”

Gordon laughed mirthlessly. “Who wouldn't? Back in my own time I was a nobody, a poor ex-soldier. Then, after Zarth Arn proposed that strange exchange of bodies across time, I found myself one of the royal family of the greatest star-kingdom in the universe. Who wouldn't like that change?”

“But you had promised to go back to Earth and re-exchange bodies with Zarth Arn, according to what the scanner revealed,” pointed out Shorr Kan. “You'd have had to give up all your temporary splendor.”

Gordon looked up at him, with what he hoped was a cynical expression.

“What the devil?” he said contemptuously to Shorr Kan. “Do you really think I'd have kept that promise?”

The League commander stared at him intently. “You mean that you were planning to deceive the real Zarth Arn, and keep his body and identity?”

“I hope you're not going to get righteous with me!” flared Gordon. “It's what you would have done yourself in my place, and you know it.

“Here I was, set for life as one of the great men of this universe, about to marry the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. No one could possibly ever doubt my identity. All I had to do was simply forget my promise to Zarth Arn. What would you have done?”

Shorr Kan burst into laughter. “John Gordon, you're an adventurer after my own heart.

By Heaven, I see that they bred bold men back in those ancient times on Earth!”

He clapped Gordon on the shoulder, his good spirits seeming partly restored.

“Don't get downhearted because I know the truth about you, Gordon. No one else knows it, except these scientists who'll never speak. You might still be able to live out your life as Prince Zarth Arn.”

Gordon pretended to catch eagerly at the bait. “You mean-you wouldn't give me away?”

“That's what I mean. You and I ought to be able to help each other,” Shorr Kan nodded.

Gordon sensed that the high-powered brain behind those keen black eyes was working rapidly.

He realized that trying to fool this utterly intelligent and ruthless plotter was the hardest task he had ever essayed. But unless he succeeded, Lianna's life and the Empire's safety were forfeit.

Shorr Kan helped him to his feet. “You come with me and we'll talk it over. Feel like walking yet?”

When they emerged from the laboratory, Durk Undis stared at Gordon as though he saw a man risen from the dead.

The fanatic young Cloudman had not expected him to emerge from that room living and sane, Gordon knew.

Shorr Kan grinned. “It's all right, Durk. Prince Zarth is cooperating with me. We shall go to my apartments.”

“Then you already have the Disruptor secret, sir?” burst out the young fanatic eagerly.

Shorr Kan's quick frown checked him. “Are you questioning me?” snapped the commander.

As they walked on, John Gordon's mind was busy with this byplay. It encouraged him in the belief that his dim scheme might be made to work.

But he would have to go carefully, carefully. Shorr Kan was the last man in the universe to be easily deceived. Gordon sweated with realization that he walked a sword-edge over an abyss.

Shorr Kan's apartments were as austere as the bare office in which Gordon had first seen him. There were a few hard chairs, bare floors, and in another room an uncomfortable-looking cot.

Durk Undis had remained outside the door. As Gordon looked around, Shorr Kan's mocking smile returned.

“Miserable hole for the master of the Cloud to live in, isn't it?” he said. “But it all helps to impress my devoted followers. You see, I've worked them up to attack the Empire by stressing the poverty of our worlds, the hardness of our lives. I daren't live soft myself.”

He motioned Gordon to a chair, and then sat down and looked at him intently.

“It's still cursed hard to believe,” he declared. “Talking here to a man of the remotest past. What was it like, that age of yours when men hadn't even left the little Earth?”

Gordon shrugged. “It wasn't so much different, at bottom. There was war and conflict, over and over. Men don't change much.”

The League commander nodded emphatically. “The mob remains always stupid. A few million men fighting on your old planet, or ten thousand star-worlds ranged against each other in this universe-it's the same thing at bottom.”

He continued swiftly. “Gordon, I like you. You're intelligent, daring and courageous. Since you are intelligent, you understand that I wouldn't let a mere passing liking influence me in your favor. But my own interests influence me, powerfully. I think we can help each other.

He leaned forward. “You're not Zarth Arn. But no one in the universe knows that fact, but me. So, to the galaxy, you are Zarth Arn. And as such, I can use you as I hoped to use the real Zarth, to act as puppet ruler after the Cloud has conquered the galaxy.”

John Gordon had hoped for this. But he pretended startled astonishment.

“You mean, you'd make me the nominal ruler of the galaxy?”

“Why not?” retorted the other. “As Zarth Arn, one of the Empire's royal blood, you'd still serve to quiet rebellion after the Empire is conquered. Of course, I'd wield the real power, as I said.”

He added frankly, “From one viewpoint you're better for my purpose than the real Zarth Arn. He might have had scruples, might have given me trouble. But you have no loyalties in this universe, and I can depend on you to stick with me from pure self-interest.”

Gordon felt a brief flash of triumph. That was exactly what he had wanted Shorr Kan to think-that he, John Gordon, was merely an ambitious, unscrupulous adventurer from the past.

“You'd have everything you could desire!” Shorr Kan was continuing. “Outwardly, you'd be the ruler of the whole galaxy. The Princess Lianna for your wife, power and wealth and luxury beyond your dreams.”

Gordon pretended a stunned, rapt wonder at the prospect. “The emperor of the galaxy? I, John Gordon?”

And then suddenly, without warning, the plan he was precariously trying to carry through slipped away from Gordon's mind and the voice of the tempter whispered in his ear.

He could do this thing, if he wanted to. He could be at least nominally the supreme sovereign of the entire galaxy with all its thousand on thousands of mighty suns and circling worlds! He, John Gordon of New York, could rule a universe with Lianna at his side!

All he had to do was to join with Shorr Kan and attach his loyalty to the Cloud. And why shouldn't he do that? What tie bound him to the Empire? Why shouldn't he strike out for himself, for such power and splendor as no man in all human history had ever dreamed of attaining?