The Star Kings

Chapter XVII. Wrecked in the Nebula

GORDON glimpsed a dozen League soldiers bursting into the farther end of this lower-deck corridor. He knew that his game was up, but he turned his atom pistol savagely loose upon them.

The pellets flew down the passage and exploded. The little flares of force blasted down half the Cloudmen there. But the others raced forward with wolfish shouts. And his pistol went dead in his hand, its loads exhausted.

Then it happened! The whole fabric of the Dendra rocked violently and there was a crash of riving plates and girders. All space outside the ship seemed illuminated by a brilliant flare.

“That Empire cruiser has spotted us and is shelling us!” yelled a wild voice. “We're hit.”

Continued rending crash of parting struts and plates was accompanied by the shrill singing of escaping air. Then came the quick slam-slam of automatic bulkheads closing.

The corridor in which Gordon stood was suddenly divided by the automatic doors closing. He was cut off from the men at its end.

“Battle-stations! Space-suits on!” rang Durk Undis' sharp voice from the annunciators throughout the ship. “We're crippled and have to fight it out with that Empire cruiser.”

Bells were ringing, alarms buzzing. Then came the swift shudder of recoil from big atom-guns broad siding. Far away in space, out there in the vast blackness, Gordon glimpsed points of light suddenly flaring and vanishing.

A duel in space, this! His sudden sabotage of the dark-out concealment had exposed the Dendra to the Empire cruiser which it had been trying to evade. That cruiser had instantly opened fire.

“Lianna!” Gordon thought wildly. “If she's been hurt-”

He turned and scrambled up the companionway to the mid-deck.

Lianna came running to meet him in the corridor there. Her face was pale but unafraid.

“There are space-suits in the locker here!” she said. “Quick, Zarth. The ship may be hit again any moment.”

The woman had kept her head enough to find one of the lockers of space-suits placed at strategic locations throughout the ship.

In their cabin, she and Gordon hastily struggled into the suits. They were of stiffened metallic fabric, with spherical glassite helmets whose oxygenators started automatically when they were closed.

Lianna spoke, and he heard her voice normally by means of the short-range audio apparatus built into each suit.

She said to him, “That Empire cruiser is going to shell this ship to fragments now that it can't go dark.”

Gordon was dazed by the strangeness of the scene from the windows. The Dendra, maneuvering at high speed to baffle the radar of the other ship, was loosing its heavy atom-shells continuously.

Far in space, tiny pinpoints of light flared and vanished swiftly. So tremendous was the distance at which this duel was being conducted, that the gigantic flares of the exploding atom-shells were thus reduced in size.

Space again burst into blinding light about them as the Empire cruiser's shells ranged close. The Dendra rocked on its beam-ends from the soundless explosions of force.

Gordon and Lianna were hurled to the floor by the violent shocks. He was aware that the drone of the drive generators had fallen to a ragged whine. More automatic bulkheads were slamming shut.

“Drive-rooms half wrecked!” came a shout through his space-suit audiophone. “Only two generators going.”

“Keep them running!” rang Durk Undis' fierce order. “We'll disable that Empire ship with our new weapon, in a few moments.”

Their new weapon? Gordon swiftly recalled how Shorr Kan had affirmed that the League had a potent new weapon of offense that could strike down any ship.

“Lianna, they've got their hands too full to bother with us right now!” Gordon said. “This is our chance to get away. If we can get off in one of the space-boats, we can reach that Empire ship.”

Lianna did not hesitate. “I am willing to try it, Zarth.”

“Then come on!” he said.

The Dendra was still rocking wildly, and he steadied Lianna as he led the way hastily down the corridor.

The space-suited gunners in the gun-galleries they passed were too engrossed in the desperate battle to glimpse them.

They reached the hatch in whose wall was a closed valve leading to one of the space life-boats attached to the hull. Gordon fumbled frantically for a moment with the valve.

“Lianna, I don't know how to open this. Can you do it?”

She swiftly grasped the catches, pulled at them. But there was no response.

“Zarth, the automatic trips have locked. That means that the space-boat is wrecked and unusable.”

Gordon refused to let despair conquer him. “There are other space-boats. On the other side-”

The Dendra was still rocking wildly, its parting girders cracking and screeching. Shells were still exploding blindingly outside.

But at that moment they heard a fiercely exultant cry from Durk Undis.

“Our weapon has disabled them. Now give them full broadsides.”

Almost instantly came a thin cheer. “We got them!”

Through the porthole beside the hatch, Gordon glimpsed far out there in the void a sudden flare like that of a new nova.

It was no pinpoint of light this time, but a blazing star that swiftly flared and vanished.

“They've destroyed the Empire cruiser somehow!” cried Lianna.

Gordon's heart sank. “But we can still get away if we can get to one of the other space-boats.”

They turned to retrace their way. As they did so, two disheveled Cloud officers burst into the cross-corridor.

“Get them!” yelled one. They started to draw their atom-pistols from the holsters of their space-suits.

Gordon charged desperately, the heel of the staggering ship hurling him into the two men. He rolled with them on the corridor floor, fiercely trying to wrest a weapon from one.

Then more voices rang loud about him. He felt himself seized by many hands that tore him loose from his antagonists. Hauled to his feet, panting and breathless, Gordon found a half-dozen Cloudmen holding Lianna and himself.

Durk Undis' fierce, flushed face was recognizable inside the glassite helmet of the foremost man.

“You traitor!” he hissed at Gordon. “I told Shorr Kan no spawn of the Empire could be depended on.”

“Kill them both now!” urged one of the raging Cloudmen. “It was Zarth Arn who sabotaged the dark-out and got us into this fix.”

“No, they don't die yet!” snapped Durk Undis. “Shorr Kan will deal with them when we get back to the Cloud.”

“If we get back to the Cloud,” corrected the other officer bitterly. “The Dendra is crippled, its last two generators will barely run, the space boats are wrecked. We couldn't make it halfway back.”

Durk Undis stiffened. “Then we'll have to hide out until Shorr Kan can send a relief ship for us. We'll call him by secret wave and report what has happened.”

“Hide out where?” said another Cloud officer. “This is Empire space. That patrol-cruiser undoubtedly got off a flash report before we finished it. This whole sector will be searched by Empire squadrons within twenty-four hours.”

Durk Undis bared his teeth. “I know. We'll have to get out of here. And there's only one place to go.”

He pointed through a porthole to a brilliant coppery star that shone hotly just a little inside the glowing haze of huge Orion Nebula.

“That copper sun has a planet marked uninhabited on the charts. We can wait there for help. The cursed Empire cruisers won't look long for us if we jettison wreckage to make it appear we were destroyed.”

“But the charts showed that that sun and its planet are the center of a dust-whorl. We can't go there,” objected another Cloudman.

“The whorl will drift us in, and a high-powered relief ship will be able to come in and get back out,” Durk Undis insisted. “Head for it with all the speed you can get out of the generators. Don't draw power yet to message Thallarna. We can do that after we're safe on that world.”

He added, pointing to Gordon and Lianna, “And tie these two up and keep a man with drawn gun over them every minute, Linn Kyle.”

Gordon and Lianna were hauled into one of the metal cabins whose walls were badly bulged by the damage of battle. They were dumped into two recoil-chairs mounted on rotating pedestals.

Plastic fetters were snapped to hold their arms and legs to the frames of the chairs. The officer Linn Kyle then left them, with a big Cloud-soldier with drawn atom-pistol remaining guard over them.

Gordon managed to rotate his chair by jerks of his body until he faced Lianna.

“Lianna, I thought we had a chance but I've just made things worse,” he said huskily.

Her face was unafraid as she smiled at him through her glassite helmet.

“You had to try it, Zarth. And at least, you've thwarted Shorr Kan's scheme.”

Gordon knew better. He realizing sinkingly that his attempt to get the Dendra captured by Empire forces had been a complete failure.

Whatever was the new, potent weapon the Cloudmen had used, it had been too much for the Empire cruiser. He had succeeded only in proving to the Cloudmen and Shorr Kan that he was their enemy.

He'd never have a chance now to warn Throon of Corbulo's treachery and the impending attack. He and Lianna would be dragged back to the Cloud and to Shorr Kan's cold retribution.

“By God, not that!” Gordon swore to himself. “I'll make them kill us before I let Lianna be taken back there.”

The Dendra throbbed on for hours, limping on its last two generators. Then it cut off power and drifted. Soon the ship was entering the strange glow of the gigantic nebula.

At intervals came ominous cracklings and creakings from many parts of the ship. When a guard came to relieve their watchdog, Gordon learned from the brief talk of the two Cloudmen that only eighteen men remained alive of the officers and crew.

The staggering ship began some hours later to buck and lurch in the grip of strong currents. Gordon realized they must be entering the great dust-whorl in the nebula, to which Linn Kyle had referred.

More and more violent grew the bucking until the Dendra seemed shaking itself apart. Then came a loud crash, and a singing sound that lasted for minutes.

“The air has all leaked out from the ship now,” Lianna murmured. “Without our space-suits, we'd all be dead.”

Death seemed close to John Gordon, in any case. The crippled ship was now in the full grip of the mighty nebula dust current that was bearing it on toward a crash on the star-world ahead.

Hours passed. The Dendra was now using the scant power of its two remaining generators again, to keep from being drawn into the coppery sun they were nearing.

Gordon and Lianna could get only occasional glimpses of their destination, through the porthole. They glimpsed a planet revolving around that copper-colored star-a yellow, tawny world.

Durk Undis' voice rang in a final order. “Strap in for crash-landing.”

The guard who watched Gordon and Lianna strapped himself into a recoil-chair beside them. Air began to scream through the wreck.

Gordon had a flashing glimpse of weird ocher forests rushing upward. The generators roared loud in a brief deceleration effort. Then came a crash that hurled Gordon into momentary darkness.