The Star Kings

Chapter XXV. The Star Kings Decide

GALACTIC war. The war the galaxy had dreaded, the long-feared struggle to the death between the Empire and the Cloud!

And it had come at this disastrous moment when he, John Gordon of ancient Earth, bore the responsibility of leading the Empire's defense.

Gordon sprang from bed. “League fleets heading toward Hercules? Are the Barons ready to resist?”

“They may not resist at all!” said Hull Burrel. “Shorr Kan is stereo-casting to them and to all the Kingdoms, warning them that resistance would be useless because the Empire is going to fall.

“He's telling them that Jhal Arn is too near death to wield the Disruptor, and that you can't use it because you don't know its secret!”

As though the words were a flash illumining an abyss, Gordon suddenly realized that that was why Shorr Kan had finally struck.

Shorr Kan knew that he, John Gordon, was a masquerader inside Zarth Arn's physical body. He knew that Gordon had no knowledge of the Disruptor such as the real Zarth had.

Knowing that, the moment he had heard of Jhal Arn being stricken down, Shorr Kan had launched the League's long planned attack. He counted on the fact that there was no one now to use the Disruptor against him. He should have realized that was what Shorr Kan would do.

Hull Burrel was shouting on, as Gordon dressed with frantic haste. `That devil is talking by stereo to the star-kings right now. You've got to hold them to the Empire.”

Officials, naval officers, excited messengers were already crowding into the room and clamoring wildly for Gordon's attention.

Hull Burrel roughly cleared them from the way as he and Gordon hastened out and raced down through the palace to the study that was the nerve-center of the Mid-Galactic Empire.

All the palace, all Throon, was waking this fateful night. Voices shouted, lights were flashing on, great warships taking off for space could be heard rushing across the storm-swept sky.

In the study, Gordon was momentarily stunned by the many telestereos that blazed with light and movement. Two of them gave view from the bridges of cruisers in the thick of the frontier fighting, shaking to thundering guns and rushing through space ablaze with atom-shells.

But then Gordon's eyes flew toward the stereo on which the dark, dominating image of Shorr Kan stood speaking. His black head bare, his eyes flashing confidently, the Cloudman was broadcasting.

“-so I repeat, Barons and rulers of the star-kingdoms, that the Cloud's war is not directed against you. Our quarrel is only with the Empire, which has too long sought to dominate the whole galaxy under the guise of working for peaceful federation. We in the League of Dark Worlds have finally struck out against that selfish aggrandizement.

“Our League offers friendship to your Kingdoms. You need not join this struggle and be dragged down to destruction with the Empire. All we ask is that you let our fleets pass through your realms without resistance. And you shall be full, equal members in the real democratic federation of the galaxy which we shall establish when we have conquered.

“For we shall conquer. The Empire will fall. Its forces cannot stand against our mighty new fleets and weapons. Nor can their long-vaunted Disruptor save them now, for they have no one to use it. Jhal Arn, who knows it, lies stricken down and Zarth Arn does not know how to use it.”

Sorr Kan's voice rang loud with supreme confidence as he emphasized his final declaration.

“Zarth Arn does not know that because he is not really Zarth Arn at all-he is an impostor masquerading as Zarth Arn! I have absolute proof of that. Would I have challenged the Disruptor's menace if I had not? The Empire cannot use that secret, and thus the Empire is doomed. Star-kings and Barons, do not join a doomed cause and wreck your own realms.”

Shorr Kan's image faded from the stereo as he concluded that ringing declaration.

“Good God, he must have gone crazy!” gasped Hull Burrel to Gordon. “To claim that you're not really yourself.”

“Prince Zarth!” rang an officer's excited call across the room. “Commander Giron calling-urgent.”

Still stunned by Shorr Kan's audacious, stroke to neutralize the Kingdoms, Gordon stumbled hastily to that other stereo.

In its view, Commander Ron Giron and his officers stood, on a battleship's bridge bent over their radar screens. The towering Centaurian veteran turned toward Gordon.

“Highness, what about the star-kingdoms?” he rasped. “We've radar reports that two of the big League fleets that came out of the Cloud are now speeding west toward Hercules and Polaris. Are the Barons and the Kingdoms going to submit to them or resist? We must know that.”

“We'll know that for certain just as soon as I can contact the Kingdoms' envoys,” Gordon said desperately. “What is your situation?”

Giron made a curt gesture. “Only our cruiser-screens are fighting so far. Some Cloud phantoms slipped through them and are sniping at our main fleet here back of Rigel, but that's not serious yet.

“What is serious is that I daren't commit my main forces on this southern front if the League is going to flank me through Hercules. If the Barons and the Kingdoms are not going to join us, I'll have to fall far back westward to cover Canopus from that flank thrust.”

Gordon, staggered by the moment of awful responsibility, tried to steady his whirling thoughts.

“Avoid commitment of your main forces as long as possible, Giron,” he begged. “I'm still hoping to hold the Kingdoms to us.”

“If they fail us now, we're in a had fix!” Giron said grimly. “The League has twice as many ships as we figured. They'll cut around in short order to attack Canopus.”

Gordon swung back to Hull Burrel. “Get the ambassadors of the star-kings, at once. Bring them here.”

Burrel raced out of the room. But almost at once, he returned.

“The ambassadors are already here. They just arrived.”

Tu Shal and the other envoys of the star-kingdoms crowded into the room a moment later, pale, excited and tense.

Gordon wasted no time on protocol. “You've heard that two of Shorr Kan's fleets are heading for Hercules and Polaris?”

Tu Shal, pallid to the lips, nodded. “The news was brought to us instantly. We have heard Shorr Kan's broadcast-”

Gordon interrupted harshly. “I demand to know if the Barons are going to resist his invasion or allow him free passage. And I demand to know if the Kingdoms are going to honor their engagements of alliance with the Empire, or surrender to Shorr Kan's threats.

The deathly-white Lyra ambassador answered. “Our Kingdoms will honor their engagements if the Empire will honor its pledge. When we pledged alliance, it was because the Empire promised to use the Disruptor if necessary to protect us.”

“Have I not told you that the Disruptor will be used?” flashed Gordon.

“You promised that but you evaded demonstrating it,” said the Polaris envoy. “Why should you do that if you know the secret? Suppose that Shorr Kan is right and that you are an impostor-then we'd be throwing our realms away in a useless fight.”

Hull Burrel, carried away by anger, uttered a roar. “Do you believe for a moment Shorr Kan's fantastic lie that Prince Zarth is an impostor?”

“Is it a lie?” demanded Tu Shal, gazing fixedly at Gordon's face. “Shorr Kan must know something to assure him the Disruptor won't be used, or he'd never have risked this attack.”

“Curse it, you can see for yourself that he's Zarth Arn, can't you?” raged the Antarian captain.

“Scientific cunning can enable one man to masquerade in the disguise of another!” snapped the Hercules envoy.

Gordon, desperate in the face of this final terrible stumbling-block, seized upon an idea that crossed his mind.

“Hull, be still!” he ordered. “Tu Shal and you others, listen to me. If I prove to you that I am Zarth Arn and that I can and will use the Disruptor, will your Kingdoms stand by the Empire?”

“Polaris Kingdom will!” said that envoy instantly. “Prove that and I'll flash instant word to our capital.”

Others chimed in swiftly, with the same assurance. And the Hercules ambassador added, “We Barons of the Cluster want to resist the Cloud, if it's not hopeless. Prove that it isn't, and we'll fight.”

“I can prove in five minutes that I am the real Zarth Arn,” rasped Gordon. “Follow me. Hull, you come too.”

Bewilderedly, they hastened after Gordon as he went out of the room and down through the corridors and ramps of the palace.

They came thus down the spiral stair to the hall from which extended that corridor of throbbing, deadly white radiance that led to the Chamber of the Disruptor.

Gordon turned to the bewildered envoys. “You all must know what that corridor is?”

Tu Shal answered. “All the galaxy has heard of it. It leads to the Chamber of the Disruptor.”

“Can any man go through that corridor to the Disruptor unless he is one of the royal family entrusted with it?” Gordon pressed.

The envoys began to understand now. “No!” said the Polarian. “Everyone knows that only the heirs of the Empire's rulers can enter the Wave that is tuned to destroy anyone except them.”

“Then watch!” Gordon said, and stepped into the radiant corridor.

He strode down it into the Chamber of the Disruptor. He grasped one of the big gray metal force-cones. Upon the wheeled platform on which it rested, he wheeled that cone back out of the chamber and the corridor.

“Now do you believe that I'm an impostor?” he demanded.

“By Heaven, no!” cried Tu Shal. “No one but the real Zarth Arn could have entered that corridor and lived.”

“Then you are Zarth Arn, and you do know how to use the Disruptor!” another said.

Gordon saw that he had convinced them. They had thought it possible that he might be another man disguised as Zarth Arn. And they knew now that that could not be so.

What they had not even dreamed, what even Shorr Kan had not told lest it meet utter disbelief, was that he was Zarth Arn in physical body but another man in mind!

Gordon pointed to the big force-cone. “That is part of the Disruptor apparatus. The rest of it I'll bring out, to be mounted at once on the battleship Elton. And then that ship goes with me out to use the Disruptor's awful power and crush the League's attack.”

Gordon had decided, had in these minutes of strain made his fateful choice.

He would try to use the Disruptor! He knew its operation from Jhal Arn's explanations, even if its purpose and power were still a dread mystery to him. He would risk catastrophe to use it.

For it was his own strange imposture, involuntary though it had been, that had brought the Empire to this brink of disaster. It was his responsibility, his duty to the real Zarth Arn, to attempt this.

Tu Shal's aging face flamed. “Prince Zarth, if you intend thus to keep the Empire's pledge, we will keep our pledge. Polaris Kingdom will fight with the Empire against the Cloud.”

“And Lyra. And we Barons!” rang the eager, excited voices. “We'll flash word to our capitals that you're going out with the Disruptor to join the struggle.”

“Send that word at once, then!” Gordon told them. “Have your Kingdoms place their fleets under Commander Giron's orders.”

And as the excited ambassadors hurried back up the stairs to send their messages, Gordon turned to Hull Burrel.

“Call the Ethne's technicians here with a squad of guards, Hull. I'll bring out the apparatus of the Disruptor and it can be taken at once to the Ethne. “

Back and forth into the silent, radiant Chamber, Gordon now hastened, bringing out one by one the big, mysterious cones. He had to do this himself-no one else except Jhal Arn could enter there.

By the time he wheeled out the bulky cubical transformer, Hull Burrel was back with Captain Val Marlann and his technicians.

Working hastily, but handling the apparatus with a gingerness that betrayed their dread, the men loaded the equipment into tubeway cars.

A half-hour later they stood in the naval spaceport beneath the shadow of the mighty Ethne. It and two other battleships were the only major units left here, the others all already on their way to join the epochal struggle.

Under the flare of lightning and crash of thunder and rain the technicians labored to bolt the big force-cones to the brackets already in place around the prow of the battleship. The tips of the cones, pointed forward, and their cables were brought back through the hull into the navigation room behind the bridge.

Gordon had had the cubical transformer with its control-panel set up here. He directed the hooking of the colored cables to the panel as Jhal Arn had explained. The massive power-leads were hastily run back and attached to the mighty drive generators of the ship.

“Ready for take-off in ten minutes!” Val Marlann reported, his face gleaming with sweat.

Gordon was shaking with strain. “One last check of the cones. There's time for it.”

He raced out into the storm, peering up at the huge, overhanging prow of the warship. The twelve cones fastened up there seemed tiny, puny.

Impossible to think that this little apparatus could produce any such vast effect as men expected. And yet – “Take-off, two minutes!” yelled Hull Burrel from the gangway, over the din of alarm bells and shouts of hurrying men. Gordon turned. And as he did so, through the confusion a slim figure ran toward him. “Lianna!” he said. “Good God, why-”

She came into his arms. Her face was white, tear-wet, as she raised it to him.

“Zarth, I had to come before you left. If you didn't come back, I wanted you to know-I still love you! I always will, even though I know it's Murn you love.” Gordon groaned as he held her in his arms with his cheek against her tear-wet face.

“Lianna. Lianna. I can't promise for the future, you may find all things changed between us in the future, but I tell you now that it is you I love.”

A wave of final, bitter heartbreak seemed to surge up in him at this last moment of wild farewell.

For it was farewell forever, Gordon knew. Even if he survived the battle, it must not be he but the real Zarth Arn who would come back, to Throon. And if he didn't survive“Prince Zarth!” yelled Hull Burrel's hoarse voice in his ear. “It is time!”

Gordon, as he tore away, had a swift vision of Lianna's white face and shining eyes that he would never forget. For he knew that it was his last.

And then Hull Burrel was dragging him bodily up the gangway, doors were grinding shut, great turbines thundering, bells ringing sharp signals down the corridors.

“Take off,” warned the annunciators shrilly, and with a crash of splitting air the Ethne zoomed for the storm-swept heavens.

Upward it roared, and with it raced the other two battleships, bolting like metal things of thought up across the star-sown sky.

“Giron's calling!” Hull Burrel was shouting in his ear as they stumbled forward along the corridors. “Heavy fighting now near Rigel. And the League's eastern fleets are forcing through.”

In the navigation-room where Gordon had set up the Disruptor apparatus, Commander Giron's grim image flashed from a telestereo.

Over the Commander's shoulder Gordon glimpsed a bridgeroom window that looked out on a space literally alive with an inferno of bursting atom-shells, of exploding ships.

Giron's voice was cool but swift. “We joined fleet action with the League's two eastern forces. And we're suffering prohibitive losses. The enemy has some new weapon that seems to strike down our ships from within-we can't understand it.”

Gordon started. “The new weapon that Shorr Kan boasted to me about. How does it operate?”

“We don't know!” was the answer. “Ships suddenly drift out of action all around us, and don't answer our calls.”

Giron added, “The Barons report their fleet is moving out east of the Cluster to oppose the Cloud's two fleets coming toward them. The fleets of Lyra, Polaris and the other allied Kingdoms are already coming down full speed from the northwest to join my command.”

The Commander concluded grimly, “But this new weapon of the League, whatever it is, is decimating us. I'm with drawing west but they're hammering us hard, and their phantoms keep getting through. I feel it my duty to warn that we can't fight long in the face of such losses.”

Gordon told him, “We're coming out with the Disruptor and we're going to use it. But it'll take many hours for us to reach the scene.”

He tried to think, before he gave orders. He remembered what Jhal Arn had said, that the target area of the Disruptor's force must be as limited as possible.

“Giron, to utilize the Disruptor it is imperative that the League's fleets be maneuvered together. Can you somehow do that?”

Giron rasped answer. “The only chance I have of doing that is to retreat slightly southwestward from this branch of the attack, as though I meant to go to the aid of the Barons. That might draw the Cloud's two attacking forces together.”

“Then try it!” Gordon urged. “Fall back southwestward and give me an approximate position for rendezvous with you.”

“Just west of Deneb should be the approximate position by the time you get here,” Giron answered. “God knows how much of our fleet will be left then if this new Cloud weapon keeps striking us down.”

Giron switched off, but in other telestereos unfolded the battle that was going on all along the line near distant Rigel.

Beside the ships that perished in the inferno of atom-shells and the stabbing attack of stealthy phantom-cruisers, the radar screen showed many Empire ships suddenly drifting out of action.

“What in the devil's name has the Cloud got that can disable our Warships like that?” sweated Hull Burrel.

“Whatever it is, it's smashing in Giron's wings fast,” muttered Val Marlann tensely. “His withdrawal may become a rout.”

Gordon turned from the dazing, bewildering stereos that showed the battle, and glanced haggardly through the bridge windows.

The Ethne was already hurtling at increasing velocity past the smaller Argo suns, speeding southward toward the Armageddon of the galaxy.

Gordon felt overwhelmed by dread, a panicky reaction. He had no place in this titanic conflict of future ages. He had been mad to make the impulsive decision to try to use the Disruptor!

He used the Disruptor? How could he, when he knew so little of it? How dared he unchain the ghastly power which its own discoverer had warned could rive and destroy the galaxy itself?