The Star Kings

Chapter XXVII. The Disruptor

PALE, ghostly beams stabbed out from the prow of the Ethne toward the dim region of space ahead. Those pallid rays seemed almost to creep slowly forward, fanning out as they did so.

Gordon, Hull Burrel and Val Marlann, crouched at the window frozen and incapable of movement as they looked ahead. And there seemed no change.

Then the massed specks in the radar screen that marked the position of the Cloud fleet's advancing line seemed to waver slightly. A flicker seemed to run through that area.

“Nothing's happening!” Burrel groaned.

“Nothing! The thing must be-”

A point of blackness had appeared far ahead. It grew and grew, pulsing and throbbing.

And swiftly it was a great, growing blot of blackness, not the blackness of mere absence of light but such living, quivering blackness as no living man had ever seen.

On the radar screen, the area that included half the Cloud fleet's advancing battle-line had been swallowed by darkness. For there was a black blot on the screen too, a blot from which radar-rays recoiled.

“God in Heaven!” said Val Marlann, shaking. “ The Disruptor is destroying space itself in that area!”

The awful, the unimaginable answer to the riddle of the Disruptor's dread power flashed through Gordon's quaking mind at last.

He still did not understand, he would never understand, the scientific method of it. But the effect of it burst upon him. The Disruptor was a force that annihilated, not matter, but space.

The space-time continuum of our cosmos was four-dimensional, a four-dimensioned globe floating in the extra-dimensional abyss. The thrust of the Disruptor's awful beams destroyed a growing section of that sphere by thrusting it out of the cosmos. It flashed across Gordon's appalled mind in a second. He was suddenly afraid. He convulsively ripped open the release switch of the thing. Then as the next second ticked, the universe seemed to go mad.

Titan hands seemed to bat the Ethne through space with raving power. They glimpsed stars and space gone crazy, the huge glaring white mass of Deneb heaving wildly through the void, comets and dark stars and meteor-drift of the void streaming insanely in the sky.

Gordon, hurled against a wall, quaked in his soul as the universe seemed to rise in mad vengeance against the puny men who had dared to lay desecrating hands on the warp and woof of eternal space.

Gordon came back to dull awareness many minutes later. The Ethne was whirling and tossing on furious etheric storms, but the starry vault of space seemed to have quieted from its insane convulsion.

Val Marlann, blood streaming from a great bruise on his temple, was clinging to a stanchion and shouting orders into the annunciator.

He turned a ghastly white face. “The turbines are holding and the disturbances are quieting. That convulsion nearly threw our ships into Deneb, and quaked the stars in this whole part of the galaxy!”

“The backlash reaction!” Gordon choked. “It was that-the surrounding space collapsing upon the hole in space the Disruptor made.”

Hull Burrel hung over the radar screen.

“Only half the Cloud ships were destroyed in the convulsion.”

Gordon shuddered. “I can't use the Disruptor again. I won't.”

“You won't have to!” Burrel said eagerly. “The remainder of their fleet is fleeing back in panic toward the Cloud.”

They were not to be blamed, Gordon thought sickly. To have space itself go mad and collapse around one-he would never have dared unloose that force if he had known. “I know now why Brenn Bir warned never to use the Disruptor lightly!” he said hoarsely. “Pray God it never will be used at all again.”

Calls came from the stereo thick and fast, stunned inquiries from Giron's ships.

“What happened?” said the shaken Commander over and over.

Hull Burrel had not lost sight of their goal, of what they must do.

“The League fleet's in full flight toward the Cloud, or what's left of them are I he told the Commander exultantly. “If we follow we can smash them once and for all.”

Giron too fired at the opportunity. “I'll order the pursuit at once.”

Back across the galactic spaces toward the shelter of the Cloud, the remnants of the League fleet were streaming. And after them, hour by hour, sped the Ethne and the Empire's battered fleet.

“They're finished, if we can smash Shorr Kan's rule and destroy their remaining ships,” Burrel exulted.

“You don't think Shorr Kan was with their fleet?” Gordon asked.

“He's too foxy for that-he'd be running things from Thallarna, never fear!” Val Marlann declared.

Gordon agreed, after a moment's thought. He knew Shorr Kan was no coward, but he'd have been directing his vast assault from his headquarters inside the Cloud.

The League of Dark Worlds' ships disappeared into the shelter of the Cloud long hours later. Soon afterward, the Empire fleet drew up just outside that vast, hazy gloom.

“If we go in after them, we might run into ambushes,” Giron declared. “The place is rotten with navigational perils that we know nothing about.”

Gordon proposed, “We'll demand their surrender, give them an ultimatum.'“

“Shorr Kan will not surrender” Hull Burrel warned.

But Gordon had them beam a stereocast into the Cloud toward Thallarna, and spoke by it.

“To the Government of the League of Dark Worlds. We offer you a chance to surrender. Give up and disarm under our directions and we promise that no one will suffer except those criminals who led you into this aggression.

“But refuse, and we'll turn loose the Disruptor upon the whole Cloud! We'll blot this place forever from the galaxy.”

Val Marlann looked at him, appalled. “You'd do that? But good God-”

“I wouldn't dare do that!” Gordon answered. “I'll never turn loose the Disruptor again. But they've felt its power and may be bluffed by it.”

There came no answer to their stereomessage. Again, after an hour, he repeated it.

Again, no answer. Then finally, after another wait, Giron's stern voice came.

“It seems that we'll have to go in there, Prince Zarth.”

“No, wait,” said Hull Burrel. “A message is coming through from Thallarna.”

In the stereo had appeared a group of wild-looking Cloudmen, some of them wounded, in a room of Shorr Kan's palace.

“We agree to your terms, Prince Zarth!” their spokesman said hoarsely. “Our ships will be docked and disarmed immediately. You will be able to enter in a few hours.”

“It could be a trick,” Val Marlann rasped. “It would give Shorr Kan time to lay traps for us.”

The Cloudman in the stereo shook his head. “Shorr Kan's disastrous tyranny is overthrown. When he refused to surrender, we rose in rebellion against him. I can prove that by letting you see him. He is dying.”

The telestereo switched its scene abruptly to another room of the palace. There before them in image sat Shorr Kan.

He sat in the chair in his austere little room from which he had directed his mighty attempt to conquer the galaxy. Armed Cloudmen were around him. His face was marble-white and there was a blasted, blackened wound in his side.

His dulling eyes looked at them out of the stereo, and then cleared for a moment as they rested on Gordon. And then Shorr Kan grinned weakly.

“You win,” he told Gordon. “I never thought you'd dare loose the Disruptor. Fool's luck, that you didn't destroy yourself with it-”

He choked, then went on. “Devil of a way for me to end up, isn't it? But I'm not complaining. I had one life and I used it to the limit. You're the same way at bottom, that's why I liked you.”

Shorr Kan's dark head sagged, his voice trailed to a whisper. “Maybe I'm a throwback to your world, Gordon? Born out of my time? Maybe-”

He was dead with the words, they knew by the way his strong figure slumped forward across the desk.

“What was he talking about to you, Prince Zarth?” asked Hull Burrel puzzledly. “I couldn't understand it.”

Gordon felt a queer, sharp emotion. Life was unpredictable. There was no reason why he should have liked Shorr Kan. But he knew now that he had.

Val Marlann and the other officers of the Ethne were exultant.

“It's victory! We've wiped out the menace of the League forever.”

The ship was in uproar. And they knew that that wild exultation of relief was spreading through their whole fleet.

Two hours later, Giron began moving his occupation forces inside the Cloud, on radar beams projected from Thallarna. Half his ships would remain on guard outside, in case of treachery.

“But there's no doubt now that they've actually surrendered,” he told Gordon. “The advance ships I sent in there report that every League warship is already docked and being disarmed.”

He added feelingly, “I'll leave an escort of warships for the Ethne. I know you'll be wanting to return to Throon now.”

Gordon told him, “We don't need any escort. Val Marlann, you can start at once.”

The Ethne set out on the long journey back, across the galaxy toward Canopus. But after a half-hour, Gordon gave new orders.

“Head for Sol, not Canopus. Our destination is Earth.”

Hull Burrel, amazed, protested. “But Prince Zarth, all Throon will be waiting for you to return. The whole Empire, everyone, will be mad with joy by this time, waiting to welcome you.”

Gordon shook his head dully. “I am not going to Throon now. Take me to Earth.”

They looked at him puzzledly, wonderingly. But Val Marlann gave the order and the ship changed its course slightly and headed for the far-distant yellow spark of Sol.

For hours, as the Ethne flew on toward the north, Gordon remained sitting and staring broodingly from the windows, sunk in a strange, tired daze.

He was going back at last to Earth, to his own time and his own world, to his own body. Only now, at last could he keep his pledge to Zarth Arn.

He looked out at the supernally brilliant stars of the galaxy. Far, far in the west now lay Canopus' glittering beacon. He thought of Throon, of the rejoicing millions there.

“All that is over for me now,” he told himself dully. “Over forever.”

He thought of Lianna, and that blind wave of heartbreak rose again in his mind. That, too, was over for him forever.

Hull Burrel came and told him, “The whole Empire, the whole galaxy, is ringing with your praises, Prince Zarth. Must you go to Earth now when they are waiting for you?”

“Yes, I must,” Gordon insisted, and the big Antarian perplexedly left him.

He dozed, and woke, and dozed again. Time seemed scarcely now to have any meaning. How many days was it before the familiar yellow disk of Sol loomed bright ahead of the ship?

Down toward green old Earth slanted the Ethne, toward the sunlit eastern hemisphere.

“You'll land at my laboratory in the mountains-Hull knows the place,” said Gordon.

The tower there in the ageless, frosty Himalayas looked the same as when he had left it-how long ago it seemed! The Ethne landed softly on the little plateau.

Gordon faced his puzzled friends. “I am going into my laboratory for a short time, and I want only Hull Burrel to go with me.”

He hesitated, then added, “Will you shake hands? You're the best friends and comrades a man ever had.”

“Prince Zarth, that sounds like a farewell!” burst Val Marlann worriedly. “What are you going to do in there?”

“"Nothing is going to happen to me, I promise you,” Gordon said with a little smile. “I will be coming back out to the ship in a few hours or so.” 'They gripped his hand. They stood silently looking after him as he and Hull Burrel stepped out into the frosty, biting air.

In the tower, Gordon led the way up to the glass-walled laboratory where rested the strange instruments of mental science that had been devised by the real Zarth Arn and old Vel Quen.

Gordon went over in his mind what the old scientist had told him about the operation of the telepathic amplifier and the mind-transmitter. He checked the instruments as carefully as he could.

Hull Burrel watched wonderingly, worriedly. Finally, Gordon turned to him.

“Hull, I'll need your help later. I want you to do as I ask even if you don't understand. Will you?”

“You know I'll obey any order you give,” burst the big Antarian. “But I can't help feeling worried.”

“There's no cause to-in a few hours you'll be on your way to Throon again and I'll be with you,” Gordon said. “Now wait.”

He put the headpiece of the telepathic amplifier on his head. He made sure it was tuned again to Zarth Arn's individual mental frequency as Vel Quen had instructed. Then he turned on the apparatus.

Gordon thought. He concentrated his mind to hurl a thought-message amplified by the apparatus, back across the abyss of dimensional time to the one mind to which it was tuned.

“Zarth Arn! Zarth Am. Can you hear me?”

No answering thought came into his, mind. Again and again he repeated the thought-call, but without response.

Wonder and worry began to grip Gordon. He tried again an hour later, but with no more success. Hull Burrel watched puzzledly.

Then, after four hours had passed, he desperately made still another attempt.

“Zarth Arn, can, you hear me? It is John Gordon calling.”

And this time, faint and far across the unimaginable abysses of time, a thin thought-answer came into his mind.

“John Gordon! Good God, for days I've been waiting and wondering what was wrong. Why is it that you yourself are calling instead of Vel Quen?”

“Vel Quen is dead!” Gordon answered in swift thought. “He was killed by League soldiers soon after I came across to this time.”

He explained hurriedly. “There has been galactic war here between the Cloud and the Empire, Zarth. I was swept into it, couldn't get back to Earth to call you for the exchange. I had to assume your identity, to tell no one as I promised. One man did learn of my imposture but he's dead and no one else here knows.”

“Gordon!” Zarth Arn's thought was feverish with excitement. “You've been true to your pledge, then? You could have stayed there in my body and position, but didn't.”

His excited thought raced on. “I've had my troubles here on your ancient Earth, They had me in a hospital for a while for amnesia because I couldn't remember your past.”

Gordon told him, “Zarth, I think I can arrange the operation of the mind-transmitter to re-exchange our bodies, from what Vel Quen explained to me. Tell me if this is the way.”

He ran over the details of the mind-transmitter operation in his thoughts. Zarth Arn's thought answered quickly, corroborating most of it, correcting him at places.

“That will do it-I'm ready for the exchange,” Zarth Arn told him finally. “But who will operate the transmitter for you if Vel Quen is dead?”

“I have a friend here, Hull Burrel,” answered Gordon. “He does not know the nature of what we are doing, but I can instruct him how to turn on the transmitter.”

He ceased concentrating, and turned to the worried Antarian who had stood watching him.

“Hull, it is now that I need your help,” Gordon said. He showed the switches of the mind-transmitter. “When I give the signal, you must close these switches in the following order.”

Hull Burrel listened closely, then nodded understandingly. “I can do that. But what's it going to do to you?”

“I can't tell you that, Hull. But it's not going to harm me. I promise you that.”

He wrung the Antarian's hand in a hard grip. Then he readjusted the headpiece and again sent his thought across the abyss.

“Ready, Zarth? If you are, I'll give Hull the signal.”

“I am ready,” came Zarth Arn's answer. “And Gordon, before we say farewell-my thanks for all you have done for me, for your loyalty to me.”

Gordon raised his hand in the signal. He heard Hull closing the switches. The transmitter hummed, and Gordon felt his mind hurled into bellowing blackness…