The Sun Smasher

CHAPTER IV

Silence, a seeming eternity of it, in which Banning stared into the dark wolfish face before him and felt his heart sink under an icy weight of apprehension. Well, that was that. They'd found him out. Now what? Rolf's warning came back to him — surrender, Jommor, death.

He thought desperately that he should speak, try to bluster his way out of it, but his tongue was stiff in his mouth. Before he could force it to make words, the wolf-faced man lifted his wine-glass high and shouted, “But you will be! We fought for you before, we'll fight again — and this time we'll see you back on your rightful throne. Hail, Valkar!"

"Hail Valkar!"

The cry rang from the metal walls. Relief swept over Banning and the hawk-eyed, hard-handed officers misread the emotion on his face for something else and cheered again. From some inner corner of Banning's soul there came unexpectedly a sense of pride. For a moment it seemed only right and good that these men were giving him a chieftain's greeting. His back straightened. He looked at them, and said, “The Valkars have never lacked for good men. I—"

He faltered. The brief moment was gone, and he saw Rolf looking at him, satisfaction shading swiftly into anxiety.

Abruptly, Banning smiled. Rolf had got him into this. Let Rolf worry. Let him sweat. Let him loyally and abjectly serve the Valkar.

"Wine,” he said, “I'll give my officers a pledge in return."

Rolf's eyes narrowed, but he put a wineglass in Banning's hand.

"Gentlemen,” said Banning, “I give you the return of the Old Empire and the freedom of the stars!"

The response almost deafened him. He turned to Rolf and whispered in English, “Corny — but effective, don't you think?” He drained the glass.

Rolf laughed. It was genuine laughter, and Banning felt that he had done something that pleased Rolf instead of angering him.

To the others Rolf said, “Jommor's cleverness failed. In spite of him, the Valkar is not changed. I know. I taught him his first lessons. He is still the Valkar."

He presented the officers one by one. Schrarm, Landolf, Kirst, Felder, Burri, Tawn. They looked like hard, competent, devoted men. Banning did not think he would last long among them if they found out he was not the Valkar, but only Neil Banning of Nebraska. He was afraid of them, and fear sharpened his wits, finding words for his tongue and a lordly carriage for his head. He was amazed at how easy it was to be lordly.

He was beginning to think he might get away with it when a young orderly came into the messroom and snapped to attention so rigidly that Banning could almost hear his bones crack.

"Captain Behrent's compliments,” he said, “and would the Valkar honor him by attending the bridge? We are now entering the Drift—"

A strident whistle from a speaker high in the wall drowned out the orderly's words. A voice followed the whistle, requiring all hands to take their stations.

The officers prepared to go. They laughed and said, “It was touch and go on the outward trip, but this time running the Drift will be easy with the Valkar at the helm."

"— entering the Drift,” said the orderly with dogged determination, “and the Captain defers to—"

Between the whistling, the monotonous repetition of orders, and the jostling of the officers as they went out the orderly gave up. He turned on Banning a look of pure hero-worship and said simply, “Sir, we'd all feel safer with you as our pilot now."

Oh, God, thought Banning, and looked despairingly at Rolf. Rolf smiled, and when the orderly stepped back, he said, “Oh, yes, you're a space pilot, one of the greatest. To be a king of stars, you must be a master of space, and you were trained to it like all the Valkars, from childhood."

"But I can't—” Banning babbled.

There was no time for more, for the orderly was holding the door open. He went through it, with Rolf, feeling trapped, and helpless.

He entered the bridge.

It was an overwhelming place, and for the first time the complete and prosaic reality of the starship was borne in upon him. Before, it had been a room, a glimpse through an incredible window, and an intellectual acceptance of something that all his former training denied. Now it became a terrifying actuality in winch men lived and worked, and gambled on their skill that they would not die.

The low broad room was crammed with instrument panels, tensely watched by the crew's technicians. In the center of the space an officer sat half surrounded by a ground-glass screen across which moved a constant stream of figures and symbols. Under his hands was a thing that resembled an organ keyboard, and Banning guessed that this was the heart and nerve-center of the ship. He hoped the man knew how to play it. He hoped it very much, because the big curving view-plates that opened up the front and two sides of the bridge revealed a view of interstellar space which even an utter greenhorn like himself could recognize as appalling.

A man with a lined, bulldog face and white hair cropped to his skull turned and saluted Banning. He wore a dark tunic with a symbol of rank on his breast, and he, did not look as though he were accustomed to defer to anyone in the handling of his ship. Yet it was without a trace of irony or anger that he said to Banning, “Sir, the bridge is yours."

Banning shook his head. He was still staring at the view-plates. At an oblique angle, the ship was speeding toward an area that stretched like a cloud across space. It was dark, occluding the stars, and yet it swarmed with little points of brightness, firefly motes that danced and flickered, and Banning knew that this must be one of those clouds of cosmic drift that he had read about in articles on astronomy, and that the bright motes were the bigger chunks of debris across its front, catching the light that blazed from all the suns of heaven.

It dawned on him that they were going into that.

The captain looked at him. So did the officer at the control-bank, and the technicians at the instrument panels, in swift, darting glances. There was a sickness in Banning, and a very great fear.

Words came to him from somewhere. He said to Behrent, almost genially, “A man's ship is as close as his wife, Captain. I would not come between either of them.” He pretended to study the panels, the ground-glass screen, the control-bank, as though be knew all about them. “And if I did,” he went on, “I could do no more than you've done already."

He stepped back, making a vague and gracious gesture that might have meant anything, and hoped that his hand was not too obviously shaking.

"Certainly,” he said, “Captain Behrent needs no instructions from anybody."

A flush of pride spread over Behrent's leathery face. His eyes glowed. “At least,” he said, “do me the honor to remain."

As a spectator,” said Banning. “Thank you.” He sat down on a narrow seat that ran underneath the starboard port, and Rolf stood beside him. He could sense that Rolf was wryly amused, and he hated him even more. Then his gaze was drawn to the port. For a moment he wished desperately that be could take refuge in his cabin, where all this was shut out. And then he thought, no, it was better to be here where you could at least see it coming.

The leading edge of the Drift rushed toward them like a black wave, all aglitter with the flashing of the cosmic flotsam that wandered with it.

Rolf said casually in English, close to his ear, “It's the only way to avoid the Empire's radar net. They watch the spaceways rather thoroughly, and we'd have a hard time explaining our business."

The wave, the Drift, the solid wall of black was right on top of them. Banning shut his jaws tight down on a yell.

They hit it.

There was no shock. Naturally. It was only dust, with the bits of rock scattered through it. Quite tenuous, really, not anything like as dense as a prairie dust-storm. It got dark. The blazing sea of stars was blotted out. Banning strained his eyes into the view-plate and saw a faint glimmering, a whirling shape as big as a house bearing down on them. He started to cry out, but the officer's hand had moved on the control-bank, and the plunging shape was gone, or rather, the ship was gone from it. There was no inertia-shock. The field-drive took care of that.

Rolf said quietly, “What that boy said was true, you know. You are the finest pilot here."

"Oh, no,” whispered Banning. “Not I."

He clutched the back of the seat with sweating bands and watched for what seemed hours, as the ship dodged and reeled and felt its way through the nighted Drift, while the chunks of interstellar rubbish hurtled silently past, little things no bigger than rifle bullets, huge things as big as moons, all of them deadly if they hit. None of them did, and Banning's fear was drowned finally in awe. If Captain Behrent could take a ship through this, and still bow to the Valkar as a spaceman, the Valkar must really have done something miraculous.

They came out at last into a “lead", a clear path between two trailing fringes of the Drift. Behrent came to stand before Banning. He smiled and said, “We're through, sir."

And Banning said, “Well done.” He meant it. He would have liked to get down before this incredible starship man and embrace his knees.

Rolf said, “I think we all need sleep."

When they were back in Banning's cabin again, Rolf looked at him and nodded briefly. “You'll do. I was afraid Jommor might have taken your spirit along with your memory, but I guess even he couldn't manage that."

Banning said. “You were taking an awful chance. You should have briefed me a little better—"

"I won't be able to brief you on everything, Kyle. No, I had to find out if you still had your nerve and your mental resources. You do.” He started out, turning in the doorway to smile half sadly. “Better get your rest, Kyle. We raise Antares in thirteen hours, and you'll need it."

"Why?” asked Banning with sudden apprehension born of something in Rolf's voice.

"A kind of test, Kyle,” he answered. “I'm going to prove to you once and for all that you are the Valkar."

He went out, leaving Banning to a slumber that was something less than easy.

Hours later, Banning stood again on the bridge with Rolf and watched his first landing, filled with awe and laden with a sense of doom. Antares overpowered him, a vast red giant of a sun that dwarfed its small companion star to insignificance. It filled all that quarter of space with a sullen glare that made it seem as though the ship swam in a sea of blood, and the bands and faces of the men in the bridge were dyed red with it, and Banning shuddered inwardly. He dreaded the landing on Katuun.

He dreaded it even more when he actually saw the planet, wheeling toward them through the sombre glare — a dim shadowy world, with a lost look about it as though men had left it long ago.

"It was mighty once,” said Rolf softly, as though he read Banning's thoughts. “The heart and hub of the Old Empire, ruling half a galaxy — the throne-world of the Valkars. It can be mighty again."

Banning looked at him. “If you can find the Hammer and use it against the New Empire, is that it?"

"That's it, Kyle,” said Rolf. “That's what you're going to do."

"I?” cried Banning. “You're mad, man! I'm not your Valkar! Even if I were, how could I find the Hammer with all memory of it gone?"

"Your memory was taken from you by Jommor,” said Rolf grimly. “He could restore it."

Banning was stunned to silence. Only now did he begin to understand the scope and daring of Rolf's plans.

The ship sped in toward the planet. It touched the atmosphere, and was swallowed in a bloody haze that thickened and darkened until Banning felt smothered with it, and more and more oppressed.

Details of the world began to show, gaunt mountain ranges, dark areas of forest that spread unbroken across whole continents, sullen oceans and brooding lakes. Rolf had said that Katuun was almost deserted now, but a man from Earth found it difficult to picture a whole world truly empty of cities, commerce, sound and people. Looking at it as the ship dropped lower down a long descending spiral, he found it inexpressibly grim and sad.

It grew even more so as he began to see that there were ruins in the emptiness, white bones of cities on the edges of the seas and lakes, vast clearings in the forest where the trees had not been able to grow because of pavements and mounds of fallen stone. There was one enormous barren patch that he knew instinctively had once been a spaceport, busy with the ships from countless stars.

A line of mountains sprang up ahead, lifting iron peaks into the sky. The ship dropped, losing speed, leveling out. A plateau spread out below the mountains, a natural landing field. Without shock or jar, the starship came to rest.

It seemed to be expected of Banning that he lead the way out onto this, his world. He did so, with Rolf at his side, walking slowly, and again it all seemed a dream. The sky, the chill, fresh wind with strange scents upon it, the soil beneath his feet — they cried their alienage to him and he could not shut his senses.

The officers followed them out, and Captain Behrent looked anxiously at the sky. “None of the others are here yet."

"They will be soon,” said Rolf. “They have to find their own secret ways to this rendezvous. It takes time."

He turned to Banning. “From here,” he said in English, “you and I will go on alone."

Banning looked down. A broad, time-shattered road led into the valley below. There was a lake there, and beside the lake was a city. The forest had grown back where it could, thick clumps of alien trees and mats of unearthly vines and creepers, but the city was vast and stubborn and would not be eclipsed. The great pillars of the gate still showed, and beyond them the avenues and courts and roofless palaces, the mighty arches and the walls, all silent in the red light, beside the still, sad lake.

They went down that road in silence. They left the wind behind them on the high land, and there was no sound but their own footsteps on the broken paving blocks. Antares hung heavy in the sky he thought of as “49 West.” To Banning, used to a small bright sun, it seemed a vast and dim and crushing thing encumbering the heavens.

It was warmer in the valley. He could smell the forest, but the air was clean of any man-made taint. The city was much closer now. Nothing moved in it, nor was there any sound.

Banning said, “I thought you told me there was still some life here."

"Go on,” Rolf answered. “Through the gate."

Banning turned to look at him. “You're afraid of something."

"Maybe."

"What? Why did we come here alone?” He reached out suddenly and grasped Rolf by his tunic collar, half throttling him. “What are you leading me into?"

Rolf's face turned utterly white. He did not lift a hand, did not stir a muscle in Banning's angry grip. He only said, in a voice that was little louder than a whisper.

"You are sealing my death-warrant. For God's sake, let me go, before the—"

He broke off, his gaze sliding past Banning to something beyond him.

"Be careful, Kyle,” he murmured. “Be careful what you do now, or we're both dead men."