"How many missiles?"
"That is the information we're waiting for now."
It came.
Narin Har read the figures to the Kings of the Marches , assembled in the flagship. These figures meant little to Stark, who was present, but he could see by the faces of the kings that the impact of them was staggering.
"We must ask for every ship available from every ruler in the galaxy," said Shorr Kan. "Every available anti-matter missile, which may not be enough since the supply is limited, and a full complement of conventional atomics. We must beg for them, and with all speed."
The scout ship, sent back through the Veil, had brought word that the thing was growing now with frightening rapidity.
The message was sent, backed by all the scientific evidence they could muster.
Again they waited.
Beyond the Veil the thing fed contentedly and dreamed its cosmic dreams. And grew.
"If the Empire sends its ships," said Shorr Kan , "the rest will follow." He pounded his fist on the table. "How long does it take the fools to deliberate? If they insist on waggling their tongues forever . . ." He stood up. "I'll speak with Jhal Arn myself."
"Jhal Arn?" asked Stark.
"You are a country boy, Ambassador. Jhal Arn is ruler of the Mid-Galactic Empire, the most potent force in the galaxy."
"You sound as though you don't love him."
"Nor the Empire. That is beside the point now. Come along, if you like."
In the communications room, Stark watched the screen of the sub-space telecom spring to life.
"The Hall of Suns," said Shorr Kan , "at Throon, royal planet of Canopus and center of the Empire. Ah, yes. The Imperial Council is in session."
The hall was vast, splendid with the banners and insignia of a thousand star-kingdoms, Stark caught only a fleeting glimpse of that magnificence, and of the many alien personages . . . ambassadors, he thought, representing their governments at this extraordinary session, princes and nobles from worlds he did not know. The view narrowed in upon the throne chair, where a tall man sat looking into the apparatus before him so that he seemed to be staring straight at Shorr Kan. Which he was, across half a galaxy.
Shorr Kan wasted no time on regal courtesies.
"Jhal Arn," he said, "you have no cause to love me, nor I you, and you have no cause to trust me, either. Still, we are both citizens of this galaxy, and here we both must live or die, and all our people with us. We of the Marches are committed, but we have not the strength to fight this thing alone. If you do not lead the way for the Star Kings, if you do not send the ships we need, then you will have condemned your own Empire to destruction."
Jhal Arn had a fine strong face, worn with the strain of governing. There was wisdom in his eyes. He inclined his head slightly.
"Your feelings, and mine, are of equal unimportance, Shorr Kan. The lords of the Council have now understood that. We have conferred with all our scientists and advisors. The decision has been taken. You shall have the ships."
The screen went dark.
And they waited, watching the blank heavens where the far suns burned, while the great blazing wheel of the galaxy turned on its hub of stars, one infinitesimal fraction of a revolution so long that only a computer could comprehend it.
At last the ships came.
Stark watched them on the screens as they came, dropping out of the void. Shorr Kan told him what they were. The squadrons of Fomalhaut Kingdom , with the blazon of the white sun on their bows. The ships of Rigel and Deneb, Algol and Altair, Antares and Vega. The fleets of wide-flung Kingdoms of Lyra and Cygnus and Cassiopeia, of Lepus and Corvus and Orion. The ships of the Barons of Hercules, ensigned with the golden cluster. And on and on until Stark's head was ringing with star names and giddy with the sheer numbers of that mustering.
Last of all, huge sombre shadows of interstellar war, came the great battle-cruisers of the Empire.
The ships of the Star Kings, in massed rendezvous off Dendrid's Veil. The heavens were aglitter with them.
There was much coming and going of star-captains, discussions of strategy, endless pawings-over of data and clackings of on-board computers. The vast armada hung in the starshine, and Stark remembered the battle plans he had made in his own life, in a former time; the plotted charges of the men of Kesh and Shun in the Martian Drylands, the deadly tribal prowlings in the swamps and seas of Venus. Exercises for prattling babes. Here, on the screen, was magnificence beyond belief.
And on the other side of the Veil was an adversary beyond his former imagining.
He wondered if Aarl still waited and listened. He wondered if the worlds of Sol still lived.
At length Shorr Kan told him, "We are ready. The combined fleets will move In exactly six units, Galactic Arbitrary Time."
* * *
The fleets of the Star Kings moved. Rank on shining rank, they plunged into the gloom of the nebula, crashed headlong through the coiling clouds of dust to burst into open space beyond where the twisted enigma waited, sprawled carelessly across space and time.
Stark stood with Shorr Kan by the screens of the small scout, attached now to Shorr Kan 's navy, three heavy cruisers and a swarm of lighter craft, everything that could carry a missile.
Aldeshar's fleet was in the first attack wave, with the other fleets of the Marches . The scout leaped away from the nebula, fired its conventional atomics into the looming blankness of the thing ahead, then spiraled upward and away, skirting the edges of destruction. It took up station where it could see, and if necessary, run. Shorr Kan was again being practical.
The first wave struck like a thunderbolt, loosing the full batteries of their missiles and swerving away a complicated three-dimensional dance of death, carefully plotted to avoid being swallowed by the enemy and to leave the way clear for the following wave.
And they came, the silver fleets with their proud insignia of suns and clusters and constellations; the might of the Star Kings against the raw power of creation.
They poured their salvos of unthinkable energy into the child of energy, lighting smothered flares across the parsecs, pounding at the fabric of the universe with which the creature was entwined until space itself was shaken and the scout ship lurched in the backlash as though upon a heavy sea.
The creature, roused, struck back.
Bolts of naked force shot from its blind face, spearing ships, wiping the heavens clean. Yet more ships came on, more missiles sped to seed the thing with deadly anti-matter. More dark lightnings flashed. But the thing still lived, and fought, and killed.
"It's defending itself," Stark said. "Not only itself, but its whole species, just as we are."
He could sense the bewilderment it felt, the fear, the outraged anger. Probably his previous contact through the Ceidrins had given him that ability, and he was sorry it had, dim though the echo was. The creature was still, he thought, unaware of living beings as such. It only knew that this sudden bursting of strange energy within it was dangerous. It had located the source of that energy and was trying to destroy it.
It appeared to have succeeded.
The fleets drew off. There was a cessation of all action. The lightnings ceased. The thing lay apparently untouched, undiminished.
Stark said, "Have we lost?" He was soaked with sweat and shaking as though he had himself been fighting.
Shorr Kan only said, "Wait."
The ships of the Barons of Hercules detached themselves from the massed ranks of the fleet. They sped away as though in flight.
"Are they running?" asked Stark.
Again Shorr Kan said, "Wait."
Presently Stark understood. Far away, greatly daring along the uncharted flank of this creature, the fleet of the Cluster struck. Annihilating lightnings danced and flared, and the creature struck out at those ships, forgetting the massed fleets that had now moved into a pattern of semi-englobement. It was after all a child, and ignorant of even simple strategies.
The fleets charged, lo
osing a combined shellfire of raving energies at a single area of the creature's being.
This time the fires they lit did not go out.
They spread. They burned and brightened. Great gouts of energy burst nova-like from out of that twisted blankness, catching ships, destroying them, but without aim or purpose. The savage bolts were random now, blind emissions of a dying force.
The fleets regrouped, pouring in all they had left to them of death.
And Stark heard . . . felt, with the atoms of his flesh . . . the last unbelieving cry of despair, the anguish of loss as strength and joy faded and the wheeling galaxies in all their beauty went from sight, a flight of brilliant butterflies swept away on a cruel wind.
It died.
The fleets of the Star Kings fled from the violence of that dying, while space rocked around them and stars were shattered, while the insane fury of total destruction blazed and roiled and fountained across the parsecs and the stuff of the universe trembled.
The ships took refuge beyond Dendrid's Veil. They waited, afraid that the chain-reaction they had set in motion might yet engulf them. But gradually the turbulence quietened, and when their instruments registered only normal radiation, the scout ship and a few others ventured to return.
The shape of the nebula was altered. Ceidri and its dim sun had vanished. Out beyond, there was a new kind of blankness, the empty blankness of death.
Even Flane Fell was awed by the enormity of what they had done. "It is a heavy thing to be God."
"Perhaps a heavier one to be man," said Shorr Kan. "God, as I recall, never doubted He was right."
They turned back then, and the fleets of the Star Kings, such as had survived that killing, dispersed, each one homing on its separate star.
Shorr Kan returned to Aldeshar.
In the hall of the ugly genie he spoke to Stark. "Well, Ambassador? Your little sun is safe now, if salvation didn't come too late. Will you return there, or will you stay with me? I could make your fortune."
Stark shook his head. "I like you, King of Aldeshar. But I'm no good running mate, and sooner or later we'd come to that enmity you spoke of. Besides, you're born for trouble, and I prefer to make my own."
Shorr Kan laughed. "You're probably right, Ambassador. Though I'm sorry. Let us part friends."
They shook hands. Stark left the palace and walked through the streets of Donalyr toward the hills, and through all the voices and the sounds around him he could still hear that last despairing cry.
He went up on the ridge above the city. And Aarl brought him home.
* * *
They sat in the mist-bordered chamber high in the ancient citadel.
"We ought not to have killed it," Stark said. "You never touched its consciousness. I did. It was . . . God-like."
"No," said Aarl. "Man is God-like, which is to say creator, destroyer, savior, kind father and petty tyrant, ruthless, bloodthirsty, bigoted, merciful, loving, murderous, and noble. This creature was far beyond mere godliness, and so perhaps more worthy than we to survive . . . but it did not survive. And that is the higher law."
Aarl fixed him with those space-black eyes.
"No life exists but at the expense of other life. We kill the grain to make our bread, and the grain in time kills the soil it grows in. Do not reproach yourself for that. In due course another such super-being may be born which will survive in spite of us, and then it will be our turn to go. Meanwhile, we survive, and that is our proof of right. There is no other."
He led Stark down the long and winding ways to the portal, where his saddled beast was waiting. Stark mounted and rode away, turning his back forever on the Third Bend.
And so he had seen the future, and touched beauty, and the thing was done, for better or worse. Beauty had died beyond Dendrid's Veil, and high above, where the walls of the Great Rift Valley towered against the sky, the sun was shining on the old proud face of Mars. Some good, some evil, and perhaps in the days to come Aarl's words would soothe his conscience.
And conscience or not, he would never forget the splendor of the ships of the Star Kings massed for battle.
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Stark and the Star Kings Page 4