Return to the Stars cotsk-2

by Edmond Hamilton

  Jhal Arn leaned forward. "Tell me, when this power seized you, was there a sensation as of mental cold?"

  Korkhann looked astonished. "How could you guess that, Highness?"

  Jhal Arn did not answer, but between him and his brother flashed a look that was grim and somber.

  A chamberlain entered the room, announcing dignitaries whom Jhal Arn greeted with formal protocol. Gordon, hearing the names of some and recognizing others, felt a sharp wonder.

  No fewer than three star-kings had come to this secret meeting... young Sath Shamar of Polaris, the aging long-regent of Cassiopeia, and the dark, crafty-looking sovereign of the Kingdom of Cepheus. There were chancellors of two other kingdoms present, and also one of the mightiest of the powerful Hercules Barons, Jon Ollen. His domain stretched so far from the Cluster to the edge of the Marches that it was actually bigger than some of the smaller kingdoms.

  He now looked like a worried man, his cadaverous face gloomy in expression. Gordon remembered his galactography well enough to realize that every realm represented here lay near the Marches of Outer Space.

  Jhal Arn began without preamble. "You've all heard the rumors that certain of the counts of the Marches are preparing some mysterious and dangerous aggression. It threatens all of you but first it threatens Fomalhaut, which is why Korkhann and my friend John Gordon have come here."

  Jhal Arn emphasized the word "friend," and the men who had ignored Gordon until this moment, glanced at him sharply.

  Jhal Arn went on, "Tell them what happened at Teyn, Korkhann."

  Korkhann told them. When he finished, there was a silence. Then young Sath Shamar said troubledly, "Of mysterious cowled strangers we have heard nothing. But lately the counts of the Marches have become highhanded with us at Polaris, and have threatened us with powers they say could destroy us."

  The tight-faced ruler of Cepheus added nothing, but the old regent of Cassiopeia nodded confirmation. "There is something in the Marches... never have the counts been so insolent with us."

  Korkhann looked at the baron and said softly, "You have something more than this, Jon Ollen? It seems to me that you are withholding something from us."

  Jon Ollen's cadaverous face flushed dull red with anger and he exclaimed, "I will not have my mind read, telepath!"

  "And how," asked Korkhann deprecatingly, "could I do that when you have kept a guard upon your thoughts since you entered this chamber?"

  Jon Ollen said sullenly, "I don't want to hunt for trouble. My barony is close up against the Marches, closer than any of your domains. If there is danger, I am most vulnerable to it."

  Jhal Arn's voice rang decisively. "You are an ally of the Empire. If danger attacks you, we come in with you at once. If you know anything, say it."

  Jon Ollen looked undecided, worried, troubled. It was a minute before he spoke.

  "I know but little, really. But... inside the Marches, not far from our frontier, is a world known as Aar. And mysterious things have happened that seem to focus on that world."

  "What kind of things?"

  "A merchant ship returned to my barony from the Marches, traveling on an insane course. Our cruisers could not understand its behavior. They ran it down and boarded it. Every man aboard it was raving mad. The automatic log-recorder showed that the ship had touched down last at Aar. Then another ship that passed near Aar sent off a distress call that was suddenly smothered. And that ship was never heard from again."

  "What else?"

  Jon Ollen's face lengthened. "There came to my court Count Cyn Cryver of the Marches. He said that certain scientific experiments had made Aar dangerous and suggested we order all ships to avoid it. But "suggested" is hardly the word... he ordered me to do this."

  "It would seem," muttered Jhal Arn thoughtfully, "that Aar is at least one focal point of the mystery."

  "We could send a squadron in there to find out quickly," said Zarth Arn.

  "But what if there's nothing really there?" cried Jon Ollen. "The counts would hold me responsible for the incursion. You must understand my position."

  "We understand it," Jhal Arn assured him. And to his brother, "No, Zarth. The baron is right. If there's nothing there we'd have angered the counts by an invasion of their domain, to the point of starting a border war all through the Marches. We'll slip a small unmarked scout into the Marches with a few men who can investigate the place. Captain Burrel, you can lead them."

  Gordon spoke up for the first time in that meeting. "I will go with Hull. Look, I'm the only one except Korkhann, who's not fitted for this kind of mission, to have seen one of the counts' cryptic allies. At Teyn, remember."

  "Why am I not fitted for such a mission?" Korkhann demanded, his feathers seeming to ruffle up with anger.

  "Because no one else is so well fitted to be Princess Lianna's right-hand man, and she mustn't lose you," said Gordon soothingly.

  "It's a risky thing," muttered Jon Ollen. "I beg of you one thing... if you are caught, please don't implicate me in this."

  "Your concern for the safety of my friends is overpowering," said Jhal Arn acidly.

  The baron disregarded the sarcasm. He got to his feet. "I shall return home at once. I don't want to be mixed up in this affair too much. Your Highnesses... gentlemen... good night."

  When he had gone out, Sath Shamar uttered an oath. "It's what I'd have expected of him. In the battle with the Dark Worlds, when the other barons gave the galaxy an example of space-fighting it can never forget, he held back until sure that Shorr Kan was defeated."

  Jhal Arn nodded. "But the strategic position of his domain makes him valuable as an ally, so we have to put up with his selfishness."

  When the star-kings and chancellors had left, Jhal Arn looked a little sadly at Gordon.

  "I wish you were not set on going, my friend. Did you come back to us, only to risk your life?"

  Gordon saw Korkhann looking at him, and knew what was in his mind. He remembered Lianna's bitter farewell, her accusation that it was the danger and wild beauty of this wider universe that had drawn him back here, and not love for her. He stubbornly told himself it wasn't true.

  "You have said yourself," he reminded Jhal Arn, "that this danger most threatens Fomalhaut. And whatever threatens Lianna is my affair."

  He was not sure that Jhal Arn believed him, and he was quite sure that Korkhann did not believe him at all.

  Three days later a very small ship lay at the naval starport of Throon. It was a phantom scout, with all the insignia removed. The small crew did not wear uniforms, nor did Hull Burrell, who was to captain it.

  In the palace, before he left, Gordon had a final word from Zarth Arn.

  "We hope you come back with information, John Gordon. But if you don't... then in thirty days three full Empire squadrons will head for that world of Aar."

  Gordon was surprised and a little appalled. "But that could lead to war in the Marches. Your brother admitted it."

  "There are worse things than a border war," Zarth Arn said somberly. "You must remember our history that you learned before. You remember Brenn Bir?"

  The name rang in Gordon's memory. "Of course. Your remote ancestor, the founder of your dynasty... the leader who repelled the alien invasion from the Magellanic Clouds outside the galaxy."

  "And who wrecked part of the galaxy doing it," Zarth Arn nodded. "We still have his records, archives that the galaxy knows nothing about. And some detail in the description you and Korkhann gave of the cowled stranger at Teyn made us look into those archives."

  Gordon felt a terrifying surmise, and it was verified by Zarth Arn's next words.

  "The records of Brenn Bir described the Magellanian aliens as having a mental power so terrific that no human or nonhuman could withstand it. Only by disrupting space and hurling them out of this dimension were those invaders defeated. And now... it seems that after all these thousands of years, they are coming back again!"

  10

  The Marches of Outer Space had been, or
iginally, an area only vaguely delimited. Early galactographers had defined it as that part of the galaxy which lay between the eastern and southern kingdoms, and the edge of the island universe. For when, in the twenty-second century, the three inventions of the faster-than-light sub-spectrum rays, the Mass Control, and the stasis-force that cradled men's bodies so that they remained impervious to extreme speeds and accelerations... when these made interstellar travel possible and the human stock poured out from Earth to colonize the galaxy, it had been toward the bigger star-systems they had gone, not the rim. Millennia later, when distant systems had broken away from Earth government and formed independent kingdoms, hardy adventurers in those kingdoms had gone into the starry wilderness of the Marches, setting up small domains that often were limited to one star and one world.

  These counts of the Marches, as they called themselves, had always been a tough, insolent breed. They owed allegiance to no star-king, though they had a nominal alliance with the Empire which prevented the other kingdoms from invading their small realms. The place had long been a focus of intrigue, a refuge for outlawed men, an irritation on the body politic of the galaxy. But each jealous star-king refused to let his rivals take over the Marches, and so the situation had perpetuated itself.

  "And that" thought Gordon, "is too damned bad. If this anarchic star-jungle had been cleaned up, it wouldn't harbor such danger now." He wondered how many of the counts were in the conspiracy with Cyn Cryver. There had to be others, because Cyn Cryver alone could not provide enough ships for any significant action. If a significant action was what they had in mind.

  The little phantom scout was well inside the Marches now, moving on a devious course. By interstellar standards, the phantom's speed was slow. Its defensive armament was almost nonexistent and its offensive weapons were nothing more than a few missiles. But it possessed a supreme advantage for such a stealthy mission as this one... the ability to disappear. That was why there were phantoms in the fleet of every kingdom.

  "It'd be safer to dark-out," said Hull Burrel, frowning. "But then we'd be running blind ourselves, and I don't like doing that in this mess."

  Gordon thought that if it was a mess, it was an impressive one. Scores of stars burned like great emerald and ruby and diamond lamps in the dark gloom. The radar screen showed shoals of drift between these star-systems, and here and there the Marches were rifted by great darkness, loops and lanes of cosmic dust.

  He looked back the way they had come, at the Hercules Cluster that blazed like bright moths swarming thick about a lamp, at the far dimmed spark of Canopus. He hoped they would live to go back there. He looked ahead and his imagination leaped beyond the stars he could see to those out on the Rim, the spiral, outlying arms of stars that fringed the wheeling galaxy, and beyond which there was nothing until the distant Magellanic Clouds.

  "It's too far," he said to Hull. "Zarth Arn must be wrong; there can't really be Magellanians in the Marches. If they had come they wouldn't have come as stealthy infiltrators, but in a great invasion."

  Hull Burrel shook his head. "They came that way once before, so the histories say. And they got annihilated, when Brenn Bir used the Disrupter on them. They might try a different way, this time." The big Antarian captain added, "But I can't believe it, either. It was so long ago."

  For a long time the little phantom threaded its way into the Marches, skirting great areas of drift that flowed like rivers through space, tacking and twisting its way around enormous ashen dark stars, swinging far wide of inhabited systems.

  Finally there came a time when, peering at the viewer, Hull Burrel pointed out a small, bright orange star glittering far away.

  "That's it. The sun of Aar."

  Gordon looked. "And now?"

  "Now we dark-out," grunted the Antarian. "And from here on it'll be cursed ticklish navigation."

  He gave an order. An alarm rang through the ship. The big dark-out generators aft began droning loudly. At that moment all the viewer-screens and radar-screens went dark and blank.

  Gordon had been in phantoms before, and had expected the phenomenon. The generators had created an aura of powerful force around the little ship, which force slightly refracted every light ray or radar beam that struck it. The phantom had become completely invisible both to eye and to radar, but by the same token those in it could see nothing outside. Navigation now must be by the special sub-spectrum radar by which the phantom could slowly feel a way forward.

  In the time that followed, Gordon thought it was remarkably like a twentieth-century submarine feeling its way through ocean depths. There was the same feeling of blindness and semi-helplessness, the same dread of collision, in this case with some bit of drift the straining radar might not catch, and the same half-hysterical desire to see sunlight again. And the ordeal went on and on, the sweat standing out in fine beads on Hull Burrel's forehead as he jockeyed the little ship closer toward the single planet of the orange star.

  Finally, Hull gave an order and the ship hung motionless. He turned his glistening face toward Gordon.

  "We should be just above the surface of Aar, but that's all I can say. I hope to God we don't come out of dark-out right over our enemies' heads!"

  Gordon shrugged. "Jon Ollen said there wasn't much on this world, that it was mostly wild."

  "One thing I love is an optimist who has no direct responsibility," growled the Antarian. "All right. Dark-out off!"

  The droning of generators died. Instantly there poured into the bridge through the viewer screens a flood of orange sunlight. They peered out tensely, blinking in the brilliance.

  "I apologize, optimist," said Hull. "It couldn't be better."

  The little ship hung level with the top foliage of a golden forest. The plants... Gordon could not think of them as trees, although they were that big... were thirty to forty feet high, graceful clusters of dark-green stems whose branches held masses of feathery golden-yellow leaves. They bore a remote but disquieting resemblance to the trees of Teyn and Gordon shivered, hoping it was not an omen. As far as the eye could reach, there was nothing but the roof of the forest glittering in the light of the orange sun.

  "Take her down fast," ordered Hull. "We could just be ranged by radar up here."

  The phantom dropped through the masses of lacy gold and landed in a grove of clustered stems, upon soft ground covered with a copper-colored brush that bore black fruits.

  Gordon, peering fascinated through the viewer, suddenly shouted. "Something!"

  The Antarian jumped to his side. "What?"

  "It's gone now," said Gordon. "Something small, almost invisible, that darted away under the brush."

  The other looked doubtful. "In the star-log, this world Aar is listed as uninhabited. An attempt was once made to colonize it but the colonists were driven away from it by dangerous conditions. This could be some formidable creature."

  Gordon was doubtful. "It seemed too small."

  "Nevertheless, we'd better have a look around before we go thrashing through these forests," the Antarian said decisively. He spoke to the crewmen in the bridge. "You and I will go out, Varren. Full armor."

  Gordon shook his head. "I'll go with Varren. One of us has to stay to complete the mission if something happens to the other... and the one who stays had better be the one who can navigate the ship back out of here."

  When Gordon and Varren stepped out of the ship they wore the suits that did double duty as space suits and defensive armor, complete with helmets. They carried guns.

  Looking uncertainly around, Gordon began to feel a bit foolish. Nothing moved except the golden foliage high above, waving in the breeze. His helmet sound-pickup brought no sounds except the faint sounds of a forest.

  "Where was this thing you saw?" asked Varren. His voice was very polite.

  "Over this way," Gordon said. "I don't know... it could have been a leaf blowing..."

  He suddenly stopped, looking upward. Twelve feet above the ground, fastened solidly inside a crotc
h of one of the trees, was a curious structure vaguely resembling a squirrel's summer nest. Except that this was no ragged thing of twigs and leaves but a solid little box of cut wood, with a door in its side.

  "It was going toward this place," said Gordon. "Look."

  Varren looked. He looked up for a long time and then he remarked quietly that he would be damned.

  "I'm climbing up there to take a look," said Gordon. "If it's what I thought I saw, it won't be too dangerous. If not... cover me."

  The climb would not have been difficult if it had not been for the clumsy suit. But he was sweating by the time he reached a crotch on which he could stand with his face level with the little box.

  Gently, Gordon pushed at the little door. A faint snapping told of a tiny catch breaking. He continued to push but it was difficult... something, someone, was holding the door on the inside.

  Then the resistance gave way, and Gordon looked inside. At first he could see nothing but a purple gloom. But the hot orange sunlight pouring in through the open door revealed detail as his eyes adjusted.

  Those who had been trying to hold the door against him now cowered in terror at the far side of a little room. They were not much more than a foot high and they were quite human in shape. They were naked, one man, one woman, and the only strange thing about them apart from their size was the fact that their bodies were semitransparent, as translucent as plastic. He could see details of the wall-surface right through them.

  They cowered, and Gordon stared, and then he heard the man speaking in a tiny voice. He could hardly hear, but it was not a language he knew.

  After a long moment he slid back to the ground. He pointed upward and said to Varren, "Take a look. Maybe you can understand their language."

  "Their what?" said Varren. He looked at Gordon as though he doubted his sanity. Then he too climbed up.