"Because," smiled the Sirian, "it's the most effective way to split the Empire and leave it wide open to the Cloud's attack. And there's another reason that Shorr Kan will explain to you."
The malice and triumph in Them Eldred's eyes detonated the rage that gathered in John Gordon's mind.
He plunged forward, heedless of Them Eldred's warning shout. He managed by a swift contortion of his body to avoid the glass paralyzer that the other jabbed at him. His fist smashed into the Sirian's face.
Them Eldred, as he sprawled backward, had Gordon atop him like a leaping panther. But the Sirian had managed to cling to his weapon. And before Gordon could carry out his intention of wrestling it away, Them Eldred desperately jabbed up with it again.
The crescent at the end of the glass rod touched Gordon's neck. A freezing shock smote like lightning through his body. He felt his senses darken swiftly.
When Gordon for a second time came back to consciousness, he was again lying in one of the bunks. This time, the freezing ache in his body was more painful. And this time, Lianna was sitting beside him and looking down at him with anxious gray eyes.
Her eyes lighted as he opened his own. "Zarth, you've been unconscious more than a day! I was beginning to worry."
"I'm-all right," he muttered. He tried to sit up, but her little hands quickly forced him back down onto the pad.
"Don't, Zarth-you must rest until your nerves recover from the electroshock."
He glanced at the porthole window. The vista of blazing stars outside seemed unchanged. He could glimpse the black blot of the Cloud, looking only a little larger in the distant forest of suns.
Lianna followed his glance. "We are travelling at tremendous speed, but it will still require a few days before we reach the Cloud. In that time, we may encounter an Empire patrol."
Gordon groaned. "Lianna, there's no hope for that. This is itself an Empire cruiser and could pass any patrol. And if Corbulo is really leader of this treachery, he'd have his patrols arranged so that this ship could pass unseen."
"I've thought and thought about it and I still can hardly believe it," Lianna said. "Corbulo a traitor! It seems fantastic! And yet-"
Gordon himself no longer doubted. The evidence was too overwhelming.
"Men will betray any trust when ambition drives them, and Corbulo is ambitious," he muttered. Then, as deeper realization came to him, "Good God, this means that if the League does attack the Empire, the Commander of the Empire forces will sabotage their defense!"
He rose painfully from the bunk despite Lianna's protestations.
"If we could only get word back to Throon somehow! That would at least put Jhal Arn on his guard!"
Lianna shook her ash-golden head a little sadly. "I fear there's no chance of that, once we're prisoners in the Cloud. Shorr Kan is not likely to let us go."
It all spun in John Gordon's mind in a bewildering chaos of known and unknown factors, in the hours that followed.
A few things, though, stood out clearly. They all, everyone in this universe, thought that he was Zarth Arn. And thus it was believed that he knew the secret of the Disrupter, that mysterious scientific weapon known only to Arn Abbas and his two sons.
That was why Corbulo had risked the plot that was sending him and Lianna now as prisoners to the Cloud! Once Shorr Kan had that secret, mysterious weapon, he would have nothing to fear from the Empire whose fleet was commanded by his own man. He would attack them at once!
The Markab droned on and on. When the ship bells signaled evening of the arbitrary "day," the aspect of the starry firmament had changed. Orion Nebula flamed now in all its titan glory far in the east.
Straight ahead, far in the distance against the remotest suns of the galaxy, brooded the black blot of the Cloud. It was visibly larger than before, and its gigantic dimensions were now becoming more clearly apparent.
Neither Them Eldred nor any of his officers or men entered the cabin. There was no opportunity for a second attack. And after searching vainly through the room, Gordon conceded defeatedly that there was nothing in it that might facilitate escape.
Sick anxiety for Lianna's safety deepened in him. He reproached himself again for letting her accompany him on this flight.
But she did not seem afraid as she looked up at him. "Zarth, at least we're together for a little while. It may be all of happiness we'll get."
Gordon found his arms instinctively starting to go around her, his hand touching her shining hair. But he forced himself to step back.
"Lianna, you'd better get some sleep," he said uncomfortably.
Lianna, looked at him with a wondering little smile. "Why, Zarth, what's the matter?"
Gordon had never in his life wanted anything so much as to reach forth to her. But to do so would be the blackest treachery.
Treachery to Zarth Arn, who had trusted his body, his life, to Gordon's pledge! Yes, and treachery to Lianna herself.
For if he were able to reach the Earth laboratory, it would be the real Zarth Arn who would come back to her-Zarth Arn, who loved Murn and not Lianna.
"That won't ever happen!" whispered a subtle, tempting voice in Gordon's mind. "You and she will never escape from the Cloud. Take what happiness you can, while you can!"
Gordon desperately fought down that insinuating voice. He spoke huskily to the puzzled girl.
"Lianna, you and I will have to forget all talk of love."
She seemed stricken by amazement, unbelief. "But Zarth, at Throon that morning you told me you loved me!"
Gordon nodded miserably. "I know. I wish to God I hadn't. It was wrong."
Little clouds began to gather in Lianna's gray eyes. She was white to the lips.
"You mean that you are still in love with Murn, after all?"
Gordon forced the answer to that out of strained, desperate resolve. He spoke what he knew was the exact truth.
"Zarth Arn does still love Murn. You have to know that, Lianna."
The incredulity in Lianna's white face gave way to a hurt that went deep in her gray eyes.
Gordon had expected stormy resentment, wrath, bitter reproach. He had steeled himself against them. But he had not expected this deep, voiceless hurt, and it was too much for him.
"To the devil with my promise!" he told himself fiercely. "Zarth Arn wouldn't hold me to it if he knew that situation-he couldn't!"
And Gordon stepped forward and grasped the girl's hand. "Lianna, I'm going to tell you the whole truth! Zarth Arn doesn't love you-but I do!"
He rushed on. "I'm not Zarth Arn. I'm an entirely different man, in Zarth Arn's body. I know it sounds incredible, but-"
His voice trailed off. For he read in Lianna's face her quick disbelief and scorn.
"Let us at least have no more lies, Zarth!" she flared.
"I tell you, it's true!" he persisted. "This is Zarth Arn's physical body, yes. But I am a different man!"
He knew from the expression on her face that his attempt had failed. He knew that she did not believe and never would believe.
How could he expect her to believe it? If positions had been reversed, would he have credited such a wild assertion? He knew he wouldn't.
No one in this universe would credit it, now Vel Quen was dead. For only Vel Quen had known about Zarth Arn's fantastic experiments.
Lianna was looking at him, her eyes now calm and level and without a trace of emotion in her face.
"There is no need for you to explain your actions by wild stories of dual personality, Zarth. I understand clearly enough. You were simply doing what you conceived to be your duty to the Empire. You feared lest I might refuse the marriage at the last moment, so you pretended love for me to make sure of me and of Fomalhaut's support."
"Lianna, I swear it isn't so!" Gordon groaned. "But if you won't trust me to speak truth-"
She ignored his interruption. "You need not have done it, Zarth. I had no thought of refusing the marriage, since I knew how much depended on my kingdom supporting the Empir
e.
"But there's no further need for stratagems. I will keep my promise and so will my kingdom. I will marry you, but our marriage will be only a political formality as we first agreed."
John Gordon started to protest, then stopped. After all, the course she proposed was the only one he could take.
If the real Zarth Arn returned, his marriage with Lianna could not be anything more than political pretense.
"All right, Lianna," Gordon said heavily. "I repeat, that I never lied to you. But it all doesn't make much difference now, anyway."
He gestured, as he spoke, toward the porthole. Out there in the star-blazing void ahead of the rushing cruiser, the monster blot of the Cloud was looming ever bigger and closer.
Lianna nodded quietly. "We do not have much chance of escaping Shorr Kan's clutches. But if a chance does present itself, you will find me your ally. Our personal emotions mean little compared to the urgent necessity of getting back with a warning to the Empire."
Gordon saw less and less chance of that, in the hours that followed. For now the Markab, its velocity at great heights, was rushing ever nearer the Cloud.
That "night" when the ship lights dimmed, he lay in his bunk thinking bitterly that of all men in history he had had the most ironic joke played upon him.
The girl across the cabin loved him, and he loved her. And yet soon a gulf of space and time incredible might forever separate them, and she would always believe him faithless.
12: In The Cosmic Cloud
Next "morning" they woke to find that the cloud was colossal now ahead. Its vast blotch loomed across half the firmament, a roiling gloom that reached out angry, ragged arms of shadow like an octopus whose dark tentacles clutched at the whole galaxy.
And the Markab now was being companioned through space by four massive black battleships with the black disk of the League of Dark Worlds marked on their bows. They were so close, and maintained so exactly the same speed, they could be clearly seen.
"We might have known that Shorr Kan would send an escort," Lianna murmured. She glanced at Gordon. "He thinks that he has the secret of the Disrupter almost in his hands, in your person."
"Lianna, set your mind at rest on one thing," Gordon told her. "He'll never get that secret from me."
"I know you are not traitor to the Empire," she said somberly. "But the League scientists are said to be masters of strange tortures. They may force it from you."
Gordon laughed shortly. "They won't. Shorr Kan is going to find that he had made one bad miscalculation."
Nearer and nearer the five ships flew toward the Cloud. All the universe ahead was now a black, swirling gloom.
Then, keeping to their tight formation, the squadron plunged into the Cloud.
Darkness swept around the ship. Not a total darkness but a gloomy, shadowy haze that seemed smothering after the blazing glory of open space.
Gordon perceived that the cosmic dust that composed the Cloud was not as dense as he had thought. Its huge extent made it appear an impenetrable darkness from outside. But once inside it, they seemed racing through a vast, unbroken haze.
There were stars in here, suns that were visible only a few parsecs away. They shone wanly through the haze, like smothered bale-fires, uncanny witch-stars.
The Markab and its escort passed comparatively close to some of these star-systems. Gordon glimpsed planets circling in the feeble glow of the smothered suns, worlds shadowed by perpetual twilight.
Homing on secret radar beams, the ships plunged on and on through the Cloud. Yet it was not until next day that deceleration began.
"We must be pretty nearly there," Gordon said grimly to the girl.
Lianna nodded, and pointed ahead through the window. Far ahead in the shadowy haze burned a dull red, smoldering sun.
"Thallarna," she murmured. "The capital of the League of Dark Worlds, and the citadel of Shorr Kan."
Gordon's nerves stretched taut as the following hours of rapid deceleration brought them closer to their destination.
Meteor-hail rattled off the ships. They twisted and changed course frequently. The shrilling of meteor-alarms could be heard each few minutes, as jagged boulders rushed upon them and then vanished in the automatic trip-blast of atomic energy from the ship.
Angry green luminescence that had once been called nebulium edged these stormy, denser regions. But each time they emerged into thinner haze, the sullen red sun of Thallarna glowed bigger ahead.
"The star-system of Thallarna was not idly chosen for their capital," Lianna said. "Invaders would have a perilous time threading through these stormy mazes to it."
Gordon felt the sinister aspect of the red sun as the ships swung toward it. Old, smoldering, sullen crimson, it glowed here in the heart of the vast and gloomy Cloud like an evil, watching eye.
And the single planet that circled it, the planet Thallarna itself, was equally somber. Strange white plains and white forests of fungoid appearance covered much of it. An inky ocean dashed its ebon waves, eerily reflecting the bloody light of the red sun.
The warships sank through the atmosphere toward a titan city. It was black and massive, its gigantic, blocklike buildings gathered in harshly geometrical symmetry.
Lianna exclaimed and pointed to the huge rows of docks outside the city. Gordon's incredulous eyes beheld a vast beehive of activity, thousands of grim warships docked in long rows, a great activity of cranes and conveyors and men.
"Shorr Kan's fleet makes ready, indeed!" she said. "And this is only one of their naval bases here. The League is far stronger than we dreamed!"
Gordon fought a chilling apprehension. "But Jhal Arn will be calling together all the Empire's forces, too. And he has the Disruptor. If Corbulo can only be prevented from further treachery!"
The ships separated, the four escort battleships remaining above while the Markab sank toward a colossal, cubical black pile.
The cruiser landed in a big court. They glimpsed soldiers running toward it-Cloud-men, pallid-faced men in dark uniforms.
It was some minutes before the door of their own cabin opened. Them Eldred stood in it with two alert League officers.
"We have arrived and I learn that Shorr Kan wishes to see you at once," the Sirian traitor told Gordon. "I beg you to make no resistance, which would be wholly futile and foolish."
Gordon had had two experiences with the glass paralyzers to convince him of that. He stood, with Lianna's hand on his, and nodded curtly.
"All right. The sooner we get this over with, the better."
They walked out of the ship, their gravitation-equalizers[8] preventing them from feeling any difference in gravity. The air was freezing and the depressing quality was increased by the murky gloom that was thickening as the red sun set.
Cold, gloomy, shadowed forever by the haze, this world at the heart of the Cloud struck Gordon as a fitting place for the hatching of a plot to rend the galaxy.
"This is Durk Undis, a high officer of the League," the Sirian was saying, "The Prince Zarth Arn and the Princess Lianna, Durk."
Durk Undis, the League officer, was a young man. But though he was not unhandsome, his pallid face and deep eyes had a look of fanaticism in them.
He bowed to Gordon and the girl, and gestured toward a doorway.
"Our Commander is waiting," he said clippedly.
Gordon saw the gleam of triumph in his eye, and in the faces of the other rigid Cloud-men they passed.
He knew they must be exultant, at this capture of one of the Empire's royal family and the striking down of mighty Arn Abbas.
"This ramp, please," Durk Undis said, as they entered the building. He could not help adding proudly to Gordon, "You are doubtless surprised at our capital? We have no useless luxuries here."
Spartan simplicity, an austere bareness, reigned in the gloomy halls of the great building. Here there was none indeed of the luxury and splendor of the great palace at Throon. Uniforms were everywhere. This was the center of a military empire.<
br />
They came to a massive door guarded by a file of stalwart, uniformed Cloud-men armed with atom-guns. These stepped aside, and the door opened.
Durk Undis and the Sirian walked on either side of Gordon and Lianna into a forbidding room.
It was even more austere than the rest of the place. A single desk with its row of visors and screens, a hard, uncushioned chair, a window looking out on the black massiveness of Thallarna-these were all.
The man behind the desk rose. He was tall, broad-shouldered, about forty years of age. His black hair was close-clipped, his strong, pallid face sternly set, and his black eyes harsh and keen.
"Shorr Kan, Commander of the League of the Dark Worlds!" intoned Durk Undis, with fanatic intensity. And then, "These are the prisoners, sir!"
Shorr Kan's stern gaze fastened on Gordon's face, and then briefly on Lianna's.
He spoke in clipped tones to the Sirian. "You have done well, Them Eldred. You and Chan Corbulo have proved your devotion to the great cause of the League, and you will not find it ungrateful."
He went on, "You had better take your cruiser back at once to the Empire and rejoin your fleet lest suspicion fall on you."
Them Eldred nodded quickly. "That will be wisest, sir. I shall be ready to execute any orders you send through Corbulo."
Shorr Kan added, "You can go too, Durk. I shall question our two unwilling guests now."
Durk Undis looked worried. "Leave them here with you alone, sir? It is true they have no weapons, but-"
Shorr Kan turned a stern face on the young fanatic. "Do you think I stand in any danger from this flabby Empire princeling? And even if there were danger, do you think I would shrink from it if it was required by our cause?"
His voice deepened. "Will not millions of men soon hazard their lives for that cause, and gladly? Should one of us shrink from any peril when upon our unswerving devotion depends the success of all we have planned?
"And we will succeed!" rang his voice. "We shall take by force our rightful heritage in the galaxy, from the greedy Empire that thought to condemn us to perpetual banishment in these dark worlds! In that great common enterprise, do you believe I think of risks?"
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