"I love her and I'm not going to leave her here for you to tamper with," Gordon asserted sullenly.
Shorr Kan snorted. "If you knew me better, you'd know that one woman means no more to me than another. Do you think I'd risk my plans for a pretty face? But if you're jealous, you can take her with you."
He added, "How are you going to explain it all to her, though? You can't very well tell her the truth about our deal."
Gordon had thought of that already. He said slowly, "I'll make up a story that you're going to let us go if I bring you certain valuable scientific secrets from my Earth laboratory."
Shorr Kan nodded understandingly. "That will be your best course."
He added rapidly, "I'll give orders at once to have our best phantom-cruiser prepared. You ought to be able to start tomorrow night."
Gordon stood up. "I'll be glad to get some rest. I feel as though I've been through a grinder."
Shorr Kan laughed. "Man, that's nothing to what the brain-scanner would have made of you if it had run longer than a few minutes. What a twist of fate! Instead of a mindless idiot, you're to be nominal emperor of the galaxy!"
He added, his face setting for just a moment to a steely hardness, "But never forget that your power is only nominal and that it is I who will give the orders "
Gordon met his searching gaze steadily "I might forget it if I thought I'd gain by that. But I'm pretty sure I wouldn't. I'm pretty sure that once I'm ruler, I'll fall if you fall. So you will be able to rely on me-or on my self-interest."
The Cloud-man chuckled. "You're right. Didn't I say I always like to deal with intelligent people? We'll get along."
He pressed a button. When Durk Undis quickly entered the room, he told him:
"Escort Prince Zarth back to his quarters and then return here for orders."
All the way back through the corridors, Gordon's thoughts were feverish. Relaxation from the intolerable strain of playing his part left him trembling.
So far, his precarious scheme for escape was succeeding. He had gambled on Shorr Kan's ruthless, cynical personality reacting in a certain way, and had won.
But he well knew that this success was only the beginning. Ahead loomed far greater difficulties which he had not yet found the least way of solving.
He'd have to go ahead, even though his scheme was suicidal in riskiness! There was no other way.
When he entered the somber apartment, Lianna sprang from a chair and ran toward him. She grasped his arm.
"Zarth, you're all right?" she cried, her gray eyes shining. "I was afraid-"
She loved him, still. Gordon knew it from her face, and again he felt that wild, hopeless rapture.
He had to fight his impulse to take her into his arms. Something of what he felt must have showed in his face, for Lianna flushed and stepped back a little.
"Lianna, I'm all right though a little shaky," Gordon told her, sinking into a chair. "I had a taste of Cloud science and it wasn't pleasant."
"They tortured you? They made you tell the Disrupter secret?"
He shook his head. "I didn't tell that secret. And I'm not going to. I convinced Shorr Kan he couldn't get it from me."
Gordon went on, telling her as much of the truth as he could. "I made that devil believe that I would have to go to my Earth laboratory to get that secret for him. And he's sending us to get it. We'll leave in a phantom-cruiser tomorrow night."
Lianna's eyes flashed. "You're going to outwit him? You have some plan?"
"I wish I did," groaned Gordon. "This is as far as my plan goes. It will get us out of the Cloud, that's all. Then it's up to me. Somehow, I'll have to find a way for us to escape that ship and get a warning of Corbulo's treachery to Jhal Arn."
He added wearily, "The only way I can think of is somehow to sabotage the phantom-cruiser so it'll be captured by Empire warships. But how to do that, I don't know. That young fanatic Durk Undis is going with a picked crew to guard us, and it won't be easy."
Faith and courage shone in Lianna's eyes. "You'll find a way somehow, Zarth. I know you will."
Her faith could not overcome the chill realization in Gordon's mind that his hare-brained scheme was almost impossible.
He might be dooming both Lianna and himself by trying it. But they were doomed anyway unless he betrayed the real Zarth Arn and the Empire, and the momentary temptation to do that had left Gordon forever.
He slept heavily, well into the next day. It was dusk when Shorr Kan and Durk Undis finally came.
"Durk Undis has all his orders, and the phantom is ready," Shorr Kan told Gordon. "You should get to Earth in five days, and be back here in eleven."
His face lit. "Then I'll announce to the galaxy that we have the Disruptor secret and that Zarth Arn has joined us, and will give Corbulo the secret signal and launch the League's attack!"
Two hours later, from the huge Thallarna spaceport, the slim, shining phantom-cruiser on which Gordon and Lianna had embarked rose from its dock and plunged headlong out through the Cloud.
16: Sabotage in Space
When Gordon and Lianna had entered the Dendra, the phantom-cruiser that was to bear them on the mission, they were led to the mid-deck corridor by Durk Undis.
The fanatic young Cloud-man bowed stiffly to them and gestured toward the door of a small suite of two tiny cabins. "These cabins will be your quarters. You will remain in them until we reach Earth."
"We will not remain in them!" Gordon flared. "The princess Lianna is already suffering from the confinement of the voyage here. We'll not stay cooped up in those tiny rooms for days more."
Durk Undis' lean face hardened. "The commander gave orders that you were to be strictly guarded."
"Did Shorr Kan say we were to be imprisoned in two tiny rooms every minute?" Gordon demanded. He saw the slight uncertainty in Durk Undis' face, and pressed his attack. "Unless we have a chance to get a little exercise, we'll refuse to carry out this whole plan."
The fanatic Cloud-man hesitated. Gordon had guessed rightly that Durk Undis did not want to go back to his superior and report the mission aborted by such a slight difficulty.
Finally, Durk Undis said grudgingly, "Very well, you will be permitted to walk in this corridor twice each day. But you will not be allowed in it any other time, or when we're running 'dark.' "
The concession was not as much as Gordon had wanted but he guessed that it was the most he could obtain. So, with anger still assumed, he followed Lianna into the cabin-suite and heard the lock click after them.
As the Dendra rose from Thallarna and started arrowing out at high speed through the gloomy hazes of the Cloud, Lianna looked inquiringly at Gordon.
"The confinement does not really bother me, Zarth. You have some plan?"
"No more than the plan I already mentioned, of somehow drawing the attention of an Empire patrol to this ship so that it'll be discovered and captured," he admitted.
He added determinedly, "I don't know yet how it can be done, but there must be a way."
Lianna looked doubtful. "This phantom undoubtedly has super-sensitive radar equipment, and will be able to spot ordinary patrols long before they spot us. It will dark-out till we're past them."
The steady drone of big drive-generators building up velocity became an unwavering background in the following hours.
The Dendra plunged through hails of tiny meteor-particles, through dust-currents that made it pitch and toss roughly. It often changed direction as it threaded its way out through the Cloud.
It was the middle of the following day before they emerged from the gloomy haze into the vast, clear vault of star-gemmed space. At once, the phantom-cruiser picked up still greater speed.
Gordon and Lianna looked from the window at the brilliant galactic spectacle ahead. To their astonishment, the distant spark of Canopus lay out of sight far on their left. Ahead of the Dendra glittered a vault of strange stars in which Orion Nebula glowed in flaming glory.
"We're not heading straight back into the Empire," L
ianna said. "They're going to avoid the most guarded Empire frontier by swinging up west of Orion Nebula and on past the Marches of Outer Space to curve in toward Sol."
"Going the long way around to sneak into the Empire by the back way!" Gordon muttered. "It's probably the way that Cloud ship came that tried to kidnap me from Earth."
His faint hopes sank. "There's less chance of an Empire patrol catching us, if we're going through a little-travelled region."
Lianna nodded. "We are not likely to meet more than a few patrol cruisers, and Durk Undis can slip past them under dark-out."
Discouragedly, Gordon stared out at the brilliant scene. His gaze shifted to the direction in which he knew Canopus must lie.
Lianna caught the direction of his gaze and looked up at him questioningly. "You are thinking of Murn?"
It startled Gordon. He had almost forgotten the dark, lovely girl whom the real Zarth Arn loved.
"Murn? No! I was thinking of that black traitor Corbulo, spinning his plots back there on Throon and just waiting his chance to murder Jhal Arn and wreck the Empire's defenses."
"That is the greatest danger," Lianna agreed soberly. "If they could only be warned of Corbulo's treachery, the League's plan of attack could still be foiled."
"And we're the only ones who can warn them," Gordon muttered.
Yet on the third day after this, he had to confess to himself that it seemed more than ever an impossibility.
The Dendra was by now well inside the boundaries of the Empire, beating northward on a course that would take it just west of the gigantic, glowing Orion Nebula.
Once beyond the great Nebula, they would fly northwestward along the little-travelled edges of the Marches of Outer Space. Few Empire warships would be in the region bordering that wild frontier of unexplored star-systems. And Sol and its planet Earth would be nearby, then.
Twice during these three days, an alarm bell had rung through the Dendra as its radar operators detected Empire warships nearby. Each time, in their cabins, Gordon and Lianna had seen the whole vault of space outside the window suddenly blacked out.
Gordon had exclaimed in astonishment when it first happened. "What's wrong? All space has gone dark!"
Lianna looked at him in surprise. "They've turned on the dark-out of our ship. You surely remember that when a phantom-cruiser runs dark, those inside it can see nothing of outside space?"
"Oh, of course," Gordon said hastily. "It's been so long since I've been in one of these craft that I'd forgotten."
He understood now what was happening. The new, loud whine that permeated the cruiser was the sound of the dark-out generators that were flinging an aura of potent force around the ship.
That aura slightly refracted every ray of light or radar beam that struck it, so that the phantom-cruiser could neither be seen or ranged by radar. Of necessity, that deflection of all outside light left the cruiser moving in utter darkness.
Gordon heard the dark-out generators down in the lower deck whining for nearly an hour. They apparently required almost all the power of the ship, the drive-machinery merely purring and the ship moving almost on inertia.
The thing happened again the following morning, when the Dendra was drawing up closer to the west borders of Orion Nebula. That glowing mass now stretched billions of miles across the firmament beside them.
Gordon saw many hot stars inside the Nebula. He recalled that it was their electron-barrage that excited the hazy dust of the Nebula to its brilliant glow.
That "evening," he and Lianna were walking in the long corridor under the close scrutiny of an armed Cloud-man when the alarm bell again rang sharp warning through the ship.
The Cloud-man instantly stepped forward. "Dark-out! Return to your cabins immediately!"
Gordon had hoped for a chance like this and resolved to seize it. They might never have another.
As the familiar whine of the dark-out came on, as he and Lianna moved toward their cabins, he leaned to whisper to her, "Act faint and collapse just as we enter the cabin!"
Lianna gave not a sign of hearing him, except that her fingers quickly pressed his hand.
The Cloud-officer was a half-dozen paces behind them, his hand resting on the butt of his atom-pistol.
Lianna, at the door of the cabin, tottered weakly and pressed her heart.
"Zarth, I feel ill!" she whispered huskily, then began to sag to the floor.
Gordon caught her, held her. "She's fainted! I knew this confinement would be too much for her!"
He turned angrily toward the startled Cloud-man. "Help me get her into the cabin!" Gordon snapped.
The officer was anxious to get them out of the corridor. His orders had been that they were immediately to be re-confined whenever a dark-out began.
Zeal to obey his orders betrayed him. The Cloud-man stepped forward and stooped to help pick up Lianna and carry her inside.
As he did so, Gordon acted! He callously let Lianna fall to the floor, and snatched at the butt of the Cloud-man's atom-gun.
So swift was his movement that he had the gun out of its holster before the other realized it. The Cloud-man began to straighten and his mouth opened to yell an alarm.
Gordon smashed the barrel of the heavy atom-pistol against the man's temple below his helmet. The officer's face relaxed blankly, and he slumped like a bag of rags.
"Quick, Lianna!" sweated Gordon. "Into the cabin with him!"
Lianna was already on her feet. In an instant, they had dragged the limp form into the little room and shut the door.
Gordon stooped over the man. The skull was shattered.
"Dead," he said swiftly. "Lianna, this is my chance!"
He was beginning to strip off the dead man's jacket. She flew to his side. "Zarth, what are you going to do?"
"There must be at least one Empire patrol cruiser nearby," Gordon rasped. "If I can sabotage the Dendra's dark-out equipment, the patrol will spot us and capture the ship."
"More likely they'll blow it to fragments!" Lianna warned.
His eyes held hers. "I know that, too. But I'm willing to take the chance if you are."
Her gray eyes flashed. "I'm willing, Zarth. The future of the whole galaxy hangs in the balance."
"You stay here!" he ordered. "I'll put on this fellow's uniform and helmet and it may give me a little better chance."
In a few minutes, Gordon had struggled into the dead man's black uniform. He jammed on the helmet, then bolstered the atom-gun and slid out into the corridor.
The dark-out was still on, the Dendra cautiously groping its way through self-induced blackness. Gordon started aft.
He had already, during these past days, located the sound of the dark-out generators as coming from aft on the lower deck. He hastened in the direction of that loud whine.
There was no one in the corridor. During dark-out, every man and officer was at action stations.
Gordon reached the end of the corridor. He hurried down a narrow companionway to the lower deck. Here doors were open, and he glanced into the big drive-generator rooms. Officers stood at flight-panels, men watched the gauges of the big, purring energy-drive.
An officer glanced up surprisedly as Gordon quickly passed the door. But his helmet and uniform seemed to reassure the Cloud-man.
"Of course!" Gordon thought. "The guard I killed would be just returning to his station from locking us up!"
He was now closer to the loud whine of the dark-out generators. They were just forward of the main drive-machinery rooms, and the door of the dark-out room was also open.
Gordon drew his atom-pistol and stepped into the doorway. He looked into a big room whose generators were emitting that loud whine. One whole side of it was a bank of giant vacuum tubes that pulsed with white radiance.
There were two officers and four men in the room. An officer at the switch-panel beyond the tubes turned to speak to a man, and glimpsed Gordon's taut face in the doorway.
"Zarth Arn!" yelled the officer, grabbing for
his gun. "Look out!"
Gordon triggered his pistol. It was the first time he had used one of these weapons and his ignorance betrayed him.
He was aiming at the vacuum tubes across the room but the gun kicked high in his hand. The exploding pellet blasted the ceiling. He flung himself down in a crouch as a pellet from the officer's pistol flicked across the room. It struck the doorframe above his head, flaring instantly.
"General alarm!" the officer was yelling. "Get-"
Gordon triggered again at that moment. This time he held his weapon down. The atomic pellets from his pistol exploded amid the bank of giant tubes.
Electric fire mushroomed out into the dark-out room! Two men and an officer screamed as raging violet flames enveloped them.
The officer with the gun swung around, appalled. Gordon swiftly shot him. He shot then at the nearest big generator.
His pellet only fused its metal shield. But the giant vacuum tubes were still popping, the whole room an inferno. The two men left there staggered in the violet fires, screaming and falling.
Gordon had recoiled into the corridor. He yelled exultantly as he saw the blackness outside the window suddenly replaced by a vault of brilliant stars.
"Our dark-out has failed!" yelled a voice on one of the upper decks.
Bells shrilled madly. Gordon heard a rush of feet as Cloud-men started pouring down from an upper deck toward the dark-out room.
17: Wrecked in the Nebula
Gordon glimpsed a dozen League soldiers bursting into the farther end of this lower-deck corridor. He knew that his game was up, but he turned his atom-pistol savagely loose upon them.
The pellets flew down the passage and exploded. The little flares of force blasted down half the Cloud-men there. But the others raced forward with wolfish shouts. And his pistol went dead in his hand, its loads exhausted.
Then it happened! The whole fabric of the Dendra rocked violently and there was a crash of riving plates and girders. All space outside the ship seemed illuminated by a brilliant flare.
"That Empire cruiser has spotted us and is shelling us!" yelled a wild voice. "We're hit!"
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