men shouted, “We can still take off, while the cruiser waits for his message!'
A general movement started toward the door. Banning knew that if they left him here, his life would pay forfeit. That knowledge lent him desperate determination. He must play the Valkar now to the hilt, for his neck! He stopped their movement, with a shout.
'Wait! And have them hunt us down in space? Listen, I have a, better idea!” He turned to Rolf. “Forget the old plan, throw it away. I have a new one. Listen you idiots who call yourselves captains. We want to penetrate to the very heart of the Empire. We want to reach the very throne and snatch the Empress off it. What better way to do it than in one of their own ships?'
They began to get the idea. They thought it over, seeing the neat shape of it, liking it more and more. Zurdis looked up at Banning, doubt and a sudden hope showing in his eyes.
'They want a message,” Banning said. “We'll give them one.” He leaped down from the throne, gesturing to Zurdis as he passed. “Fetch him, Sohmsei. Alive! You others of the Arraki — follow me, and I'll show you how to strike a blow for the Valkar!” He lifted his head to grin defiantly at Rolf, still standing on the steps of the throne. “Are you coming?” he demanded.
Rolf let go a laugh of pure exultation. “Lord,” he said, “I am at your heels!'
It was the first time he had given Banning that title.
Horek, the dark smiling man of the Starfleet, cried out shrilly, “Come on, you hounds — if you'd like to catch a cruiser!'
They cheered and followed Banning out into the nighted streets, with the Arraki for link-boys to carry the torches. And Banning, seeing the ruins and the fallen colossi under the dim moons, hearing the footsteps and the voices and thinking of what lay ahead, thought secretly, This is all a mad dream, and some day I'll wake from it. But meanwhile—
He turned to Rolf and said in English, “Did you have a plan?'
'Oh, yes. An elaborate and very clever one, that might even have worked — but we'd have lost a lot of ships.'
'Rolf.'
'Yes.'
'What did you tell them, to get them into this?'
'Half the truth. I said that Jommor has the key to the secret of the Hammer, that he stole that from you. We have to get it back, I didn't think it necessary to explain that the key is actually your memory — which, of course, they believe you already have.'
'Um. Rolf—'
'What now?'
'Don't make any more arrangements for me.'
'After this,” said Rolf quietly, “I think I could trust you to make your own.'
Meanwhile, Banning thought, impostor or not he must keep playing the Valkar — if Neil Banning was not to die.
They passed the great gate of the city. Out on the ruined road, Banning stopped and looked back. The huge bulk of the palace showed at the far end of the avenue, alight with many torches — an eerie mockery of life in that dead, deserted place. He nodded and spoke to the Arraki, and to the captains. One by one their own torches went out, and men and not-men melted away into the jungle, leaving Banning alone with Rolf and Behrent and Horek of the Starfleet, and the two Arraki, Sohmsei and Keesh, who held Zurdis close between them.
They went up the ruined road to the plateau. And on the way Banning spoke seriously to Zurdis, who listened with great care.
'His men may decide to fight for him,” Rolf said, and Banning nodded.
'Behrent and Horek can handle that, they'll have all the other crews behind them. Few men have any love for traitors.'
Zurdis said sullenly, “I told no one else. Why share the gain? The men are all loyal to the Valkar.'
'Good,” said Banning, and then told Behrent, “But make sure it's true!'
On the plateau, Banning made straight for his own ship and the radio room, with Rolf and Zurdis and the two Arraki. The operator on duty sprang up startled out of a half doze, and began frantically to work. Banning set Zurdis by the microphone, and Sohmsei beside him with the tips of his talons resting lightly on the captain's throat.
'He can hear your words before they're spoken,” Banning said. “If he hears treason, you'll never live to speak it.” He gestured sternly. “Go on.'
A voice was already acknowledging the call. Slowly and very clearly, Zurdis said into the microphone, “Zurdis here. Listen — the man Rolf brought back is not the Valkar, and half the men suspect it. They are quarrelling about it now, in the throne-room of the palace. They're disorganized and completely off guard. There are no Arraki about, and if you land now in the jungle outside the city gate, you can grab the lot without any trouble.'
'Good,” said the voice. “You're sure this man is not the Valkar?'
'Sure.'
'I'll send word at once to Jommor — he'll be relieved. In a way I'm sorry — it would have been more of an honor to me, to bring him in. Oh well, Rolf and a whole conspiracy can't be sneered at! We'll land in twenty minutes. You stand clear.'
The microphone clicked. Zurdis looked at Banning.
Banning said to Sohmsei. “Is his mind clean?'
'Lord,” answered the Arraki, “he is thinking now how he can warn the cruiser's men after they land, leaping swiftly out to get among them. He is thinking of many things he cannot hide, and none of them are good.'
Banning said curtly, “Take him out.'
They took him.
Banning turned savagely to Rolf. “I want no unnecessary killing when the cruiser lands. Make that understood!'
He went to his cabin and got the weapons Rolf had given him. The cerebro-shockers were short-ranged for hot work. These weapons were stocky pistols that fired explosive pellets. He wasn't sure he could use them, though Rolf had explained how it was done. When he went out, the men of the crews were drawn up and waiting. Keesh and Sohmsei took their accustomed places beside him. They were alone.
'All right,” said Banning. “Quickly.'
They plunged down into the dark bowl of the valley, under the ghostly ocher moons.
Presently Banning shouted, “Take cover! Here she comes!'
The black ranks of the forest trees swallowed them up. Overhead a huge dark shape was dropping swiftly down. Banning had a moment of panic, when it seemed certain that the giant bulk would crush him and all his men. Then he saw that it was only night and optical illusion, and the cruiser sank down with a splintering of breaking trees some hundred yards away — caught as he had planned it between his two forces. A great wind struck them, whipping the branches over their heads and whirling a storm of twigs and leaves in their faces. Then there was silence, and Banning went forward through the trees, with his men behind him.
The cruiser's men were already filing out, fully armed and in good order, but not expecting any trouble here, more concerned with picking their way through the dark and the broken trees. And then from nowhere Banning's forces hit them, and they were like the iron that lies between the hammer and the anvil. Banning shouted, and Sohmsei echoed him with a long wailing cry.
More men poured out of the cruiser's port. There was firing, with explosive pellets bursting like tiny stars, and much deadly floundering among the trees. The cruiser's floodlights came on, turning the landscape into a tangled pattern of white glare and black shadows, in which the shapes of men and Arraki swarmed in a wildly-shifting phantasmagoria. Banning raced for the cruiser, with Sohmsei and Keesh scuttering swiftly beside him, and more Arraki came in answer to the call, quick and eager as children running to play, their strange eyes shining in the light.
With Banning at their head, they swept in through the cruiser's open port, into the lock room, into the passageways, driving the surprised humans before them, trampling them under their swift-moving feet, sweeping the ship like a great broom. A few of them died, and others were wounded. But Banning knew that he had guessed right, and that these unhuman servitors were the strongest weapon he could use against men who had heard of them only in legends and old wives’ tales. The sudden nightmare rush of Sohmsei's people out of the dark, the
