'What about me?” said Rolf, between his teeth.
Jommor seemed to waver. Tharanya said, “You will not do it, Jommor.” His face became stony with resistance.
The view-plates behind them suddenly blazed with dazzling explosions of light a raving brilliance that paled the stars. Across the whole wall of the heavens, behind Sunfire, great bursts of light flared and faded.
'They're ranging to bracket us,” Behrent said. “We can fight back — but not for long, at these odds.'
Banning said tightly, “Tharanya will stop them. I'll have radio-room get ready for her broadcast. Wait.'
He raced off the bridge, into the radio-room. He was back in a moment, and he took Tharanya by the arm.
'Now, Tharanya, you're going to speak to those ships, and tell them that they'll cease firing or you'll perish with us.'
Tharanya laughed. She looked almost happy. She said, “You won't perish — not this way. You'll have to surrender.'
Banning said, “Jommor, you'd better talk to her, and quickly.'
Again the view-plates fit to those awful flares, and this time they were closer, so close that they occluded all that part of the heavens.
Jommor said, “Tharanya—'
She exclaimed, “Don't you see, they know they're beaten, they know they can't force me to do it!'
Behrent had gone to the screens again but he came back now. He said puzzledly, “The cruisers just dropped back! They're still following, but they've fallen back and stopped firing.'
'They wouldn't!” Tharanya cried. “You're lying—'
Banning heaved a sigh of relief. “That was too close. Anyway, it worked. They won't shell us, now they know their sovereign's aboard.'
'But they don't know it yet, do they?” said Rolf.
Banning nodded. “I had radio-room cut this intercom mike right beside us into our broadcast wave. Every ship would have heard Tharanya's voice — and Jommor's.'
Jommor uttered an exclamation in a voice thick with anger. Tharanya's eyes blazed baffled hatred, but she said nothing.
Banning motioned with his weapon. “We'll go back down. I wouldn't try any more clever tricks.'
'I'll go with you,” Rolf grunted.
The woman said nothing at all when they locked her in the cabin that had been Landolph's. But, in the next cabin, to which they took him, Jommor spoke up when they were about to leave him.
'We could still make a deal,” he said to Banning.
'Turn Tharanya loose in a life-skiff — and I'll restore your memory.
Banning laughed. He thought he had the measure of the man now.
'No, Jommor.'
Jommor said steadily, “Rolf will tell you I've never broken faith.'
'I can believe that. But I can also believe that you'd break faith this time — to keep us from getting the Hammer. Wouldn't you?'
Jommor made no answer to that, but the wavering of his gaze was answer enough.
Rolf told him, “You've got some time yet, Jommor. But soon, you'll do what we want. You'll be glad to.'
'Will I?'
'Yes. Because of the place we are going to. Cygnus Cluster. We are going to it, and into it.'
However little the Cluster might mean to Banning, it was perfectly evident that it meant much to Jommor. His powerful face became a shade paler.
'So that's where the Hammer is?'
'That's where. On a world in the most dangerous Cluster in the galaxy. I don't know what world it's on. And I don't know how to navigate the Cluster safely to get there. I'd run Sunfire to destruction, if I tried it. But someone does know.'
Jommor's eyes swung to Banning. “The Valkar knows. Is that it?'
Rolf nodded. “Yes. The Valkar knows. Of course, he doesn't remember now, he'd crash us for sure in there — but when he remembers, we'll be safe enough. You. I. Tharanya.'
Jommor said nothing for a moment, and then he whispered a curse so bitter that it shocked Banning. They locked the door.
'Let him sweat,” said Rolf. He looked at Banning. “I think you'd better get some sleep, Kyle. You're likely to need it.'
'Sleep?” cried Banning. “You expect me to sleep, with those cruisers hounding us, with the Cluster ahead, with—'
'Nothing's going to happen for a while,” Rolf pointed out brusquely. “Those ships will have checked with Rigel by now, they're certain we have Tharanya and they will merely follow us. And Cygnus Cluster is a long way off yet,” he added meaningly, “And you've an ordeal ahead of you.'
Again that icy breath of dread touched Banning. He knew that, deep down, he did not want Jommor to consent, did not want him tampering with the mind of Neil Banning.
'Come on,” said Rolf, steering him toward his cabin. “I'll fix you a drink, to relax your nerves.'
He did, and Banning drank it, thinking of other things — of Tharanya, and himself, and a vast threatening entity called the Cygnus Cluster. He sat down on the bunk and talked to Rolf, and almost without knowing it he fell asleep.
He dreamed.
He was two men. He was himself, and he was the Valkar, a shadowy sinister figure with cruel eyes and outlandish dress, who bulked larger and larger until the familiar Banning was dwarfed and dwindled into a thing no bigger than a mouse. And the Valkar-self drove the Banning-self away, crying with tiny cries in a vast enveloping darkness. It was a frightening dream. He was glad when he woke from it.
Sohmsei was beside his bunk waiting, patient as a statue. In answer to Banning's question he said, “You have slept a long time, Lord. Very long. Rolf made it so, with a powder he put in your drink.'
Banning said angrily, “So he drugged me, did he? He had no right—'
'It was good, Lord. You needed rest, for there will be no rest now, until all is over and done.'
Something in the Arraki's tone made Banning shiver. “Sohmsei,” he asked, “you have gifts that are denied to men. Is one of them a telling of the future?'
Sohmsei shook his head. “No more than you or Rolf, Lord, can I see beyond that wall. But sometimes, through a chink in the stones—” he broke off. “Even as men, we dream. It is probably no more than that.'
'No, tell me. Tell me what you saw through the chink in the wall!'
'Lord, I saw the whole broad sky on fire.'
Banning got up. “Do you know what it meant?'
'No. But doubtless we shall learn.” Sohmsei crossed to the door, which he opened. “And now The Valkar is wanted on the bridge.'
Banning went there, in no joyous frame of mind. Rolf and Behrent were both there, looking haggard, as though they had tried to sleep without the benefit of drugs and found it useless. They were standing at a forward view-plate. They turned their heads when Banning entered, and nodded, and when he joined them, Rolf put one hand on his shoulder and pointed with the other.
Banning looked. Ahead of the ship, already clearly defined and growing imperceptibly larger almost as be watched, was a vast blazing cloud of stars, a stunning and unthinkable splendor of suns, scarlet, gold, and peacock-blue, emerald and diamond-white, flung like the robe of God across infinity. Patches of nebulosity glowed here and there with softer radiance, and all along its side there was a darkness, a black cloud that absorbed all light, a greedy thing that seemed to feed on suns.
'I believe,” said Rolf softly, “that on Earth it is known as the ‘America’ cluster, because of its shape. You see the resemblance to that continent's outline? And how odd the name seems, now.'
'I wish I were back there,” muttered Banning, and meant it.
Behrent had not taken his eyes from the glory ahead. To him it was not a wonder and a beauty, but a challenge — one that he knew he could not meet.
