The Star Kings
by
Edmond Hamilton
Table of Contents
THE STAR KINGS
Edmond Hamilton
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
The Star Kings: Copyright ©1949 Edmond Hamilton
A Baen Ebook
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com
ISBN 10: 1-4191-8343-5
ISBN 13: 978-1-4191-8343-0
Cover art by Doug Chaffee
First ebook, February 2008
Electronic version by WebWrights
www.webwrights.com
1: John Gordon
When John Gordon first heard the voice inside his mind, he thought that he was going crazy.
It came first at night when he was just falling asleep. Through his drowsing thoughts, it spoke sharp and clear.
'Can you hear me, John Gordon? Can you hear me call?'
Gordon sat up, suddenly wide awake and a little startled. There had been something strange and upsetting about it.
Then he shrugged. The brain played strange tricks when a man was half-asleep and the will relaxed. It couldn't mean anything.
He forgot it until the next night. Then, just as he began to slip into the realm of sleep, that clear mental voice came again.
'Can you hear me? If you can hear me, try to answer my call!'
Again Gordon woke up with a start. And this time he was a little worried. Was there something the matter with his mind? He had always heard it was bad if you started to hear voices.
He had come through the war without a scratch. But maybe those years of flying out in the Pacific had done something to his mind. Maybe he was going to be a delayed psychoneurotic casualty.
'What the devil, I'm getting excited about nothing,' Gordon told himself roughly. 'It's just because I'm nervous and restless.'
Restless? Yes, he was that. He had been, ever since the war ended and he returned to New York.
You could take a young accountant clerk out of a New York insurance office and make him into a war pilot who could handle thirty tons of bomber as easily as he handled his fingers. You could do that, for they had done it to Gordon.
But after three years of that, it wasn't so easy to give that pilot a discharge button and a 'thank you' and send him back to his office desk. Gordon knew that, too, by bitter experience.
It was queer. All the time he had sweated and risked his neck out there over the Pacific, he had been thinking how wonderful it would be to get back to his old job and his comfortable little apartment.
He had got back, and they were just the same as before. But he wasn't. The John Gordon who had come back was used to battle, danger and sudden death, but not used to sitting at a desk and adding up figures.
Gordon didn't know what he wanted, but it wasn't an office job in New York. Yet he'd tried to get these ideas out of his mind. He'd fought to get back into the old routine, and the fight had made him more and more restless.
And now this queer calling voice inside his brain! Did that mean that his nervousness was getting the best of him, that he was cracking up?
He thought of going to a psychiatrist, but shied at the idea, It seemed better to fight down this thing himself.
So the next night, Gordon grimly waited for the voice to call and prepared to prove to himself that it was a delusion.
It did not come that night, nor the next. He supposed it was over. Then the third night, it came more strongly than ever.
'John Gordon, listen to me! You are not having delusions! I am another man, speaking to your mind by means of a science I possess.'
Gordon lay there in semi-sleep, and that voice seemed wonderfully real to him.
'Please try to answer me, John Gordon! Not with speech, but with thought. The channel is open-you can answer if you try.'
Dazedly, Gordon sent an answering thought out into the darkness.
'Who are you?'
The reply came quickly and clearly, with a pulse of eagerness and triumph in it.
