The Star Kings

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 Empire.

'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.'