The Star Kings

him.

The girl was leaning toward him from the chair in which she was bound. Her face was worried.

'Zarth, I thought for a moment you were really hurt! Your recoil-chair almost broke loose completely.'

'I'm all right,' Gordon managed to answer. His eyes swung to take in the scene. 'We've landed, all right!'

The Dendra was no longer a ship. It was now a twisted, wrecked mass of metal whose voyaging was forever ended.

Walls had bulged like paper, metal girders and struts had been shorn away like cardboard, by the impact of the crash. Hot coppery sunlight streamed through a gaping rent in the cabin wall. Through that opening, Gordon could glimpse the scene outside.

The wreck lay amid towering ocher jungles of strange trees whose broad leaves grew directly from their smooth yellow trunks. Trees and brush and strange shrubs of yellow-and-black flowers had been crushed by the fall of the wreck. Golden spore-dust drifted in the metallic sunlight, and strange webbed-winged birds or creatures flew through the ocher wilderness.

To Gordon's ears came the ragged hum of atomic turbines and generators, close to them in the wreck.

'Durk Undis' men have been working to start the two generators,' Lianna said. 'They were not badly damaged, it seems.'

'Then they're going to send a call back to the Cloud,' Gordon muttered. 'And Shorr Kan will send another ship here!'

The officer Linn Kyle came into their cabin, no longer wearing a space-suit.

'You can take the suits off the prisoners,' Linn Kyle told their guard. 'Keep them fettered in the chairs, though.'

Gordon was relieved to get rid of the heavy suit and helmet. He found the air breathable but laden with strange, spicy scents.

Just across the corridor from their prison was the stereo room. They heard a transmitter there soon begin its high-pitched whine. Then the taut voice of Durk Undis reached them.

'Calling headquarters at Thallarna! Dendra calling!'

Lianna asked, 'Won't their call arouse attention? If it's heard by Empire warships, it will.'

Gordon had no hope of that. 'No, Durk Undis mentioned a secret wave they would use. No doubt that means they can call Thallarna without being overheard.'

For minutes, the calls continued. Then they heard Durk Undis order the transmitter turned off.

'We'll try again,' they heard him say. 'We've got to keep trying until we reach headquarters.'

Gordon hitched his recoil-chair around by imperceptible jerks of his body. He could now look across the shattered corridor into the stereo-room, whose door sagged from its frame.

In there, two hours later, he saw Durk Undis and his operator again try to reach Thallarna with a call. As the generators astern began humming, the operator closed the switches of his transmitter and then carefully centered a series of vernier dials on his panel.

'Be careful to keep exactly on the wave,' Durk Undis cautioned. 'If the cursed Empire ships get even a whisper of our call, they'll run a direction-fix on it and be here to hunt us.'

Then, again, began the series of calls. And this time, Durk Undis succeeded in obtaining a response.

'Dendra calling, Captain Durk Undis speaking!' he exclaimed eagerly into the transmitter. 'I can't go stereo, for lack of power. But here's my identification.'

He uttered a series of numbers, evidently a prearranged identification code. Then he rapidly gave the space coordinates of the planet inside the nebula where the wreck lay, and reported the battle and its sequel.

Shorr Kan's ringing voice came from the receiver of the apparatus.

'So Zarth Arn tried to sabotage the mission? I didn't think he was such a fool! I'll send another phantom- cruiser for you at once. Maintain silence until it arrives, for the Empire fleet mustn't suspect you're in their realm.'

'I assume that we will not now be continuing the mission to Earth?' said Durk Undis.

'Of course not!' snapped Shorr Kan. 'You'll bring Zarth Arn and the girl back to the Cloud. Above all, he mustn't get away to carry any news to Throon!'

Gordon's heart chilled, as he heard. Lianna looked mutely at him.

Durk Undis and the other Cloud-men were jubilant. Gordon heard the fanatic young captain give his orders.

'We'll maintain sentries around the wreck. We don't know what kind of creatures are in these jungles. Linn Kyle, you command the first watch.'

Night swept upon the ocher jungles as the coppery sun sank. The dank breath of the forest became stronger.

The night was like one of wondrously glowing moonlight, for the flaring nebula sky dripped strange radiance upon the brooding jungles and the wreck.

Out of the nebula-illuminated jungle there came a little later the echo of a distant cry. It was a throaty, bestial call, but with a creepy human quality in its tones.

Gordon heard Durk Undis' sharp voice. 'That must be a beast of some size! Keep your eyes open.'

Lianna shivered slightly. 'They tell strange tales of some of these lost worlds in the nebula. Few ships ever dare to enter these dust-whorls.'

'Ships are going to enter this one, if I can bring it about,' muttered Gordon. 'We're not going back to the Cloud!'

He had discovered something that gave him a faint hope. The recoil-chair in which he was fettered had suffered like the rest of the wreck from the shock of the crash-landing. The metal frame of the chair was slightly cracked along the arm to which his wrist was fettered.

The crack was a slight one, not affecting the strength of the chair. But it presented a slightly raised and ragged edge. Against this roughened edge, Gordon began secretly rubbing the plastic fetter on his wrist.

Gordon realized the improbability of this small abrasion severing the plastic. But it was at least a possibility, and he kept it up by imperceptible movements until his muscles ached.

Toward morning, they were awakened from doze by a repetition of the weird, throaty call in the distant forests. The next day, and the next, passed as the Cloud-men waited. But on the third night, horror burst upon them.

Soon after nightfall that night, a yell from one of the Cloud-men sentries was followed by the crash of an atom-pistol.

'What is it?' cried Durk Undis.

'Creatures that looked like men-but they melted when I fired at them!' cried another voice. 'They disappeared like magic!'

'There's another! And more of them!' cried a third Cloud-man. 'See!'

Guns went off, the explosion of their atomic pellets rocking the night. Durk Undis yelled orders.

Lianna had swung her chair around on its pedestal, toward the porthole. She cried out.

'Zarth! Look!'

Gordon managed to hitch his chair around also. He stared at the unbelievable sight outside the porthole.

Out there, manlike creatures in scores were pouring out of the jungle toward the wreck. They looked like tall, rubbery human men. Their eyes were blazing as they charged.

Durk Undis and his men were using their atom-pistols. The blinding flare of the atomic pellets darkened the soft nebula-glow.

But wherever those pellets blasted the strange invaders, the rubbery men simply melted. Their bodies melted down into viscous jelly that flowed back over the ground in slow retreat.

'They're coming from the other side too!' yelled the warning of Linn Kyle.

Durk Undis' voice rang imperatively. 'Pistols won't hold them off long! Linn, take two men and start the ship's generators. Hook a jet-cable to them and we can spray these creatures with pressure-rays!'

Lianna's eyes were distended by horror, as they witnessed the rubbery horde seize two of the Cloud-men and bear them back into the jungles.

'Zarth, they are monsters! Not men, yet not beasts-'

Gordon saw that the fight was going badly. The rubbery horde had pressed Dick Undis' men back close