work from, or you'll get the backlash. Don't you remember it all now, Zarth?'
Gordon nodded hurriedly. 'Of course. But I'm glad just the same that it will be your job to use it.'
Jhal looked more haggard. 'God knows I don't want to! It has rested here all these centuries without being used. And the warning of Brenn Bir still is true.'
He pointed up, as he spoke, to an inscription on the opposite wall. Gordon read it now for the first time.
'To my descendants who will hold the secret of the Disruptor that I, Brenn Bir, discovered: Heed my warning! Never use the Disruptor for petty personal power! Use it only if the freedom of the galaxy is menaced!
'This power you hold could destroy the galaxy. It is a demon so titanic that once unchained, it might not be chained again. Take not that awful risk unless the life and liberty of all men are at stake!'
Jhal Arn's voice was solemn. 'Zarth, when you and I were boys and were first brought down here by our father to have the Wave tuned to us, we little dreamed that a time might come when we would think of using that which has lain here for so long.'
His voice rang deeper. 'But the life and liberty of all men
Gordon felt shaken by the implications of that warning. It was like a voice of the dead, speaking heavily in this silent room.
Jhal turned and led the way out of the room. He closed the door and again Gordon wondered. No lock, not bolts, no guard!
They went down the long radiant corridor and emerged from it into the softer yellow light of the well of the spiral stair.
'We'll mount the equipment on the
'You will never show them anything, Jhal Arn!' Out from beneath the spiral stair had sprung a disheveled man who held an atom-pistol leveled on Gordon and Jhal Arn.
'Orth Bodmer!' cried Gordon. 'You were hiding in the palace all the time!'
Orth Bodmer's thin face was colorless, deadly, twitching in a pallid smile.
'Yes, Zarth,' he grated. 'I knew the game was up when I saw Them Eldred brought in. I couldn't get out of the palace without being swiftly traced and apprehended, so I hid in the deeper corridors.'
His smile was ghastly now. 'I hid, until as I had hoped you came down here to the Chamber of the Disruptor, Jhal Arn! I've been waiting for you!'
Jhal's eyes flashed. 'Just what do you expect to gain by this?'
'It is simple,' rasped Bodmer. 'I know my life is forfeit. Well, so is your life unless you spare mine!'
He stepped closer, and Gordon read the madness of fear in his burning eyes.
'You do not break your word when it is given, highness. Promise me that I shall be pardoned, and I will not kill you now!'
Gordon saw that panic had driven this rabbity, nervous traitor to insane resolve.
'Jhal, do it!' he cried. 'He's not worth risking your life for!'
Jhal Arn's face was dull red with fury. 'I have let one traitor go free, but no more!'
Instantly, before Gordon could voice the cry of appeal on his lips, Orth Bodmer's atom-pistol crashed.
The pellet tore into Jhal Arn's shoulder and exploded there as Gordon plunged forward at the maddened traitor.
'You murdering lunatic!' cried Gordon fiercely, seizing the other's gun-wrist and grappling with him.
For a moment, the thin Councilor seemed to have superhuman strength. They swayed, stumbled, and then reeled together from the hall into the brilliant white radiance of the long corridor.
Then Orth Bodmer screamed! He screamed like a soul in torment, and Gordon felt the man's body relax horribly in his grasp.
'The Wave!' screeched Bodmer, staggering in the throbbing radiance.
Even as the man screamed, Gordon saw his whole body and face horribly blacken and wither. It was a shriveled, lifeless body that sank to the floor.
So ghastly and mysterious was that sudden death, that for a moment Gordon was dazed. Then he suddenly understood.
The throbbing radiance in the corridor and in the Chamber of the Disruptor was the Wave that Jhal Arn had spoken of! It was not light but a terrible, destroying force-a force so tuned to individual human bodily vibrations that it blasted every human being except the chosen holders of the Disruptor secret.
No wonder that no locks or bolts or guards were needed to protect the Disruptor! No man could approach it without being destroyed, except Jhal Arn and Gordon himself. No, not John Gordon but Zarth Arn-it was Zarth Arn's physical body that the Wave was tuned to spare!
Gordon stumbled out of that terrible radiance back into the hall. He bent over the prone form of Jhal Arn.
'Jhal! For God's sake-'
Jhal Arn had a terrible, blackened wound in his shoulder and side But he was still breathing, still alive.
Gordon sprang to the stair and shouted upward. 'Guards! The Emperor has been hurt!'
Guards, officers, officials, came pouring down quickly, Jhal Arn by then was stirring feebly. His eyes opened.
'Bodmer-guilty of this attack on me!' he muttered to them. 'Is Zarth all right?'
'I'm here. He didn't hit me, and he's dead now,' Gordon husked.
An hour later, he waited in an outer room of the royal apartments high in the palace. Lianna was there, striving to comfort Jhal Arn's weeping wife.
A physician came hurriedly from the inner room to which Jhal Arn had been taken.
'The emperor will live!' he announced. 'But he is terribly wounded, and it will take many weeks for him to recover.'
He added worriedly, 'He insists on Prince Zarth Arn coming in.'
Gordon uncertainly entered the big, luxurious bedroom. The two women followed. He stooped over the bed in which Jhal Arn lay.
Jhal Arn whispered an order. 'Bring a stereo-transmitting set. And order it switched through for a broadcast to the whole Empire.'
'Jhal, you mustn't try it!' Gordon protested. 'You can make announcements of my being cleared in another way than that.'
'It's not only that that I have to announce,' Jhal whispered. 'Zarth, don't you realize what it means for me to be stricken down at the very moment when Shorr Kan's plans are reaching their crisis?'
The stereo transmitter was hastily brought in. Its viewer-disk swung to include Jhal Arn's bed, and Gordon and Lianna and Zora.
Jhal Arn painfully raised his head on the pillow, his white face looking into the disk.
'People of the Empire!' he said hoarsely. 'The same traitorous assassins who murdered my father have tried to murder me, but have failed. I shall in time be well again.
'Chan Corbulo and Orth Bodmer-
'And since I am thus stricken down, I appoint my brother Zarth Arn as regent to rule in my place until I recover. No matter what events burst upon us, give your allegiance to Zarth Arn as leader of our Empire!'
24: Storm Over Throon
Gordon uttered an involuntary exclamation of dismayed amazement.
'Jhal, no! I can't wield the rule of the Empire, even for a short time!'
Jhal Arn had already made a feeble gesture of dismissal to the technicians. They had quickly switched off the stereo apparatus as he finished speaking, and were now withdrawing.
At Gordon's protest, Jhal Arn turned his deathly-white face and answered in an earnest whisper.
