The Star Kings

Burrel's hoarse voice in his ear. 'It is time!'

Gordon, as he tore away, had a swift vision of Lianna's white face and shining eyes that he would never forget. For he knew that it was his last.

And then Hull Burrel was dragging him bodily up the gangway, doors were grinding shut, great turbines thundering, bells ringing sharp signals down the corridors.

'Take off' warned the annunciators shrilly, and with a crash of splitting air the Ethne zoomed for the storm-swept heavens.

Upward it roared, and with it raced the other two battleships, bolting like metal things of thought up across the star-sown sky.

'Giron's calling!' Hull Burrel was shouting in his ear as they stumbled forward along the corridors. 'Heavy fighting now near Rigel! And the League's eastern fleets are forcing through!'

In the navigation-room where Gordon had set up the Disruptor apparatus, Commander Giron's grim image flashed from a telestereo.

Over the Commander's shoulder Gordon glimpsed a bridge-room window that looked out on a space literally alive with an inferno of bursting atom-shells, of exploding ships.

Giron's voice was cool but swift. 'We've joined fleet action with the League's two eastern forces. And we're suffering prohibitive losses. The enemy has some new weapon that seems to strike down our ships from within-we can't understand it.'

Gordon started. 'The new weapon that Shorr Kan boasted to me about! How does it operate?'

'We don't know!' was the answer. 'Ships suddenly drift out of action all around us, and don't answer our calls.'

Giron added, 'The Barons report their fleet is moving out east of the Cluster to oppose the Cloud's two fleets coming toward them. The fleets of Lyra, Polaris and the other allied Kingdoms are already coming down full speed from the northwest to join my command.'

The Commander concluded grimly, 'But this new weapon of the League, whatever it is, is decimating us! I'm withdrawing west but they're hammering us hard, and their phantoms keep getting through. I feel it my duty to warn that we can't fight long in the face of such losses.'

Gordon told him, 'We're coming out with the Disrupter and we're going to use it! But it'll take many hours for us to reach the scene.'

He tried to think, before he gave orders. He remembered what Jhal Arn had said, that the target area of the Disruptor's force must be as limited as possible.

'Giron, to utilize the Disrupter it is imperative that the League's fleets be maneuvered together. Can you somehow do that?'

Giron rasped answer. 'The only chance I have of doing that is to retreat slightly southwestward from this branch of the attack, as though I meant to go to the aid of the Barons. That might draw the Cloud's two attacking forces together.'

'hen try it!' Gordon urged. 'Fall back southwestward and give me an approximate position for rendezvous with you.'

'Just west of Deneb should be the approximate position by the time you get here,' Giron answered. 'God knows how much of our fleet will be left then if this new Cloud weapon keeps striking us down!'

Giron switched off, but in other telestereos unfolded the battle that was going on all along the line near distant Rigel.

Beside the ships that perished in the inferno of atom-shells and the stabbing attack of stealthy phantom- cruisers, the radar screen showed many Empire ships suddenly drifting out of action.

'What in the devil's name has the Cloud got that can disable our warships like that?' sweated Hull Burrel.

'Whatever it is, it's smashing in Giron's wings fast,' muttered Val Marlann tensely. 'His withdrawal may become a rout!'

Gordon turned from the dazing, bewildering stereos that showed the battle, and glanced haggardly through the bridge windows.

The Ethne was already hurtling at increasing velocity past the smaller Argo suns, speeding southward toward the Armageddon of the galaxy.

Gordon felt overwhelmed by dread, a panicky reaction. He had no place in this titanic conflict of future ages! He had been mad to make the impulsive decision to try to use the Disrupter!

He use the Disrupter? How could he, when he knew so little of it? How dared he unchain the ghastly power which its own discoverer had warned could rive and destroy the galaxy itself?

26: Battle Between the Stars

Throbbing, droning, quivering in every girder to the thrust of its mighty drive-jet, the Ethne and its two companion ships raced southward across the starry spaces of the galaxy.

For hour on hour, the three great battleships had rushed at their highest speed toward the fateful rendezvous near the distant spark of Deneb, toward which the Empire forces were retreating.

'The Barons are fighting!' Hull Burrel cried to Gordon from the telestereo into which he was peering with flaming eyes. 'God, look at the battle off the Cluster!'

'They should be drawing back by now toward the Deneb region as Giron's forces are doing!' Gordon exclaimed.

He was stunned by the telestereo scene. Transmitted from one of the Cluster ships in the thick of that great battle, it presented an almost incomprehensible vista of mad conflict.

To the eye, there was little design or purpose in the struggle. The star-decked vault of space near the gigantic ball of suns of Hercules Cluster seemed pricked with tiny flares. Tiny flares, shining forth swiftly and as swiftly vanishing! And each of those flares was the bursting of an atomic broadside far in space!

Gordon could not completely visualize that awful battle. This warfare of the far future was too strange for him to supply from experience the whole meaning of that dance of brilliant death-flares between the stars. This warfare, in which ships far, far apart groped for each other with radar beams and fired their mighty atom-guns by instant mechanical computation, seemed alien and unearthly to him.

The pattern of the battle he witnessed began slowly to emerge. The will-o'-the-wisp dance of flares was moving slowly back toward the titanic sun-swarm of the Cluster. The battle-line was crackling and sparkling north and northwest of the great sun-cluster now.

'They're pulling back, as Giron ordered!' Hull Burrel exclaimed. 'Good God, half the Barons' fleet must be destroyed by now.'

Val Marlann, captain of the Ethne, was like a caged tiger as he paced back and forth between the stereos.

'Look at what's happening to Giron's main fleet retreating from Rigel!' he said hoarsely. 'They're hammering it like mad now. Our losses must be tremendous!'

The stereo at which he glared showed Gordon the similar, bigger whirl of death-flares withdrawing westward from Rigel.

He thought numbly that it was as well he couldn't visualize this awful Armageddon of the galaxy as the others could. It might well shake his nerve disastrously, and he had to keep cool now.

'How long before we'll rendezvous with Giron's fleet and the Barons'?' he cried to Val Marlann.

'Twelve hours, at least,' said the other tautly. 'And God knows if there'll be any of the Barons' ships left to join up.'

'Curse Shorr Kan and his fanatics!' swore Hull, his craggy face crimson with passion. 'All these years, they've been building ships and devising new weapons for this war of conquest!'

Gordon went back across the room, to the control-board of the Disrupter apparatus. For the hundredth time since leaving Throon, he rehearsed the method of releasing the mysterious force.