The Star Kings

'But what does that force do when I release it?' he wondered again, tensely. 'Does it act as a giant beam of lethal waves, or a zone of annihilation for solid matter?'

Vain speculation! It could hardly be those things. Brenn Bir would not have left solemn warning that it could destroy the galaxy, if it were!

Hours of awful strain passed as the Ethne's little squadron drew nearer the scene of the titan struggle. Every hour had seen the position of the Empire's forces growing worse.

Giron, retreating southwestward to join the battered Hercules fleet still fighting off the Cluster, had been Joined finally by the Lyra, Polaris and Cygnus fleets near the Ursa Nebula.

The Empire commander had turned on the pursuing League armada and had fought savagely there for two hours, a staggering rearguard action that had involved both forces in the glowing Nebula.

Then Gordon heard Giron ordering the action broken off. The order, in secret scrambler-code like all naval messages, came from their own stereos.

'Captain Sandrell, Lyra Division-pull out of the Nebula! The enemy is forcing a column between you and the Cygnus Division!'

The Lyra commander's desperate answer flashed. 'Their phantoms have piled up the head of our column. But I'll-'

The message was abruptly interrupted, the stereo going dark. Gordon heard Giron vainly calling Sandrell, with no response.

'It's what happens over and over!' raged Hull Burrel. 'An Empire ship reports phantoms near, and then suddenly its report breaks off and the ship drifts silent and disabled!'

'Shorr Kan's new weapon!' gritted Val Marlann: 'If we only had an idea what it is!'

Gordon suddenly remembered what Shorr Kan had told him, when he had boasted of that weapon in Thallarna.

'-it's a weapon that can strike down enemy warships from inside them!'

Gordon repeated that to the others and cried, 'Maybe I'm crazy but it seems to me the only way they could strike down a ship from inside is by getting a force-beam of some kind in on the ship's own stereo beams! Every ship that has been stricken has been stereoing at the time!'

'Hull, it could be!' cried Val Marlann. 'If they can tap onto our stereos and use them as carrier-beams right into our own ships-'

He sprang to the stereo and hastily called Giron and told him their suspicion.

'If you use squirt transmission on our scrambler code it may baffle their new weapon!' Val Marlann concluded. 'They won't be able to get a tap on our beams in time. And keep damper-equipment in your stereo-rooms in case they do get through.'

Giron nodded understandingly. 'We'll try it. I'll order all our ships to use only momentary transmission, and assemble messages from the squirts on recorders.'

Val Marlann ordered men with 'dampers,' the generators of blanketing electric fields that could smother dangerous radiation, to stand by near their own stereos.

Already, the Empire ships were obeying the order and were 'squirting' their messages in bursts of a few seconds each.

'It's helping-far fewer of our ships are being disabled now!' Giron reported. 'But we've been badly battered and the Baron's fleet is just a remnant. Shall we fall back south into the Cluster?'

'No!' Gordon cried. 'We daren't use the Disrupter inside the Cluster. You must hold them near Deneb.'

'We'll try,' Giron said grimly. 'But unless you get here in the next four hours, there'll not be many of us left to hold.'

'Four hours?' sweated Val Marlann. 'I don't know if we can! The Ethne's turbines are running on overload now!'

As the Ethne's small squadron rushed on southward toward the white beacon of Deneb, the great battle east of the star was reeling back toward it.

Death-dance of flaring, falling star-ships moved steadily westward through the galaxy spaces! Up from the south, the battered remnants of the Barons' valiant fleet was coming to join with the Empire and Kingdoms' fleets for the final struggle.

Armageddon of the galaxy, in truth! For now the triumphant two main forces of the Cloud were joining together in the east and rushing forward in their final overwhelming attack.

Gordon saw in the telestereo and radar screens this climactic struggle which the Ethne had almost reached.

'A half hour more-we might make it, we might!' muttered Val Marlann through stiff lips.

The watch officer at the main radar screen suddenly yelled. 'Phantoms on our port side!'

Things happened then with rapidity that bewildered John Gordon. Even as he glimpsed the Cloud phantom- cruisers suddenly unmasking in the radar screen, there was a titan flare in space to their left.

'One of our escort gone!' cried Hull Burrel. 'Ah!'

The guns of the Ethne, triggered by mechanical computers swifter than any human mind could be, were going off thunderously.

Space around them flashed blinding bright with the explosion of heavy atom-shells which barely missed them. Two distant flares burgeoned up and died, an instant later.

'We got two of them!' Hull cried. 'The rest have darked out and they won't dare come out of dark-out again.'

Giron's voice came from the stereo, the 'squirt' transmission being pieced together by recorders to make a normal message.

'Prince Zarth, the League armada is flanking us and within the hour they'll cut us to pieces!'

Gordon cried answer. 'You've got to hold on a little longer, until-'

At that instant, in the stereo-image, Giron vanished and was replaced by pallid, black-uniformed men who raised heavy rod-shaped weapons in quick aim.

'Cloud-men! Those League phantoms have tapped our beam and are using Shorr Kan's new weapon!' screeched Burrel.

A bolt of ragged blue lightning shot from the rod-like weapon of the foremost Cloud-man in the stereo. That flash of force shot over Gordon's head and tore through the metal wall.

Invasion of the ship by stereo-images! Images that could destroy them, by that blue bolt that used the stereo-beam as carrier!

It lasted but a few seconds, then the 'squirt' switch functioned and the Cloud-men images and their weapons disappeared.

'So that's how they do it!' cried Burrel. 'No wonder they got half our ships with it before we found out about it!'

'Turn on those dampers, quick!' ordered Val Marlann. 'We're likely to get another burst from the stereo any moment!'

Gordon felt the hair on his neck bristling as the Ethne rushed now into the zone of battle itself. An awful moment was approaching.

Giron had the Empire and Kingdom ships massed in a short defensive line with its left flank pinned on Deneb's great, glaring white mass. The heavier columns of the League fleets were pressing it in a crackling fire of flaring ships, seeking to roll up the right flank.

Space seemed an inferno of dying ships, of flames dancing between the stars, as the Ethne fought forward to the front of the battle. Its own guns were thundering at the Cloud phantoms that were hanging to it steadily, repeatedly emerging from dark-out to attack.

'Giron, we're here!' Gordon called. 'Now spread your line out thinner and withdraw at full speed.'

'If we do that, the League fleets will bunch together and tear through our thinner line like paper!' protested Giron.

'That's just what I want, to bunch the League ships as much as possible!' Gordon replied. 'Quick, we'll-'

Again, the stereo-image of Giron suddenly was replaced by a Cloud-man with the rod-shaped weapon.

The weapon loosed a blue bolt-but the bolt died, smothered by the fields of the 'dampers.' Then the 'squirt' switch functioned again to cut the stereo.