The Star Kings

the Empire fleet drew up just outside that vast, hazy gloom.

'If we go in after them, we might run into ambushes,' Giron declared. 'The place is rotten with navigational perils that we know nothing about.'

Gordon proposed, 'We'll demand their surrender, give them an ultimatum.'

'Shorr Kan will not surrender!' Hull Burrel warned.

But Gordon had them beam a stereo-cast into the Cloud toward Thallarna, and spoke by it.

'To the Government of the League of Dark Worlds! We offer you a chance to surrender. Give up and disarm under our directions and we promise that no one will suffer except those criminals who led you into this aggression.

'But refuse, and we'll turn loose the Disruptor upon the whole Cloud! We'll blot this place forever from the galaxy!'

Val Marlann looked at him, appalled. 'You'd do that? But good God-'

'I wouldn't dare do that!' Gordon answered. 'I'll never turn loose the Disruptor again. But they've felt its power and may be bluffed by it.'

There came no answer to their stereo-message. Again, after an hour, he repeated it.

Again, no answer. Then finally, after another wait, Giron's stern voice came.

'It seems that we'll have to go in there, Prince Zarth.'

'No, wait,' cried Hull Burrel. 'A message is coming through from Thallarna!'

In the stereo had appeared a group of wild-looking Cloud-men, some of them wounded, in a room of Shorr Kan's palace.

'We agree to your terms, Prince Zarth!' their spokesman said hoarsely. 'Our ships will be docked and disarmed immediately. You will be able to enter in a few hours.'

'It could be a trick!' Val Marlann rasped. 'It would give Shorr Kan time to lay traps for us.'

The Cloud-man in the stereo shook his head. 'Shorr Kan's disastrous tyranny is overthrown. When he refused to surrender, we rose in rebellion against him. I can prove that by letting you see him. He is dying.'

The telestereo switched its scene abruptly to another room of the palace. There before them in image sat Shorr Kan.

He sat in the chair in his austere little room from which he had directed his mighty attempt to conquer the galaxy. Armed Cloud-men were around him. His face was marble-white and there was a blasted, blackened wound in his side. His dulling eyes looked at them out of the stereo, and then cleared for a moment as they rested on Gordon. And then Shorr Kan grinned weakly.

'You win,' he told Gordon. 'I never thought you'd dare loose the Disruptor. Fool's luck, that you didn't destroy yourself with it-'

He choked, then went on. 'Devil of a way for me to end up, isn't it? But I'm not complaining. I had one life and I used it to the limit. You're the same way at bottom, that's why I liked you.'

Shorr Kan's dark head sagged, his voice trailed to a whisper. 'Maybe I'm a throwback to your world, Gordon? Born out of my time? Maybe-'

He was dead with the words, they knew by the way his strong figure slumped forward across the desk.

'What was he talking about to you, Prince Zarth?' asked Hull Burrel puzzledly. 'I couldn't understand it.'

Gordon felt a queer, sharp emotion. Life was unpredictable. There was no reason why he should have liked Shorr Kan. But he knew now that he had.

Val Marlann and the other officers of the Ethne were exultant.

'It's victory! We've wiped out the menace of the League forever!'

The ship was in uproar. And they knew that that wild exultation of relief was spreading through their whole fleet.

Two hours later, Giron began moving his occupation forces inside the Cloud, on radar beams projected from Thallarna. Half his ships would remain on guard outside, in case of treachery.

'But there's no doubt now that they've actually surrendered,' he told Gordon. 'The advance ships I sent in there report that every League warship is already docked and being disarmed.'

He added feelingly, 'I'll leave an escort of warships for the Ethne. I know you'll be wanting to return to Throon now.'

Gordon told him, 'We don't need any escort. Val Marlann, you can start at once.'

The Ethne set out on the long journey back across the galaxy toward Canopus. But after a half-hour, Gordon gave new orders.

'Head for Sol, not Canopus. Our destination is Earth.' Hull Burrel, amazed, protested. 'But Prince Zarth, all Throon will be waiting for you to return! The whole Empire, everyone, will be mad with joy by this time, waiting to welcome you!'

Gordon shook his head dully. 'I am not going to Throon now. Take me to Earth.'

They looked at him puzzledly, wonderingly. But Val Marlann gave the order and the ship changed its course slightly and headed for the far-distant yellow spark of Sol.

For hours, as the Ethne flew on toward the north, Gordon remained sitting and staring broodingly from the windows, sunk in a strange, tired daze.

He was going back at last to Earth, to his own time and his own world, to his own body. Only now at last could he keep his pledge to Zarth Arn.

He looked out at the supernally brilliant stars of the galaxy. Far, far in the west now lay Canopus' glittering beacon. He thought of Throon, of the rejoicing millions there.

'All that is over for me now,' he told himself dully. 'Over forever.'

He thought of Lianna, and that blind wave of heartbreak rose again in his mind. That, too, was over for him forever.

Hull Burrel came and told him. 'The whole Empire, the whole galaxy, is ringing with your praises, Prince Zarth! Must you go to Earth now when they are waiting for you?'

'Yes, I must,' Gordon insisted, and the big Antarian perplexedly left him.

He dozed, and woke, and dozed again. Time seemed scarcely now to have any meaning. How many days was it before the familiar yellow disk of Sol loomed bright ahead of the ship?

Down toward green old Earth slanted the Ethne, toward the sunlit eastern hemisphere.

'You'll land at my laboratory in the mountains-Hull knows the place,' said Gordon.

The tower there in the ageless, frosty Himalayas looked the same as when he had left it-how long ago it seemed! The Ethne landed softly on the little plateau.

Gordon faced his puzzled friends. 'I am going into my laboratory for a short time, and I want only Hull Burrel to go with me.'

He hesitated, then added, 'Will you shake hands? You're the best friends and comrades a man ever had.'

'Prince Zarth, that sounds like a farewell!' burst Val Marlann worriedly. 'What are you going to do in there?'

'Nothing is going to happen to me, I promise you,' Gordon said with a little smile. 'I will be coming back out to the ship in a few hours or so.'

They gripped his hand. They stood silently looking after him as he and Hull Burrel stepped out into the frosty, biting air.

In the tower, Gordon led the way up to the glass-walled laboratory where rested the strange instruments of mental science that had been devised by the real Zarth Arn and old Vel Quen.

Gordon went over in his mind what the old scientist had told him about the operation of the telepathic amplifier and the mind-transmitter. He checked the instruments as carefully as he could.

Hull Burrel watched wonderingly, worriedly. Finally, Gordon turned to him.

'Hull, I'll need your help later. I want you to do as I ask even if you don't understand. Will you?'

'You know I'll obey any order you give!' said the big Antarian. 'But I can't help feeling worried.'

'There's no cause to-in a few hours you'll be on your way to Throon again and I'll be with you,' Gordon said. 'Now wait.'

He put the headpiece of the telepathic amplifier on his head. He made sure it was tuned again to Zarth Arn's