Return to the Stars

voiced the objection. He looked down the table at Gordon and then turned to Lianna.

He said, 'It is no concern of ours if you have favorites, Highness. But it is our concern if you let them meddle in statecraft. No.'

Lianna stood up, her eyes blazing. The old man did not flinch from her anger. But before she could speak, Korkhann interrupted so smoothly and swiftly that it hardly seemed like an interruption at all.

'With your permission, Highness, I would like to answer that,' he said. He looked around the hostile quartet of faces. 'You all know, I think, that I have certain powers and that I have not often been wrong in stating a fact.'

'Get to it, Korkhann,' growled the old councilor.

'Very well.' Korkhann's wing unfolded and his clawed hand rested on Gordon's shoulder. 'I will say this, as a fact. No one... I say, no one, in the whole galaxy, would have as much influence in the councils of the Empire than this Earthman, John Gordon.'

Gordon looked up at him, astounded. 'So you have been mind-reading?' he muttered. 'Or did she tell you...'

Korkhann ignored him, and looked steadily at the councilors. In their faces, hostility faded into puzzlement.

'But why... how?' demanded Abro.

Korkhann did the odd shrugging movement that made his feathers ruffle as in a wind.

'I have given you the fact. I will not explain.'

They stared, frowning and curious, at Gordon, until he was sorely tempted to shout at them, 'Because for a time I was your emperor!' But he did not, and finally old Hastus Nor rumbled, 'If Korkhann says so, it must be true, even though...' He stopped, then went on decisively. 'Let the man Gordon go.'

Gordon said softly, 'Thank you. But has anyone asked me whether I want to go?'

He was mad clear through at being treated like a pawn, being argued over and challenged and defended, and he would have gone on to say so, but Lianna spoke very firmly.

'Gentlemen, the council is ended.'

They went out with no more said, and when they had gone, Lianna came toward Gordon.

'Why did you say that?' she asked. 'You want to go.'

'Why should I?'

'Don't lie,' she said. 'I saw the eagerness in your face when it was suggested that you go to Throon.'

She looked at him, and he saw the pain and doubt in her clear eyes.

'For a little while, after death had just passed us by at Teyn, I thought we had come closer,' she said. 'I thought it would be as it had been before with us...'

'So did I.'

'But I was wrong. It's not I you care about.'

'That,' said Gordon angrily, 'is a fine thing to say to a man who risked his life to get here to you. All I know is, you treat me like a...'

She did not let him finish. 'Did you risk your life to reach me, John Gordon? Was it I you remembered and longed for, back in that distant age of yours, or was it the adventure, the starships, all that our age has that yours had not, that you really longed to return to?'

There was just enough truth in the accusation to take the anger out of Gordon, and the moment of half-guilt he felt must have shown on his face, for Lianna, looking up at him, smiled a white and bitter smile.

'I thought so,' she said, and turned away. 'Go to Throon, then, and be damned.'

8

All the way to Canopus, Gordon spent his waking time in the bridge of the fast scout. Through the windows that were not really windows, he watched the star-groups rise up and change and fall behind. After the arid years on little Earth, he could not get enough of stars.

The titanic jumble of suns that was Hercules Cluster, the seat of power of those mighty barons who looked on star-kings as mere equals, dropped past them to the west. The vast mass of faintly glowing drift that was known as the Deneb Shoals, they skirted. They plunged on and now they were passing through the space where, that other time, the space-fleets of the Empire and its allies had fought out their final Armageddon with the League of the Dark Worlds.

Gordon looked and dreamed. Far, far off southward lay the sprawling blotch of deeper darkness that was the Cloud, from which the armadas of the Dark Worlds had poured in their prideful menace. He remembered Thallarna and he remembered Shorr Kan, the master of the League, and how he had surrendered to defeat.

'You think too much of past things and not enough of the present ones,' said Korkhann, watching him shrewdly.

Gordon smiled. 'If you know as much about me as I think you know, can you blame me? I was an impostor. I hardly knew what I was doing in that battle, but I was there, and who could forget that?'

'Power is a heady wine,' said Korkhann. 'You had it once, the power of a universe in your hand. Do you long for it again?'

'No,' said Gordon, startled by the echo of Lianna's accusation. 'I was scared to death of it when I had it.'

'Were you, John Gordon?'

Before Gordon could frame an irritated answer to that, Korkhann had gone away from the bridge.

His irritation faded and was forgotten as, in the time that followed, the heart-worlds of the mighty Mid- Galactic Empire brightened far ahead.

The stunning blue-white flare of Canopus was arrogant in its hugeness and intensity. And as the scout rushed on, there came into view the planets that circled that truly royal sun. Gordon's eyes clung to one of those planets, a gray, cloud-wrapped sphere. Throon...

He was remembering how he had first seen it, amazed and bewildered by this future universe, playing a part for which he had no preparation, a pawn in the hands of cosmic political powers whose purposes he could not dream.

Was he anything more than that right now? Wasn't he brought here to Throon so that Korkhann might exploit his supposed influence with Jhal Arn, sovereign of the Empire? Yes, he thought, it's true. But it's not just for Fomalhaut policies, it's for Lianna and against whatever mysterious, menacing things was hatching out in the Marches that threatened her most immediately.

The planet rose up to meet him, its gray-green bulk immense, the sprawling continents starred with glittering metropoli that flared in the white sunlight. Then a mighty ocean, and then, far head, what his gaze leaped to meet, the dazzling radiance that almost blinded the eye, the Glass Mountains of smooth silicates flinging back the sunset light in shaking spears and fans and banners of glory. They went over that radiance, through it, and ahead of them there loomed the cluster of fairylike glass towers that was the greatest capital of the galaxy.

Over its starport, the traffic was of tremendous volume. Gordon had forgotten how many ships came and went to this center of the Empire. Clocked smoothly in by the director-computers, the bulky arrogant liners from Deneb and Aldebaran and Sol came down to the inport like a parade of giants, while the smaller craft poured like a cataract of shining midges. But their own craft, being official, skirted all this and descended toward the naval port, where the giant warships of the Empire loomed like dark thunderclouds above their docks.

An hour later, they stood in the huge building that was the seat of dynasty and the administrative center of the Empire.

Zarth Arn came to meet them, a tall figure, his dark face breaking into a smile and then becoming serious as he took Gordon's hand.

'I could wish your return to Throon had been on another occasion than this,' he said. 'Yes, my brother knows why you have come. You're not the first on this errand.'

Korkhann asked quickly, 'The others are worried about the Marches, Highness?'