Return to the Stars

'Saw Burrel's shackle, and hurry,' said Shorr Kan hoarsely, handing him the hook that was now wet to the hilt.

As Gordon worked, he saw Shorr Kan stoop and tear open the robe of the huddled heap on the floor, but he could not see what the dead H'Harn looked like. He heard a sharp sound from Shorr Kan.

The shackle parted. Shorr Kan hurried them toward the rear of the hall.

'This way. I don't think we have all the time in the world.'

The little spaceport beyond the dead town lay dark and silent under the stars, when they reached it. Shorr Kan led them toward one small ship that lay apart from the others. Its black bulk loomed before them, and to Gordon it seemed oddly strange in outline, with thick vanes sprouting from its sides such as he had seen on no other starship.

'It's the ship in which the four H'Harn agents came to this galaxy,' said Shorr Kan, fumbling with the lock- catch. 'The other three went to Teyn and other worlds, but the ship was left here with Susurr. From what I've heard, it's far faster than any ship we know of, so if we get away in it, they'll never catch us.'

When they had got inside and the hooded lights in the control-bridge were on, Hull Burrel uttered a grunt of astonishment.

'Well, don't stand there,' said Shorr Kan impatiently. 'You're the professional spaceman here. Get busy and take us the devil out of here.'

'I never saw a control-board like this,' Hull objected. 'Some of those controls don't seem to mean a thing. They...'

'Some of the controls are familiar to you, aren't they?'

'Yes, but...'

'Then use the ones you know, but take off!'

Hull Burrel, his professional soul outraged by the sloppiness of such a suggestion, nevertheless took the pilot chair. It was far too small for him and his knees came almost to his chin as he poked and prodded and pulled.

The little ship went away from Aar very fast, bursting out of the darkness of the night side of the planet into the brilliant sun.

'What course?' demanded the Antarian.

Shorr Kan gave him the bearings. Hull Burrel cautiously set them up, swearing at the unfamiliarity of the calibrations.

'I'm not setting a course, I'm just making an educated guess,' he grumbled. 'We'll likely pile up in the drift somewhere.'

Gordon watched the lonely stars ahead, as they rushed, and his shakiness left him.

'We're heading out toward the Rim of the galaxy?' he asked, and Shorr Kan nodded. 'Where will we swing back in, then?'

'We won't swing back in,' answered Shorr Kan calmly. 'We're going right on.'

Hull swung around. 'What do you mean? There's nothing but intergalactic space beyond... nothing!'

'You forget,' reminded Shorr Kan. 'There are the Magellanic Clouds... the worlds of the H'Harn.'

'For God's sake, why would we want to go there?'

Shorr Kan laughed. 'I feared this would be a shock to you. But I have your word, remember. It stands thus: The H'Harn are preparing something out there, with which to strike at our galaxy. So... we go out on a reconnaissance. We find out what it is. And we bring back that knowledge so the star-kings can prepare against the H'Harn. After all... isn't that the mission on which you two came?'

'But why should you risk your neck to save the star-kingdoms?' Gordon demanded.

Shorr Kan shrugged. 'The reason is simple. I couldn't stay much longer with the counts without betraying my suspicions of their H'Harn allies... and the moment any H'Harn saw that in my mind, I'd be dead. But I couldn't go back to the star-kingdoms... they'd hang me for certain when they found out I was still living.'

Gordon was beginning to see the light.

'But,' Shorr Kan continued, 'if I risk all to go to the Magellanic Clouds and come back with a warning of the H'Harn plans, the past will be forgotten. I'll be a hero, and you don't hang heroes. I gamble that I'll be on a throne again in a year.'

Hull Burrel appealed to Gordon. 'Do we let him take advantage of the fact that we've given our word to do this?'

Gordon answered thoughtfully, 'We do. Hull. Not just when he reminds us that this is our mission.'

Hull Burrel uttered a loud curse. 'You're a fool, John Gordon, but I'll go along with it. I've lived long enough anyway, so I might as well commit suicide going on an impossible mission with a damned fool and the biggest villain in the galaxy!'

13

The ship flew at incredible speed through the Marches of Outer Space. Everywhere about it were suns, flaming suns and ashen, dying stars and dark cindery hulks, with their planets and moons and dangerous trailing shoals of drift. A cosmic jungle, far beyond the demesne of the great star-kingdoms; a jungle not to be invaded without due caution.

Yet the men inside the ship were not worried by their demented progress.

John Gordon, at the moment, was too shaken to be worried about anything. He stared out through the after view-screen, at the wilderness in which the orange sun of Aar had already vanished, still not believing their escape. He was only faintly aware that the chair he sat in was too small for his muscular, stocky frame, or that the ceiling curve of the control-room was much too close over his head. Or that the metal surfaces around him were of a sickly and unpleasant blue, like the skin of a drowned man.

After a while he turned from the view-screen to look at Shorr Kan, who looked back at him; the dark, well- remembered face with the lean bones and sardonic eyebrows. Shorr Kan grinned.

'Yes we did,' he said. 'We made it. Thanks to me.'

Gordon let out a long breath and passed his hand over his own face, rubbing the angles of it like a sleeper waking. 'Yes,' he said, 'I guess we did. Hull?'

Hull Burrel looked perfectly placid and content now, even though he was perched in that ridiculously small chair. 'Coping,' he said. 'At least, for now.'

It was only then that Gordon began to get the perspective. The control-room was like the inside of a polished egg, made to hold much smaller birds than these.

'Well,' said Shorr Ran, 'the H'Harn are a small race. No reason for them to build for our comfort.'

Hull, who towered even over Shorr Kan, lifted his head, bumped it on some overhanging equipment, and retracted it, swearing. 'They didn't have to overdo it,' he said. 'And I wish they hadn't been quite so damned cryptic about their controls.' He continued to poke and prod cautiously at the unintelligible knobs and dials, marked with alien symbols. If Hull Burrel could figure those out, Gordon thought, he was even better than the best spaceman in the galaxy.

And he had better figure them out, Gordon thought, because all our precious necks depend on it.

Shorr Kan was watching the forward view-screen now, the sub-electronic mirror that converted mass impulses from the normal space they were tearing through, literally, at FTL+, into images the eye could see. He appeared fascinated by what was pictured there.

'At a guess,' he said, 'what would you estimate our speed to be?'

Gordon looked at the screen. The stars, dead and living, and the banks of drift, all the tumbled splendor of the Marches, seemed to him to be almost stationary.

'We don't seem to be moving at all,' he said. 'Or at least, not much.'

But Hull was staring at the screen as well, his copper-colored face rapt. 'We're moving all right,' he said. 'No ship in our galaxy can move as fast as this.' He answered Shorr Kan's question. 'No, I couldn't guess. I'd have to have another point of reference and...'

Shorr Kan said, 'Is it safe, in this smother?'