Return to the Stars

Shorr Kan was a strong man but the big Antarian shook him like a terrier shaking a rat. 'He's got a beautiful idea, surely. He'll march us in as prisoners, and since his escape didn't work he'll claim he never tried it, and he'll throw us to the wolves!'

'Wait a minute,' said Gordon, pulling at Burrel's arm. 'Let him go. Too much depends on this, Hull! Let's talk about it.' But the seeds of suspicion were flourishing in Gordon's own mind, and he looked very coldly at Shorr Kan, as the latter stepped quickly back and away from Hull's reluctantly opened hands.

'It does,' said Gordon, 'sound exactly like the kind of clever double cross you've always been good at.'

'Doesn't it, though,' said Shorr Kan, and smiled. 'And I'll have to admit that I considered doing it just that way.'

Gordon watched him narrowly. 'But you changed your mind?'

'Yes, Gordon, I did.' There was an odd note of patience in his voice now, as though he were explaining something to a very small child. 'I've told you this before and I'll repeat it again. I could stay with the counts and deceive them all down the line, but I cannot deceive the H'Harn, and one stray thought would be the end of me. So I prefer to take my chances at Fomalhaut. It's simple arithmetic.'

'With you, my friend,' said Gordon sourly, 'nothing is simple. That's why I find this difficult to believe... because it is simple.'

'Then let's find something else to pitch it on,' said Shorr Kan brightly. 'Friendship, for example. I've always rather liked you, Gordon. I've said so in the past. Doesn't that count for anything?'

'Oh, my God,' said Hull Burrel softly. 'Here's the biggest scoundrel in the galaxy, and he asks you to believe in him because he likes you. Let me kill him, John Gordon.'

'I'm tempted,' Gordon said. 'But wait a bit.' He paced up and down, trying to force himself to think clearly against the doubts and the agonizing apprehension that filled his mind. Finally he said, 'It comes down to one thing. The only starships that will be coming to this world are the counts' ships. And this is the only possible way we could hope to get one of those ships. We have to gamble, Hull. Give him the stunner.'

Hull Burrel eyed him incredulously.

Gordon said, 'If you can think of another way, tell me.'

Hull stood a moment with his head down like an angry buffalo. Then he swore and handed the weapon to Shorr Kan.

Instantly Shorr Kan leveled the stunner at them.

'Now you are my captives,' he said, smiling. 'Hull was absolutely right, I am going to turn you over as prisoners to the counts.'

Hull's fury went quite beyond reason. He rushed forward bellowing, in the face of the stunner, his hands raised for a killing blow.

Shorr Kan stepped agilely aside and let him blunder past. Then he laughed, a laugh of pure and wicked delight.

'Look at him,' he said. 'Isn't he lovely?' Hull had turned around and was standing uncertainly, his big hands swinging, staring in dumb amazement as Shorr Kan laughed again. 'Sorry, Hull, I had to do it. You were so sure. I didn't have the heart to disappoint you.' He tossed the stunner in the air, caught it again expertly, and shoved it into his belt. 'Come along now. Before we encounter anyone, human or Qhalla, I'll have to bind your hands, but no need for that yet.'

He gave Hull a friendly clap on the back. Hull turned dusky purple, but Gordon could not help grinning a little.

They started out across the rolling plain, headed northward in the direction in which the grotesque Qhalla bands had been hurrying. The sun sank down across the sky, and then as a rosy sunset darkened into twilight, there was a distant flashing and a rolling crack of thunder, thrice repeated in the clear evening, and they saw three shining starships come down.

Two hours later, they stood in the darkness of night and watched a scene that might have been lifted straight out of hell.

16

Red-flaring torches illuminated the crowded streets of what was less a town than a planless huddle of huts and shanties and ramshackle warehouses dumped haphazardly beside a ford of the river. The Qhallas were not civilized enough to need anything more than a meeting place and marketplace, and it was not a very big one. But it was thronged now with thousands of the winged bipeds, shuffling in the dusty lanes with such a press of bodies that the hut walls creaked at their shoulders. The shaking red light picked out their leather wings and glistening reptilian eyes. Their hoarse voices made an incessant squawking din. They made Gordon think of a horde of demons, and they stank beyond belief.

The focus of all this big crowd was the three starships that rested on the plain outside the wretched town. Two of them were big cargo ships whose gleaming sides loomed up far beyond the torchlight, into the darkness. The third ship was much smaller, a fast little cruiser. The Qhalla horde milled between the town and the two bigger ships.

'Transports,' said Shorr Kan. 'The smaller cruiser will be one of the counts directing his end of the operation.'

Hull Burrell said contemptuously, 'That mob couldn't do much against a modern star-world.'

'Ah, but this is only part of it, a very small part,' said Shorr Kan. 'All through the Marches, on wild worlds like this, the same sort of gathering will be going on. All the nonhuman peoples will answer the call of Narath Teyn.'

Remembering how the Gerrn had idolized him, Gordon had no doubt of that.

'The counts' fighting ships will take on Fomalhaut's navy,' Shorr Kan added. 'While they are engaged, the massed transports will go through and land these hordes for a direct assault on the capital.'

The words conjured up a nightmare vision in Gordon's mind, and he felt again an agony of guilt for having left Lianna.

'The Empire is the ally of Fomalhaut,' said Hull Burrel. 'They'll have something to say about it.'

'But this will be a surprise. By the time an Empire fleet can get there, Narath Teyn may sit on the throne of Fomalhaut. It won't be easy then to unseat him.'

Shorr Kan did not go on to voice the inevitable corollary, though it was in all their minds... that Lianna might not then be alive to reclaim her throne, leaving Narath Teyn as the sole and rightful heir.

Gordon demanded harshly, 'Are we just going to stand here and talk about it?'

Shorr Kan looked thoughtfully down from the low hill where they were hidden, above the town.

'If I take you two in as prisoners, I can convince whatever official of the counts is in charge that I'm still Cyn Cryver's ally. But there's another problem.' He indicated the milling, squawking, stinking Qhallas. 'The way they look, and from what I've heard of them, they'd tear us to pieces before we ever reached the ships.'

'On that I believe you,' said Hull. 'They're a wild lot anyway, and they're worked up now to the point of madness.'

Shorr Kan shrugged. 'No use asking for a sticky end like that. We'll just have to wait until we see a better chance of getting through. But I'd better bind your hands now. When the chance does come, we'll have to move fast.'

Gordon submitted to having his hands bound behind his back, though the prospect of being helpless among the Qhallas was not one he relished. He consoled himself with the realization that his hands wouldn't do him any good anyway. But Hull Burrel flatly refused.

'Oh, for God's sake,' snarled Gordon. 'What do you want to do, sit here and die?'

'I think we'll do that anyway,' he muttered, looking at the Qhallas. But he put his hands behind him and let Shorr Kan tie them.

Then they sat in the grass and waited, hoping for some way to open for them to the ships.

The blazing stars of the Marches looked down from the sky. The wind brought the sound of hoarse shouting from where the torches flickered. Gordon smelled the pungent smell of the warm grasses on which they sat, and it