To his surprise, Abro, who disliked him intensely, nodded thoughtful approval. 'An excellent move...
When the others had gone, Lianna looked at Gordon with a faint smile.
'That was Shorr Kan's suggestion, wasn't it?'
Hours later, he sat with her on a terrace high on the vast wall of the palace. Soft darkness was about them, and the heavy scent of flowers. But there was no quiet in the great city that lay below them in the night.
The city flared with lights. Armed bodies of men were moving with swift precision, to and fro. Missile batteries were being set up in the palace grounds. In the distance, where the spaceport lay, huge, tubby space- monitors were rising up growling into the darkness to take their places in the network of defenses around the throne-world of Fomalhaut.
Gordon looked up at the starry sky. Out there two great star-fleets were drawing fatefully together, and what happened when they met would probably seal the fate of this whole star-kingdom, and possibly many more besides. There had been no further word from Hercules, and if the barons were moving to help, they were keeping it secret from everyone.
His mind reached farther out, beyond the edge of the galaxy, where the mighty Empire fleet would be searching for the H'Harn force that might or might not be hidden there. If they could find it, the Disrupter would unloose its cosmic power again and the threat from Magellan would disappear. But would they find it? Gordon felt a deep hopelessness, an almost prophetic certainty that they would not. The H'Harn would not have returned without the strongest kind of armor, offensive and defensive.
They would not have forgotten how they faced the Disrupter before.
It seemed that Lianna too was thinking of the H'Harn. She had been silent for a long time, but when she spoke it was about them.
'If Narath does invade, will he have any of those creatures with him?'
'I feel sure he will have.'
'How can you be so sure?'
Heavily, Gordon explained, 'The H'Harn know that I once operated the Disruptor... that time when my mind was in Zarth Arn's body. They think I could tell them all about it. I can't, of course. I only operated the thing by mechanically following Jhal Arn's instructions. But they think I can, so they want me.'
He felt Lianna shiver, and he knew that she was remembering the stunning mental assault of the H'Harn who had nearly destroyed them at Teyn.
Gordon said somberly, 'A great deal of everything that has happened in the galaxy seems to stem back to that one freakish fact-that I happened to exchange minds with Zarth Arn, one of the three men who knew the secret of the Disruptor. That was why the League of the Dark Worlds kidnapped me, and when that failed, got me... and you, too... to Thallarna.'
He went on, looking out into the clamorous city. 'That one fatal thing was what led the League to attack the Empire... they knew by then that I wasn't really Zarth Arn, and thought I couldn't use the Disruptor. And now the deadliest enemies of all-the H'Harn-they think I can tell them what they want to know about the only weapon that bars them from the galaxy. They won't stop at anything to get their hands on me.'
He shook his head. 'Through that one fatal coincidence, I've been a curse to this whole future time... as Shorr Kan said, the grain of the sand in the machine.'
'No,' said Lianna. She took his hands. 'And even if that were so, the fault is not yours, but Zarth Arn's.' She was silent a moment. Then she said softly, 'I'm glad you came here, John Gordon. Very glad.'
After a while she drew away from him and said, 'I must go down and show myself to the defenders of my world. No, don't come with me. I have to do this alone.'
After she had gone, Gordon sat for a long time looking past the moving lights and the uproar and clamorous confusions of the great city, toward the starry sky. A star-kingdom might fall, Narath might realize his ambition and sit on the throne of Fomalhaut, and he, John Gordon, and Lianna might be sent to their deaths. And that would be a world tragedy as well as a personal one.
But if the H'Harn succeeded, that would be tragedy for the whole galaxy, a catastrophe of cosmic dimensions. Thousands of years before the H'Harn had come from the outer void, bent on conquest, and only the power of the Disruptor, unloosed by Brenn Bir, had driven them back. Out there in the Magellanic Cloud they had brooded all this time, never giving up their purpose, filtering back gradually in secret, plotting with the counts, plotting with Narath Teyn, making ready some tremendous stroke.
Doomsday had come again, after these thousands of years.
21
The starships were fighting, out between the great suns of Austrinus and the Marches of Outer Space. Two fleets of heavy cruisers flashed side by side, and their missile broadsides seemed to light up that whole part of the galaxy with their bursting flares. On the outskirts of this mighty running battle, ghostly jackals on the heels of the tigers, the phantom cruisers hung, emerging from the invisibility of dark-out to loosen their swift volleys and then retreating into invisibility again.
In the screen which Gordon watched, down in the Defense Room of the royal palace of Fomalhaut, the whole flashing struggle seemed almost incomprehensible, reduced as it was to a swarming of electronic fireflies-fluid, swirling, ever shifting. But after a time it became evident that the heavier column of the counts' fleet was pressing hard against the ships of Fomalhaut, pressing them slowly to the west and away from the star and planet they had tried to cover.
Abro's face was glistening with sweat and he muttered oaths and entreaties as he watched.
'Engl's a good man but he just doesn't have enough weight,' he groaned. 'Three to two... and their ratio is increasing. They're pushing our fleet away from Fomalhaut to make clear passage for
And his thick finger stabbed toward the upper right-hand corner of the screen, where a new swarm of radar- dots had made its appearance and was crawling steadily down toward Fomalhaut.
The transports. And somewhere in them would be Narath Teyn, his mad and beautiful face alight with the coming triumph, and with him would be the nonhuman hordes that he had gathered from scores of worlds.
It gave Gordon a feeling of agonized impotence to be forced to wait here and watch the attack come toward them. But if Lianna felt that too, and had no doubt that she did, she permitted no trace of it to show in her white face.
'Still no word from the barons?' she asked, and Korkhann answered, 'No,' and moved his wings with a sighing sound. 'No word from them, and no sign of them, Highness. It seems we must meet this attack alone.'
Abro said bitterly, 'If Engl had only been able to detach enough heavy cruisers, we might have had a chance to turn them back. But I don't think we can prevent a landing now.'
Gordon thought that Shorr Kan had had the right strategy, and it was a pity that Engl either could not or would not follow it.
'That is out of our hands now,' said Lianna, gesturing toward the tremendous battle on the screen. 'We must be ready to defend our world. Come.'
She spoke like a queen and she walked like one as she led the way up through the palace. Along the way, Shorr Kan stepped in beside Gordon. He had not attempted to enter the Defense Room during this crisis, knowing that he would not be allowed. Hull Burrel glared at him and went on, but Gordon paused.
'It's clear enough in all your faces,' said Shorr Kan. 'The Fomalhaut fleet is losing out there, isn't it?'
'It is,' said Gordon, 'and it's being pushed westward, and presently this place will be absolute hell when Narath's transports land.'
Shorr Kan nodded gloomily. 'No doubt of that. Too bad. I've been cracking my brain trying to think of a way to get myself out of this trap...'
Gordon said in mock amazement. 'Why, I thought that since we're all at the end of the string, you would prefer to die nobly, fighting to the last.'
