but to kill.'
4
Instantly there was an outcry in the bridge room, of anger and shock. Harn Horva quelled it with one sharp order.
'Quiet! We have no time for that.' He turned again to the screens and studied them, his body taut as a drawn bow. Gordon looked at Lianna. Whatever she felt inside, she was showing nothing to the men but cool self- possession. Gordon began really to be afraid.
'Can't you message Fomalhaut for help?' he asked.
'Too far away. They couldn't possibly get here in time, and in any case our friends ahead there in the drift would attack instantly if they intercepted such a message. Which of course they would.'
Harn Horva straightened, the lines deep at the corners of his mouth. 'I believe our only hope is to turn and run for it. With your permission, Highness...'
'No,' said Lianna, unexpectedly.
Gordon stared at her. So did the captain. She smiled, briefly and without humor.
'There's no need to spare me, Harn Horva, though I thank you for the intent. I know as well as you do that we might outrun their ships, but not their missiles. And the moment we change course, showing that we're aware of the ambush, we'd have a cloud of missiles after us.'
Harn Horva began talking fiercely about evasive action and missile-destroyer batteries, but Lianna was already beside the communications technician.
'I will speak to the Royal ComCenter at Fomalhaut. Make it a normal transmission.'
'Highness!' said the Captain desperately. 'They'll intercept.'
'I want them to,' said Lianna, and Gordon was struck by the look in her eyes. He started to speak but Korkhann forestalled him, his feathers ruffled with emotion.
'Your plan is a bold one, Highness, and sometimes boldness pays. But I urge you to think very carefully before you commit yourself.'
'And all of you as well. I understand that, Korkhann. I have thought. And I can see no other way.' Looking at them all, she explained. 'I will message Fomalhaut that I am going on to visit my cousin Narath Teyn at Marral, for an important conference. Then I propose to do exactly that.'
For a moment there was a stunned silence. Then Gordon said, 'What?'
Lianna continued as though she had not heard him. 'You see what this will do. If it's known that I'm heading for Marral, and anything happens to me on the way, my cousin would certainly get the blame. At the very least it would rouse enough feeling against him so that his hopes of succeeding me would be pretty well ruined. Which stalemates our friends there in the drift. Narath Teyn won't dare let me be killed under circumstances that would shatter all his plans.'
'That's all very fine,' said Gordon, 'but what happens after you get there? You know the man wants to get rid of you, and you're putting yourself squarely in his hands.' He was close to Lianna now, intent only on her and quite aware of the frozen stillness around him. 'No. The captain's idea is better. The chance of escaping may be small but it is a chance. This way...'
Lianna's eyes were very wide, very cool, very gray. She smiled, a small curving of the mouth. 'I thank you for your concern, John Gordon. I have considered all the objections, and this is my decision.' She turned to the technician. 'Fomalhaut, please.'
The technician looked uneasily at Harn Horva, who made a helpless gesture and said, 'Do as Her Highness wishes.' Neither he nor anyone else appeared to notice the coloring of Gordon's face, which was first red and then white. In fact, it was as though Gordon had suddenly become invisible.
Gordon moved forward a step, without quite realizing it Korkhann's fingers closed tightly on his arm, and then more tightly, the sharp talons digging just a little. Gordon stiffened and then forced himself to relax and stand easily. He watched the screens while Lianna made her transmission to Fomalhaut. Nothing happened. The dark drift ahead remained quiescent, concerned with its own cold and ancient affairs which had nothing to do with humanity. The thought crossed his mind that Korkhann might have invented the lurking ships and the death-wish.
'But see here,' whispered Korkhann's voice beside him. The clawed fingers pointed to the hot-spot screens and the vagrant sparks that glittered there. 'Each spark is a ship's generator. The drift moves. Nothing is ever still in space. As the drift moves, so must the ships, and there scanners can see where radar is as good as blind.'
'Korkhann,' said Gordon softly, 'my friend, you make me just the least small bit nervous.'
'You'll get used to it. And don't forget... I am your friend.'
Lianna finished her message, spoke briefly to the captain, and left the bridge. Gordon followed with Korkhann. Once below, Lianna said pleasantly, 'Will you excuse us, Korkhann?'
Korkhann bowed and strode away down the passage on his long thin legs. Lianna flung open the door of the lounge without waiting for Gordon to do it for her. When they were inside and the door closed again, she turned and faced him.
'You must never,' she said, 'question my judgment or interfere with my orders in public.'
Gordon looked at her. 'How about in private? Or are you ruler in the bedroom, too?'
Now it was her turn to redden. 'It may be hard for you to understand. You come from a different age, a different culture.'
'I do indeed. And I will tell you something. I will not give up my right to say what I think.' She opened her mouth, and he raised his voice, not much, but there was a note in it that held her silent. 'Furthermore, when I speak as a friend, as a man who loves you and is concerned only for your safety, I will not be publicly slapped in the face for it.' His eyes were as steady as hers, and as hot. 'I'm beginning to wonder, Lianna. Perhaps you'd do better with someone who isn't such a lout about protocol.'
'Please try to understand! I have obligations above and beyond my personal feelings. I have a kingdom I must worry about.'
'I do understand,' Gordon said. 'I once had an empire to worry about, remember? Good night.'
He left her standing. Out in the passage, in spite of his anger, he could not help smiling. He wondered how many times she'd been walked out on. Not often enough, he thought.
He went along to his own cabin and lay awake wondering if her harebrained scheme would work, if they would be allowed to pass quietly on their way to Marral, wherever that might be. He half expected every minute to feel the impact of a missile that would blow the cruiser's fragments across half this sector of space. But time went by and nothing happened, and after a while he began to think about Lianna and what might lie ahead.
When he slept at last his dreams were disturbed and sad. In all of them he lost her, sometimes in the midst of a lurid darkness where strange shapes walked, and sometimes in a vast throne room where she walked away from him, and away, and away, gliding backwards with her face toward him and her eyes on his, the cool, remote eyes of a stranger.
The cruiser skirted the edge of the drift, altered course slightly to the southwest and continued on her way unmolested.
The next 'day,' arbitrarily so-called in the ship's log, Korkhann met Gordon in the captain's mess, where he was toying with a gloomy breakfast all alone, having purposely waited until Harn Horva and the other officers would be finished. Lianna always took her breakfast in her private suite.
'So far,' said Korkhann, 'the plan seems to be working.'
'Sure,' said Gordon. 'The victim is walking right into a trap; why shoot her on the way?'
'It might be difficult for Narath Teyn to find a way to kill her on his own world without being accused of it.'
'Do you think so?'
Korkhann shook his head. 'No. Knowing Narath Teyn and his world, and his people, I don't think it will be difficult at all.'
They were silent for a time. Then Gordon said, 'I think you'd better tell me all you can.'
They went into a lounge and Korkhann opened the map panel, where the tiny suns of Fomalhaut Kingdom
