She smiled at him. «It is your doing, Martin,» she said. «You came from the past just to bring us hope. It’s enough to make one believe in destiny.» She took his hand. «But of course it’s not the hope you wanted. This won’t get you back home.»
«It doesn’t matter,» he said.
«It does, Martin. But—may I say it? I’m still glad of it. Not only for the sake of the Empire, but—»
A voice rattled over the bridge communicator: «Ultrawave to bridge. The enemy is sending us a message, your majesty. Shall I send it up to you?»
«Of course.» Taury switched on the bridge screen.
A face leaped into it, strong and proud and ruthless, the Sunburst shining in the green hair. «Greeting, Taury of Sol,» said the Anvardian. «I am Ruulthan, Emperor of the Galaxy.»
«I know who you are,» said Taury thinly, «but I don’t recognize your assumed title.»
«Our detectors report your approach with a fleet approximately one-tenth the size of ours. You have one Supernova ship, of course, but so do we. Unless you wish to come to terms, it will mean annihilation.»
«What are your terms?»
«Surrender, execution of the criminals who led the attacks on Anvardian planets, and your own pledge of allegiance to me as Galactic Emperor.» The voice was clipped, steel-hard.
Taury turned away in disgust. Saunders told Ruulthan in explicit language what to do with his terms, and then cut off the screen.
Taury gestured to the newly installed time-drive controls. «Take them, Martin,» she said. «They’re yours, really.» She put her hands in his and looked at him with serious gray eyes. «And if we should fail in this—good-bye, Martin.»
«Good-bye,» he said thickly.
He wrenched himself over the panel and sat down before its few dials. Here goes nothing!
He waved one hand, and Hunda cut off the hyperdrive. At low intrinsic velocity, the Vengeance hung in space while the invisible ships of her fleet flashed past toward the oncoming Anvardi.
Slowly then, Saunders brought down the time-drive switch. And the ship roared with power, atomic energy flowed into the mighty circuits which they had built to carry her huge mass through time—the lights dimmed, the giant machine throbbed and pulsed, and a featureless grayness swirled beyond the ports.
He took her back three days. They lay in empty space, the Anvardi were still fantastic distances away. His eyes strayed to the brilliant yellow spark of Sol. Right there, this minute, he was sweating his heart out installing the time projector which had just carried him back…
Bur no, that was meaningless, simultaneity was arbitrary. And there was a job to do right now.
The chief astrogator’s voice came with a torrent of figures. They had to find the exact position in which the Anvardian flagship would be in precisely seventy-two hours. Hunda rang the signals to the robots in the engine room, and slowly, ponderously, the Vengeance slid across five million miles of space.
«All set,» said Hunda. «Let’s go!»
Saunders smiled, a mirthless skinning of teeth, and threw his main switch in reverse. Three days forward in time…
To lie alongside the Anvardian dreadnought! Frantically Hunda threw the hyperdrive back in, matching translight velocities. They could see the ship now, it loomed like a metal mountain against the stars. And every gun in the Vengeance cut loose!
Vortex cannon—blasters—atomic shells and torpedoes—gravity snatchers—all the hell which had ever been brewed in the tortured centuries of history vomited against the screens of the Anvardian flagship.
Under that monstrous barrage, filling space with raving energy till it seemed its very structure must boil, the screens went down, a flare of light searing like another nova. And through the solid matter of her hull those weapons bored, cutting, blasting, disintegrating. Steel boiled into vapor, into atoms, into pure devouring energy that turned on the remaining solid material. Through and through the hull that fury raged, a waste of flame that left not even ash in its track.
And now the rest of the Imperial fleet drove against the Anvardi. Assaulted from outside, with a devouring monster in its very midst, the Anvardian fleet lost the offensive, recoiled and broke up into desperately fighting units. War snarled between the silent white stars.
Still the Anvardi fought, hurling themselves against the ranks of the Imperials, wrecking ships and slaughtering men even as they went down. They still had the numbers, if not the organization, and they had the same weapons and the same bitter courage of their foes.
The bridge of the Vengeance shook and roared with the shock of battle. The lights darkened, flickered back, dimmed again. The riven air was sharp with ozone, and the intolerable energies loosed made her interior a furnace. Reports clattered over the communicator: «—Number Three screen down—Compartment Number Five doesn’t answer—Vortex turret Five Hundred Thirty Seven out of action—»
Still she fought, still she fought, hurling metal and energy in an unending storm, raging and rampaging among the ships of the Anvardi. Saunders found himself manning a gun, shooting out at vessels he couldn’t see, getting his aim by sweat-blinded glances at the instruments—and the hours dragged away in flame and smoke and racking thunder…»
«They’re fleeing!»
The exuberant shout rang through every remaining compartment of the huge old ship. Victory, victory, victory—she had not heard such cheering for five thousand weary years.
Saunders staggered drunkenly back onto the bridge. He could see the scattered units of the Anvardi now that he was behind them, exploding out into the Galaxy in wild search of refuge, hounded and harried by the vengeful Imperial fleet.
And now the Dreamer stood up, and suddenly he was not a stump-legged little monster but a living god whose awful thought leaped across space, faster than light, to bound and roar through the skulls of the barbarians. Saunders fell to the floor under the impact of that mighty shout, he lay numbly staring at the impassive stars while the great command rang in his shuddering brain:
«Soldiers of the Anvardi, your false emperor is dead and Taury the Red, Empress of the Galaxy, has the victory. You have seen her power. Do not resist it longer, for it is unstoppable.
«Lay down your arms. Surrender to the mercy of the Imperium. We pledge you amnesty and safe-conduct. And bear this word back to your planets:
«Taury the Red calls on all the chiefs of the Anvardian Confederacy to pledge fealty to her and aid her in restoring the Galactic Empire!»
Chapter 6
Flight Without End
They stood on a balcony of Brontothor and looked again at old Earth for the first time in almost a year and the last time, perhaps, in their lives.
It was strange to Saunders, this standing again on the planet which had borne him after those months in the many and alien worlds of a Galaxy huger than he could really imagine. There was an odd little tug at his heart, for all the bright hope of the future. He was saying good-bye to Eve’s world.
But Eve was gone, she was part of a past forty-eight thousand years dead, and he had seen those years rise and die, his one year of personal time was filled and stretched by the vision of history until Eve was a remote, lovely dream. God keep her, wherever her soul had wandered in these millennia—God grant she had had a happy life—but as for him, he had his own life to live, and a mightier task at hand than he had ever conceived.