Return to the Stars
by
Edmond Hamilton
Table of Contents
RETURN TO THE STARS
Edmond Hamilton
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
The Star Kings: Copyright ©1949 Edmond Hamilton
A Baen Ebook
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com
ISBN 10: 4-4774-6127-5
ISBN 13: 978-4-4774-6127-4
Cover art by Doug Chaffee
First ebook, February 2008
Electronic version by WebWrights
www.webwrights.com
1
The receptionist opened the inner door. "Will you go right in, Mr. Gordon?"
Gordon said, "Thank you." The door closed softly behind him, and at the same time a man rose from behind a small desk and came toward him. He was a tall man, surprisingly young, with a brisk, friendly, energetic air about him. "Mr. Gordon?" he said, and held out his hand. "I'm Dr. Keogh."
Gordon shook hands and allowed himself to be guided to a chair beside the desk. He sat, looking around the room, looking everywhere but at Keogh, suddenly acutely embarrassed.
Keogh said quietly, "Have you ever consulted a psychiatrist before?"
Gordon shook his head. "I never... uh... felt the need."
"All of us have problems at some time in our lives," said Keogh. "This is nothing to be ashamed of. The important thing is to realize that a problem does exist. Then, and only then, is it possible to do something about it." He smiled. "You see, you have already taken the vital forward step. From here on it should be much easier. Now then." He studied Gordon's card which he had filled in at what seemed unnecessary length. "You're in the insurance business."
"Yes."
"Judging from your position with the firm, you must be quite successful."
"I've worked hard these last few years," Gordon said, in an odd voice.
"Do you like your work?"
"Not particularly."
Keogh was silent a moment or two, frowning at the card. Gordon fought down an overwhelming impulse to run for the door. He knew that he would only have to come back again. He could not carry this question alone any longer. He had to know.
"I see that you're unmarried," Keogh said. "Like to tell me why?"
"That's part of the reason I came here. There was a girl..." He broke off, then said with sudden fierce determination, "I want to find out whether I've been having delusions."
"What kind of delusions?" asked Keogh gently.
"At the time," said Gordon, "I wasn't in any doubt. It was all real. More real, more alive, than anything that had ever happened to me before. But now... now I don't know." He looked at Keogh, his eyes full of pain. "I'll be honest with you. I don't want to lose this dream... if it was a dream. It's more precious to me than any reality. But I know that if... if I... oh, hell!" He got up and moved around the room, aimlessly, his broad stocky shoulders hunched and his hands balled into fists. He looked like a man about to jump off a cliff, and Keogh knew that he was just that. He sat quietly, waiting.
Gordon said, "I thought that I went to the stars. Not now, but in the future. Two hundred thousand years in the future. I'll give it to you all in one lump, Doctor, and then you can call for the strait-jacket. I believed that my mind was drawn across time, into the body of another man, and for a while... keeping my own identity, you understand, my own memories as John Gordon of twentieth-century Earth... for a while I lived in the body of Zarth Arn, a prince of the Mid-Galactic Empire. I went to the stars..."
His voice trailed away. He stood by the window, looking out at falling rain and the roofs and walls and chimneys of West Sixty-fourth Street. The sky was a drab blankness fouled with soot.
"I heard the sunrise music," Gordon said, "that the crystal peaks make above Throon when Canopus comes to warm them. I feasted with the star-kings in the Hall of Stars. And at the end, I led the fleets of the Empire against our enemies, the men from the League of Dark Worlds. I saw the ships die like swarming fireflies off the shores of the Hercules Cluster..."
He did not turn to see how Keogh was taking all this. He had started and he would not stop, and in his voice there was pride and longing and the anguish of loss.
"I've shot the Orion Nebula. I've been into the Cloud, where the drowned suns burn in a haze of darkness. I've killed men, Doctor. And in that last battle, I-"
He stopped and shook his head, turning abruptly away from the window.
"Never mind that now. But there was more. A lot more. A whole universe, a language, names, people, costumes, places, details. Could I have imagined all that?"
He looked at Keogh. Desperately.
Keogh said, "Were you happy in that universe?"
Gordon thought about that, his square, honest face creased in a careful frown. "Most of the time I was frightened. Things were..." He made a gesture vaguely indicating great troubles. "I was in constant danger. But... yes, I guess I was happy there."
Keogh nodded. "You mentioned a girl?"
Now Gordon turned again to the window. "Her name was Lianna. She was a princess of Fomalhaut Kingdom. She and Zarth Arn were betrothed... a matter of state, you understand, and it wasn't supposed to be anything more. Zarth Arn already had a morganatic wife, but I, Gordon, in Zarth Arn's body-I fell in love with Lianna."
"Did she return your feeling?"
"Yes, it was the end of the world for me when I had to leave her and come back here to my own world, my own time... And here's what makes it so difficult, Doctor. I'd given up hope of ever seeing her again, and then it seemed to me that she spoke to me one night, telepathically, across time, and told me that Zarth Arn believed he could find a way to bring me through physically, in my own body..." His voice trailed off again and his shoulders sagged. "How insane that dream sounds when I tell it. But it made this dreary life worth living for a long while, just the hope, knowing that someday I might go back. And of course nothing ever happened. And now I don't know whether anything ever did happen, really."
He walked back to the chair and sat down, feeling strangely exhausted and empty.
"I've never told this to anyone before. Now that I have, it's like... it's as though I'd killed something, or killed part of myself. But I can't go on living between two worlds. If that world of the future was hallucination, and this one is reality, the only reality, then I've got to accept it."
He sat, brooding. Now it was Keogh's turn to rise and move about. He turned to glance at Gordon a time or two, as though he were having difficulty finding a point of attack. Then he made up his mind.
"Well," he said briskly, "let us look at the available evidence." He glanced at some scribbled notes on his desk. "You say that your mind was drawn across time, into the body of another man."
"That's right. Zarth Arn was a scientist as well as a noble. He had perfected the method and the equipment. The exchange was effected from his laboratory."
"Very well. Now what happened to your own body, here in the present day on Earth, while your mind was absent from it?"