Tu Shal's aging face flamed. “Prince Zarth, if you intend thus to keep the Empire's pledge, we will keep our pledge. Polaris Kingdom will fight with the Empire against the Cloud.”
“And Lyra. And we Barons!” rang the eager, excited voices. “We'll flash word to our capitals that you're going out with the Disruptor to join the struggle.”
“Send that word at once, then!” Gordon told them. “Have your Kingdoms place their fleets under Commander Giron's orders.”
And as the excited ambassadors hurried back up the stairs to send their messages, Gordon turned to Hull Burrel.
“Call the Ethne's technicians here with a squad of guards, Hull. I'll bring out the apparatus of the Disruptor and it can be taken at once to the Ethne. “
Back and forth into the silent, radiant Chamber, Gordon now hastened, bringing out one by one the big, mysterious cones. He had to do this himself-no one else except Jhal Arn could enter there.
By the time he wheeled out the bulky cubical transformer, Hull Burrel was back with Captain Val Marlann and his technicians.
Working hastily, but handling the apparatus with a gingerness that betrayed their dread, the men loaded the equipment into tubeway cars.
A half-hour later they stood in the naval spaceport beneath the shadow of the mighty Ethne. It and two other battleships were the only major units left here, the others all already on their way to join the epochal struggle.
Under the flare of lightning and crash of thunder and rain the technicians labored to bolt the big force-cones to the brackets already in place around the prow of the battleship. The tips of the cones, pointed forward, and their cables were brought back through the hull into the navigation room behind the bridge.
Gordon had had the cubical transformer with its control-panel set up here. He directed the hooking of the colored cables to the panel as Jhal Arn had explained. The massive power-leads were hastily run back and attached to the mighty drive generators of the ship.
“Ready for take-off in ten minutes!” Val Marlann reported, his face gleaming with sweat.
Gordon was shaking with strain. “One last check of the cones. There's time for it.”
He raced out into the storm, peering up at the huge, overhanging prow of the warship. The twelve cones fastened up there seemed tiny, puny.
Impossible to think that this little apparatus could produce any such vast effect as men expected. And yet – “Take-off, two minutes!” yelled Hull Burrel from the gangway, over the din of alarm bells and shouts of hurrying men. Gordon turned. And as he did so, through the confusion a slim figure ran toward him. “Lianna!” he said. “Good God, why-”
She came into his arms. Her face was white, tear-wet, as she raised it to him.
“Zarth, I had to come before you left. If you didn't come back, I wanted you to know-I still love you! I always will, even though I know it's Murn you love.” Gordon groaned as he held her in his arms with his cheek against her tear-wet face.
“Lianna. Lianna. I can't promise for the future, you may find all things changed between us in the future, but I tell you now that it is you I love.”
A wave of final, bitter heartbreak seemed to surge up in him at this last moment of wild farewell.
For it was farewell forever, Gordon knew. Even if he survived the battle, it must not be he but the real Zarth Arn who would come back, to Throon. And if he didn't survive“Prince Zarth!” yelled Hull Burrel's hoarse voice in his ear. “It is time!”
Gordon, as he tore away, had a swift vision of Lianna's white face and shining eyes that he would never forget. For he knew that it was his last.
And then Hull Burrel was dragging him bodily up the gangway, doors were grinding shut, great turbines thundering, bells ringing sharp signals down the corridors.
“Take off,” warned the annunciators shrilly, and with a crash of splitting air the Ethne zoomed for the storm-swept heavens.
Upward it roared, and with it raced the other two battleships, bolting like metal things of thought up across the star-sown sky.
“Giron's calling!” Hull Burrel was shouting in his ear as they stumbled forward along the corridors. “Heavy fighting now near Rigel. And the League's eastern fleets are forcing through.”
In the navigation-room where Gordon had set up the Disruptor apparatus, Commander Giron's grim image flashed from a telestereo.
Over the Commander's shoulder Gordon glimpsed a bridgeroom window that looked out on a space literally alive with an inferno of bursting atom-shells, of exploding ships.
Giron's voice was cool but swift. “We joined fleet action with the League's two eastern forces. And we're suffering prohibitive losses. The enemy has some new weapon that seems to strike down our ships from within-we can't understand it.”
Gordon started. “The new weapon that Shorr Kan boasted to me about. How does it operate?”
“We don't know!” was the answer. “Ships suddenly drift out of action all around us, and don't answer our calls.”
Giron added, “The Barons report their fleet is moving out east of the Cluster to oppose the Cloud's two fleets coming toward them. The fleets of Lyra, Polaris and the other allied Kingdoms are already coming down full speed from the northwest to join my command.”
The Commander concluded grimly, “But this new weapon of the League, whatever it is, is decimating us. I'm with drawing west but they're hammering us hard, and their phantoms keep getting through. I feel it my duty to warn that we can't fight long in the face of such losses.”
Gordon told him, “We're coming out with the Disruptor and we're going to use it. But it'll take many hours for us to reach the scene.”
He tried to think, before he gave orders. He remembered what Jhal Arn had said, that the target area of the Disruptor's force must be as limited as possible.
“Giron, to utilize the Disruptor it is imperative that the League's fleets be maneuvered together. Can you somehow do that?”
Giron rasped answer. “The only chance I have of doing that is to retreat slightly southwestward from this branch of the attack, as though I meant to go to the aid of the Barons. That might draw the Cloud's two attacking forces together.”
“Then try it!” Gordon urged. “Fall back southwestward and give me an approximate position for rendezvous with you.”
“Just west of Deneb should be the approximate position by the time you get here,” Giron answered. “God knows how much of our fleet will be left then if this new Cloud weapon keeps striking us down.”
Giron switched off, but in other telestereos unfolded the battle that was going on all along the line near distant Rigel.
Beside the ships that perished in the inferno of atom-shells and the stabbing attack of stealthy phantom-cruisers, the radar screen showed many Empire ships suddenly drifting out of action.
“What in the devil's name has the Cloud got that can disable our Warships like that?” sweated Hull Burrel.
“Whatever it is, it's smashing in Giron's wings fast,” muttered Val Marlann tensely. “His withdrawal may become a rout.”
Gordon turned from the dazing, bewildering stereos that showed the battle, and glanced haggardly through the bridge windows.
The Ethne was already hurtling at increasing velocity past the smaller Argo suns, speeding southward toward the Armageddon of the galaxy.
Gordon felt overwhelmed by dread, a panicky reaction. He had no place in this titanic conflict of future ages. He had been mad to make the impulsive decision to try to use the Disruptor!
He used the Disruptor? How could he, when he knew so little of it? How dared he unchain the ghastly power which its own discoverer had warned could rive and destroy the galaxy itself?
Chapter XXVI. Battle Between the Stars
THROBBING, droning, quivering in every girder to the thrust of its mighty drive-jet, the Ethne and its two companion ships raced southward across the starry spaces of the galaxy.