Val Marlann, blood streaming from a great bruise on his temple, was clinging to a stanchion and shouting orders into the annunciator.
He turned a ghastly white face. “The turbines are holding and the disturbances are quieting. That convulsion nearly threw our ships into Deneb, and quaked the stars in this whole part of the galaxy!”
“The backlash reaction!” Gordon choked. “It was that-the surrounding space collapsing upon the hole in space the Disruptor made.”
Hull Burrel hung over the radar screen.
“Only half the Cloud ships were destroyed in the convulsion.”
Gordon shuddered. “I can't use the Disruptor again. I won't.”
“You won't have to!” Burrel said eagerly. “The remainder of their fleet is fleeing back in panic toward the Cloud.”
They were not to be blamed, Gordon thought sickly. To have space itself go mad and collapse around one-he would never have dared unloose that force if he had known. “I know now why Brenn Bir warned never to use the Disruptor lightly!” he said hoarsely. “Pray God it never will be used at all again.”
Calls came from the stereo thick and fast, stunned inquiries from Giron's ships.
“What happened?” said the shaken Commander over and over.
Hull Burrel had not lost sight of their goal, of what they must do.
“The League fleet's in full flight toward the Cloud, or what's left of them are I he told the Commander exultantly. “If we follow we can smash them once and for all.”
Giron too fired at the opportunity. “I'll order the pursuit at once.”
Back across the galactic spaces toward the shelter of the Cloud, the remnants of the League fleet were streaming. And after them, hour by hour, sped the Ethne and the Empire's battered fleet.
“They're finished, if we can smash Shorr Kan's rule and destroy their remaining ships,” Burrel exulted.
“You don't think Shorr Kan was with their fleet?” Gordon asked.
“He's too foxy for that-he'd be running things from Thallarna, never fear!” Val Marlann declared.
Gordon agreed, after a moment's thought. He knew Shorr Kan was no coward, but he'd have been directing his vast assault from his headquarters inside the Cloud.
The League of Dark Worlds' ships disappeared into the shelter of the Cloud long hours later. Soon afterward, the Empire fleet drew up just outside that vast, hazy gloom.
“If we go in after them, we might run into ambushes,” Giron declared. “The place is rotten with navigational perils that we know nothing about.”
Gordon proposed, “We'll demand their surrender, give them an ultimatum.'“
“Shorr Kan will not surrender” Hull Burrel warned.
But Gordon had them beam a stereocast into the Cloud toward Thallarna, and spoke by it.
“To the Government of the League of Dark Worlds. We offer you a chance to surrender. Give up and disarm under our directions and we promise that no one will suffer except those criminals who led you into this aggression.
“But refuse, and we'll turn loose the Disruptor upon the whole Cloud! We'll blot this place forever from the galaxy.”
Val Marlann looked at him, appalled. “You'd do that? But good God-”
“I wouldn't dare do that!” Gordon answered. “I'll never turn loose the Disruptor again. But they've felt its power and may be bluffed by it.”
There came no answer to their stereomessage. Again, after an hour, he repeated it.
Again, no answer. Then finally, after another wait, Giron's stern voice came.
“It seems that we'll have to go in there, Prince Zarth.”
“No, wait,” said Hull Burrel. “A message is coming through from Thallarna.”
In the stereo had appeared a group of wild-looking Cloudmen, some of them wounded, in a room of Shorr Kan's palace.
“We agree to your terms, Prince Zarth!” their spokesman said hoarsely. “Our ships will be docked and disarmed immediately. You will be able to enter in a few hours.”
“It could be a trick,” Val Marlann rasped. “It would give Shorr Kan time to lay traps for us.”
The Cloudman in the stereo shook his head. “Shorr Kan's disastrous tyranny is overthrown. When he refused to surrender, we rose in rebellion against him. I can prove that by letting you see him. He is dying.”
The telestereo switched its scene abruptly to another room of the palace. There before them in image sat Shorr Kan.
He sat in the chair in his austere little room from which he had directed his mighty attempt to conquer the galaxy. Armed Cloudmen were around him. His face was marble-white and there was a blasted, blackened wound in his side.
His dulling eyes looked at them out of the stereo, and then cleared for a moment as they rested on Gordon. And then Shorr Kan grinned weakly.
“You win,” he told Gordon. “I never thought you'd dare loose the Disruptor. Fool's luck, that you didn't destroy yourself with it-”
He choked, then went on. “Devil of a way for me to end up, isn't it? But I'm not complaining. I had one life and I used it to the limit. You're the same way at bottom, that's why I liked you.”
Shorr Kan's dark head sagged, his voice trailed to a whisper. “Maybe I'm a throwback to your world, Gordon? Born out of my time? Maybe-”
He was dead with the words, they knew by the way his strong figure slumped forward across the desk.
“What was he talking about to you, Prince Zarth?” asked Hull Burrel puzzledly. “I couldn't understand it.”
Gordon felt a queer, sharp emotion. Life was unpredictable. There was no reason why he should have liked Shorr Kan. But he knew now that he had.
Val Marlann and the other officers of the Ethne were exultant.
“It's victory! We've wiped out the menace of the League forever.”
The ship was in uproar. And they knew that that wild exultation of relief was spreading through their whole fleet.
Two hours later, Giron began moving his occupation forces inside the Cloud, on radar beams projected from Thallarna. Half his ships would remain on guard outside, in case of treachery.
“But there's no doubt now that they've actually surrendered,” he told Gordon. “The advance ships I sent in there report that every League warship is already docked and being disarmed.”
He added feelingly, “I'll leave an escort of warships for the Ethne. I know you'll be wanting to return to Throon now.”
Gordon told him, “We don't need any escort. Val Marlann, you can start at once.”
The Ethne set out on the long journey back, across the galaxy toward Canopus. But after a half-hour, Gordon gave new orders.
“Head for Sol, not Canopus. Our destination is Earth.”
Hull Burrel, amazed, protested. “But Prince Zarth, all Throon will be waiting for you to return. The whole Empire, everyone, will be mad with joy by this time, waiting to welcome you.”
Gordon shook his head dully. “I am not going to Throon now. Take me to Earth.”
They looked at him puzzledly, wonderingly. But Val Marlann gave the order and the ship changed its course slightly and headed for the far-distant yellow spark of Sol.
For hours, as the Ethne flew on toward the north, Gordon remained sitting and staring broodingly from the windows, sunk in a strange, tired daze.
He was going back at last to Earth, to his own time and his own world, to his own body. Only now, at last could he keep his pledge to Zarth Arn.
He looked out at the supernally brilliant stars of the galaxy. Far, far in the west now lay Canopus' glittering beacon. He thought of Throon, of the rejoicing millions there.
“All that is over for me now,” he told himself dully. “Over forever.”
He thought of Lianna, and that blind wave of heartbreak rose again in his mind. That, too, was over for him forever.