He did get his eyes open this time. He was in a small metal room with a solid metal door. There was a very tiny window with bars, and orange sunlight slanting through them.
Across the room from him, Hull Burrel sprawled like one dead.
Gordon got to his feet. for a while he stood perfectly still, hoping that he was not going to fall. Then he moved painfully to the Antarian and knelt beside him.
Hull had a bruise on his chin, but no other perceptible injuries. Yet he lay like a man in deathly coma, his coppery face no longer like the side of a rough rock but gone all slack and sagging. His eyes were closed, but his mouth was open and spittle dribbled from it.
Gordon took him by the shoulders and said, "Hull," and all of a sudden the living log turned into a maddened wildcat. Hull scrambled up, thrusting Gordon away, glaring at him as if he were an attacking enemy.
Gradually Hull's eyes cleared. His muscles relaxed. He stared stupidly at Gordon and said. "What's the devil's the matter with me?"
"You were slugged," said Gordon. "Not with a club, but with mental force. You were taken under control when we were nearing this place."
"This place?" Hull Burrel looked around, at the small, dusty metal room. "I don't remember," he muttered. "This looks like a prison."
Gordon nodded. "We're in the dead town of the old colonists. And you can't have a town without a jail."
His head ached. And more than his head was hurt. His pride was severely bruised. He said, "Hull, I was a sort of hero back in that other time, when I lived in Zarth Arn's body... wasn't I?"
Hull stared. "You were. But what..."
"I was going to be a hero all over again," said Gordon bitterly. "To show that I could be good as John Gordon, too. I've done fine haven't I? Throon, Lianna... they'll be proud of me."
"You weren't leading this mission, I was," growled Hull Burrel. "It was I who fell on my face." He went to the little window and looked at the street choked with golden foliage. He turned around, his brows knitted. "Mental force, you said. Then there must be one of those damned Magellanians here."
Gordon shrugged. "Who else could do a thing like that? We've been taken like children. They were sitting here waiting for us."
Hull suddenly shouted loudly. "Varren! Kano... Rann. . . are you here?"
There was no answer from the crewmen whose names he had shouted.
"Wherever they are, they're not within earshot," muttered Hull, plainly worried. "What next?"
"Next, we wait," said Gordon.
They waited for more than an hour. Then the door opened without warning. Outside it stood a supercilious young man whose black uniform bore in silver the design of the Mace.
"The Count Cyn Cryver will see you now," said the young man. "You can walk, or be dragged."
"All right, we'll walk," said Gordon. "I've enough headache already."
They walked out into the hot sunlight, and along a street that had once been wide. But time and weather had cracked its pavement and seeds had lodged to grow into the feathery trees, so that now it was more like following a path in a forest.
The corroded metal fronts of buildings showed through the foliage, silent and dead. And Gordon glimpsed a statue, the figure of a man in space dress, looking proudly down from the middle of the street. It would be, he thought, the star-captain who had led the ill-fated colonists here, in the long-ago centuries.
Look and be proud, star-captain. All that you wrought died long ago, and the last descendants of your people are the furtive little hunted things in the forest. Be proud, star-captain, be happy, for your eyes are blind and cannot see...
They were taken into a building that looked like a municipal center. In a shadowy big hall, Count Cyn Cryver lounged in a chair at a table, drinking a tawny-colored liquor from a tall goblet. He wore black, with his insignia arrogant on his breast, and he looked at Gordon with amused eyes.
"You kicked up quite a stir at Teyn, but it seems we have you safe now," he said. He drank and put the goblet down. "A word of advice... never trust a coward. Like Jon Ollen, for instance."
A light burst upon Gordon. "Of course. That's why you were waiting for us. Jon Ollen is one of you."
Nothing else could explain it. The cadaverous baron was a traitor, and it was a safe assumption that the super-telepath who had come to Throon had been hidden in Jon Ollen's ship.
Hull Burrel demanded harshly, "Where are my men?"
Cyn Cryver smiled. "We had no need of your men or your ship, so they have been destroyed. As you will be destroyed when we no longer have any use for you."
Hull's fist clenched. He looked as though he was about to spring at Cyn Cryver, but the men with the stunners stepped forward.
"You will be examined later," Cyn Cryver said. "You are here now only because an old friend of yours wishes to see you. Tell their old friend that they are here, Bard."
One of the men went through a door at the rear of the hall. Gordon felt his skin crawl as he heard steps returning a moment later. He thought he knew what was coming.
He was wrong. It was not the cowled shape he feared that came into the hall. It was a man, broad-shouldered and tall, black-haired, tough-faced and keen-eyed, who stopped and look at them, smiling.
"By God," said Hull Burrel. "Shorr Kan!"
"Oh, no," said Gordon. "Can't you see, it's an impersonation they've got up... Lord knows why. We saw Shorr Kan die, killed by his own men."
The man who looked like Shorr Kan laughed. "You thought you saw that. But you were deceived, Gordon. And if I do say so myself, it was a neat piece of deception, considering how little time we had in which to dream it up."
And it was the voice of Shorr Kan. It was also the voice of a dead man speaking in the darkness and saying, "So that's what he looks like!"
He came closer and spoke earnestly, as one explaining something to a friend. "I was in the devil of a spot, thanks to you. Your damned Disruptor had shattered our fleet, and you were coming on toward the Dark Worlds, and my faithful subjects had got wind of it and were rioting in the streets. It was my neck, if I didn't think of something pretty quick."
He grinned. "It took you all in, didn't it? I still had a few faithful officers, and when they sent out that stereo-vision message of surrender, they could show you poor old Shorr Kan, with a big fake wound in his side, putting on a death scene I'm really proud of."
He burst into laughter. Stupefied, because he did not want to believe this and was beginning to do so, Gordon exclaimed, "Shorr Kan's body was found in the ruins of his palace!"
The other shrugged. "A body was found. The body of a dead rioter, who was my size and wore my uniform and decorations. Of course there wasn't too much left to identify because we fired the palace before we got the devil out of there... which little incendiary feat was blamed on my rioting subjects."
Gordon could no longer disbelieve. He stared at Shorr Kan at this man who had made himself master of the Dark Worlds and then, with their power, had almost shattered the star-kingdoms.
"And you've been hiding here in the Marches ever since?" he cried.
"Let me say instead that I've been making an extended visit to certain of my old friends here, among whom I number first the Count Cyn Cryver," said Shorr Kan. "When I heard you were among us, the Gordon whom I had never physically seen but whom I had known only too well... well, I had to give you a greeting for old time's sake."
The insolent brass of the man, his complete, mocking, light-hearted cynicism, had not changed.
Gordon said, between his teeth, "Why, I'm glad you saved your neck... even though it's a comedown from master of the League of the Dark Worlds, to hang onto the coattails of a Cyn Cryver. Still, it's better than dying."
Shorr Kan laughed, in honest enjoyment. "Did you hear that, Cyn? Do you wonder I admired this chap? Here he is at the end of his rope, and he tries to slap my face in a way that'll make bad blood between you and me!"