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"What," asked Gordon, "are the Broken Stars?"

Hull said, "Did you ever stop to think why the Marches of Outer Space are such a mess of debris?"

"I haven't had very much time to consider cosmic origins."

"The scientists tell us," said the Antarian, "that long ago two fairly large star-clusters were on a collision course. When they met, of course the looser parts of the swarms simply went through each other with only a minimum of actual hits. But even those few were enough to strew debris all along the Marches.

"However, in each cluster there was a much tighter, denser core of stars, and those high-density cores collided. The result was terrific. Stars tore each other up in such a high incidence of collisions that they formed a spinning mess of half-stars, bits of stars, shattered planets, whole planets... you name it. Scarcely anyone ever risks going into that jungle, but at least two scientific survey ships have in the past crossed through it. If they had a chance, so do we." As a sort of afterthought he added, "I don't have to tell you how thin it is."

Gordon said, "Take it."

"Do I have a vote?" asked Shorr Kan.

With one voice, Hull and Gordon answered, "No."

Shorr Kan shrugged.

Gordon said to the Antarian, "When you send your message, tell Fomalhaut what we know about the counts and the impending attack, but don't mention Shorr Kan. They'd never believe that story, and they might put the whole warning down as a fake."

Hull nodded. "Since you're persona grata at the court of Fomalhaut, I'll send it in your name. Have you any recognition signal, so they can be sure it's you?"

Gordon thought. "Tell them it's from the man who once called Korkhann, their Minister of Nonhuman Affairs, an overgrown mynah bird. Korkhann will know."

The little dispatch cruiser crawled on the chart until it was close to that ominous reef of red dots. Only then did Hull Burrel send his message.

That done, they plunged headlong into the Broken Stars.

18

The place was like a star-captain's nightmare.

To the eye, the Broken Stars would have seemed only a region where the points of starry light were somewhat denser, through which the small ship seemed to creep.

But the radar and sensor instruments saw it differently. They saw a region where the debris of shattered suns, long, cool, and dark, whirled in small ovaloids, in spinning little maelstroms, in cones and disks and nests of wreckage. Splintered stones and dust that had once been planets lay in drifts. And the many surviving suns of the wrecked star-clusters flared out fiercely as background.

The computers that took the radar impulses and directed the cruiser's flight along the chosen course were clacking like the chattering teeth of hysterical old women. Hull Burrel, hunched over the board, listened to that uproar and watched the rapidly changing symbols, only occasionally reaching out his hand to give the computers a new course. But when he did so, it was done with all the speed of which he was capable.

Gordon and Shorr Kan, standing behind him, looked at the viewplate which showed only the swarming points of light through which they seemed barely to move. They looked then at the flashing radar screen, and were awed.

"I was in Orion Nebula once, but that was child's play compared to this," said Gordon. "Have we got a chance at all?"

"We have," said Hull, "if we don't run into a bit of it too complicated for the radar to sense in time. But I'll tell you how you can improve our chances about a hundred percent."

"How?"

"By getting off my neck!" Hull roared, without turning. "Go and sit down. I can fly this damned suicide mission better without jawbone help."

"He's right," said Shorr Kan, and nodded to Gordon. They drew back. "There's nothing you and I can do now... but wait! Yes, there is one thing we can do. Back in a minute."

He went aft. Gordon sat down wearily in one of the chairs at the rear of the bridge that were intended for top-brass to sit in and harass worried pilots.

Hull had told them that radar showed no sign of pursuit at all. He had explained that when the counts saw them dive into the Broken Stars, they would write them off as finished. And, he had added, they were probably right.

Shorr Kan came back holding a couple of plastic flasks filled with a pale, slightly milky-looking liquor. He grinned sardonically at Gordon.

"I was pretty sure that Obd Doll would have something stored away. The counts of the Marches are a hard-drinking lot. Here, have one."

Gordon took the flask, but stared up at Shorr Kan in amazement. "A drink? Now? In this?" And he jerked his head toward the radar screen. "Any minute, one stray chunk of drift..."

Shorr Kan sat down. "Quite right. And can you think of a better time for drinking?"

Gordon shrugged. Maybe Shorr Kan made sense, at that. All Hull wanted them to do was to keep quiet and let him make his long-shot gamble for life. Very well, then. He would keep quiet. He lifted the flask and drank.

The liquor might look a little like milk and it was bland going down, but it was hellfire when it hit his insides.

"Better than anything we had in the Dark Worlds," said Shorr Kan.

"I remember," said Gordon, "when Lianna and I were your prisoners at Thallarna... how long ago that seems!... you said you'd offer us a drink but you didn't keep the stuff around because it would spoil your pose as the austere patriotic leader."

Shorr Kan smiled wryly. "And much good it did me in the end." He looked at Gordon with a kind of admiration. "I had the whole galaxy in my grasp, and then you came along. By God, I have to hand it to you. You really were a spoiler."

Gordon turned and looked, startled, toward the view-plate. Nothing there seemed to have changed but there was a new sound, a screeching and screeking along the hull.

"Relax, Gordon," said Shorr Kan. "Just tiny particles, probably no bigger than atoms. Nothing to get jumpy about." He added, "When I think about it, in spite of the remarkable things you've done, you've nearly always had the jumps."

Gordon said between his teeth, "It seems a natural reaction when one's life is in danger."

"Look at me," said Shorr Kan. "I'm in as much danger as you. More, because if we get out of this mess there's more trouble waiting for me. I'm flying for my life... the second time... me that was lord of the Dark Worlds. But do I get upset? Not a bit. If Shorr Kan has to go, he'll go with his head high."

He raised the flask with a theatrical gesture, but the smile on his dark face was mocking.

Gordon shook his head. There were times when Shorr Kan just reduced him to silence.

"So drink up and be of good heart," said Shorr Kan. "We'll get through, all will go well with you, and you'll save my neck when we get there... I hope!"

The computers were chattering even more wildly, and when Gordon glanced forward he saw that the symbols were flashing in a swift stream across the radar screen. It seemed to him that Hull Burrel, hunched over the board, had his head bent in resignation, bowing to the inevitable end. Gordon turned his own head quickly away.

He thought of Lianna. It was strange how, when everything was getting unreal to him in the slow freezing terror of approaching dissolution, she remained quite real. Even if he survived, he felt that she was lost to him. But he thought of her, and was glad.

"You know, I've had an idea for a long time," Shorr Kan was saying, "that you're sort of a grain of sand in the machine, Gordon. I mean, you take someone out of his own context, his own time-frame, and hurl him into the future where he's got no business to be, and you put everything out of kilter. See how your coming, from the very first, has upset things all across the galaxy."

Gordon said dryly, "What you mean is that I upset the private plans of one Shorr Kan, that's all."