Then more voices rang loud about him. He felt himself seized by many hands that tore him loose from his antagonists. Hauled to his feet, panting and breathless, Gordon found a half-dozen Cloudmen holding Lianna and himself.
Durk Undis' fierce, flushed face was recognizable inside the glassite helmet of the foremost man.
“You traitor!” he hissed at Gordon. “I told Shorr Kan no spawn of the Empire could be depended on.”
“Kill them both now!” urged one of the raging Cloudmen. “It was Zarth Arn who sabotaged the dark-out and got us into this fix.”
“No, they don't die yet!” snapped Durk Undis. “Shorr Kan will deal with them when we get back to the Cloud.”
“If we get back to the Cloud,” corrected the other officer bitterly. “The Dendra is crippled, its last two generators will barely run, the space boats are wrecked. We couldn't make it halfway back.”
Durk Undis stiffened. “Then we'll have to hide out until Shorr Kan can send a relief ship for us. We'll call him by secret wave and report what has happened.”
“Hide out where?” said another Cloud officer. “This is Empire space. That patrol-cruiser undoubtedly got off a flash report before we finished it. This whole sector will be searched by Empire squadrons within twenty-four hours.”
Durk Undis bared his teeth. “I know. We'll have to get out of here. And there's only one place to go.”
He pointed through a porthole to a brilliant coppery star that shone hotly just a little inside the glowing haze of huge Orion Nebula.
“That copper sun has a planet marked uninhabited on the charts. We can wait there for help. The cursed Empire cruisers won't look long for us if we jettison wreckage to make it appear we were destroyed.”
“But the charts showed that that sun and its planet are the center of a dust-whorl. We can't go there,” objected another Cloudman.
“The whorl will drift us in, and a high-powered relief ship will be able to come in and get back out,” Durk Undis insisted. “Head for it with all the speed you can get out of the generators. Don't draw power yet to message Thallarna. We can do that after we're safe on that world.”
He added, pointing to Gordon and Lianna, “And tie these two up and keep a man with drawn gun over them every minute, Linn Kyle.”
Gordon and Lianna were hauled into one of the metal cabins whose walls were badly bulged by the damage of battle. They were dumped into two recoil-chairs mounted on rotating pedestals.
Plastic fetters were snapped to hold their arms and legs to the frames of the chairs. The officer Linn Kyle then left them, with a big Cloud-soldier with drawn atom-pistol remaining guard over them.
Gordon managed to rotate his chair by jerks of his body until he faced Lianna.
“Lianna, I thought we had a chance but I've just made things worse,” he said huskily.
Her face was unafraid as she smiled at him through her glassite helmet.
“You had to try it, Zarth. And at least, you've thwarted Shorr Kan's scheme.”
Gordon knew better. He realizing sinkingly that his attempt to get the Dendra captured by Empire forces had been a complete failure.
Whatever was the new, potent weapon the Cloudmen had used, it had been too much for the Empire cruiser. He had succeeded only in proving to the Cloudmen and Shorr Kan that he was their enemy.
He'd never have a chance now to warn Throon of Corbulo's treachery and the impending attack. He and Lianna would be dragged back to the Cloud and to Shorr Kan's cold retribution.
“By God, not that!” Gordon swore to himself. “I'll make them kill us before I let Lianna be taken back there.”
The Dendra throbbed on for hours, limping on its last two generators. Then it cut off power and drifted. Soon the ship was entering the strange glow of the gigantic nebula.
At intervals came ominous cracklings and creakings from many parts of the ship. When a guard came to relieve their watchdog, Gordon learned from the brief talk of the two Cloudmen that only eighteen men remained alive of the officers and crew.
The staggering ship began some hours later to buck and lurch in the grip of strong currents. Gordon realized they must be entering the great dust-whorl in the nebula, to which Linn Kyle had referred.
More and more violent grew the bucking until the Dendra seemed shaking itself apart. Then came a loud crash, and a singing sound that lasted for minutes.
“The air has all leaked out from the ship now,” Lianna murmured. “Without our space-suits, we'd all be dead.”
Death seemed close to John Gordon, in any case. The crippled ship was now in the full grip of the mighty nebula dust current that was bearing it on toward a crash on the star-world ahead.
Hours passed. The Dendra was now using the scant power of its two remaining generators again, to keep from being drawn into the coppery sun they were nearing.
Gordon and Lianna could get only occasional glimpses of their destination, through the porthole. They glimpsed a planet revolving around that copper-colored star-a yellow, tawny world.
Durk Undis' voice rang in a final order. “Strap in for crash-landing.”
The guard who watched Gordon and Lianna strapped himself into a recoil-chair beside them. Air began to scream through the wreck.
Gordon had a flashing glimpse of weird ocher forests rushing upward. The generators roared loud in a brief deceleration effort. Then came a crash that hurled Gordon into momentary darkness.
Chapter XVIII. Monster Man
GORDON came to himself, dazed and shaken, to find that it was Lianna's anxious voice that had aroused him.
The woman was leaning toward him from the chair in which she was bound. Her face was worried.
“Zarth, I thought for a moment you were really hurt. Your recoil-chair almost broke loose completely.”
“I'm all right,” Gordon managed to answer. His eyes swung to take in the scene. “We've landed, all right.”
The Dendra was no longer a ship. It was now a twisted, wrecked mass of metal whose voyaging was forever ended.
Walls had bulged like paper, metal girders and struts had been shorn away like cardboard, by the impact of the crash. Hot coppery sunlight streamed through a gaping rent in the cabin wall. Through that opening, Gordon could glimpse the scene outside.
The wreck lay amid towering ocher jungles of strange trees whose broad leaves grew directly from their smooth yellow trunks. Trees and brush and strange shrubs of yellow-and-black flowers had been crushed by the fall of the wreck. Golden spore-dust drifted in the metallic sunlight, and strange webbed-winged birds or creatures flew through the ocher wilderness.
To Gordon's ears came the ragged hum of atomic turbines and generators, close to them in the wreck.
“Durk Undis' men have been working to start the two generators,” Lianna said. “They were not badly damaged, it seems.”
“Then they're going to send a call back to the Cloud,” Gordon muttered. “And Shorr Kan will send another ship here.”
The officer Linn Kyle came into their cabin, no longer wearing a space-suit.
“You can take the suits off the prisoners,” Linn Kyle told their guard. “Keep them fettered in the chairs, though.”
Gordon was relieved to get rid of the heavy suit and helmet. He found the air breathable but laden with strange, spicy scents.
Just across the corridor from their prison was the stereo room. They heard a transmitter there soon begin its high-pitched whine. Then the taut voice of Durk Undis reached them.
“Calling headquarters at Thallarna! Dendra calling.”
Lianna asked, “Won't their call arouse attention? If it's heard by Empire warships, it will.”