Thern Eldred glanced tensely at his watch. "Everything has been scheduled to the minute, highness," he told Gordon. "My cruiser, the Markab, is waiting in a secluded dock at the spaceport. Ostensibly we take off to join the Sagittarius patrol."
"You're risking your neck for us too, captain," Gordon said earnestly.
The Sirian smiled. "Commander Corbulo has been like a father to me. I could not refuse the trust when he asked me and my men."
The car slowed and halted beside another little vestibule in which two naval officers armed with atom-pistols were waiting. They saluted sharply as Gordon and Lianna stepped out. Thern Eldred quickly followed and led the way up a gliding ramp.
"Now muffle your cloaks about your faces until we get aboard the Markab," he told them. "After that, you need fear nothing."
They emerged onto a corner of the spaceport. It was night, two golden moons strung across the blazing starry sky, casting down a warm light in which the massive ships, cranes and machines glinted dully.
Towering from the docks, dwarfing all else, loomed the black bulks of the mighty first-line battleships. As they followed Thern Eldred along the side of one, Gordon glimpsed the portentous muzzles of its heavy atom-gun batteries silhouetted against the stars.
The Sirian made a signal and held them suddenly back, as a troop of noisy sailors swaggered past. Standing there in the dark, Gordon felt the pressure of Lianna's fingers on his hand. Her face, in the dim light, smiled at him undauntedly.
Then Thern Eldred motioned them on. "We must hurry!" he sweated. "We're behind schedule-"
The black, fishlike mass of the Markab rose before them in the golden moonlight. Lights glittered from small portholes, and there was a steady throbbing of power from the stern of the light cruiser.
They followed the Sirian and his two officers up a narrow gangway toward a waiting open door in the side of the ship. But suddenly, the silence was violently broken.
Annunciators about the spaceport screamed a loud siren alarm. Then a man's hoarse, excited voice shouted from the speakers.
"General alarm to all naval personnel!" yelled that wild voice. "Arn Abbas has just been assassinated!"
Gordon froze, wildly clutching Lianna's hand as they stopped there on the gangway.
The voice was shouting on. "Apprehend Prince Zarth Arn wherever he is encountered! He is to be arrested immediately!"
"Good God!" cried Gordon. "Arn Abbas murdered-and they think I escaped and did it!"
The whole great spaceport was waking to the alarm, the voice shouting its wild message over and over from a hundred annunciators. Bells were ringing, men yelling and running.
Far southward, over the distant towers of the city Throon, gleaming fliers were rushing up in the night sky and racing wildly across the heavens in half a dozen different directions.
Them Eldred tried to urge the frozen Gordon and Lianna up the gangway. "You must hurry, highness!" cried the Sirian. "Your only chance is to get away at once!"
"Run away and let them think I murdered Arn Abbas?" cried Gordon. "No! We're going back to the palace at once!"
Lianna, her face pale, swiftly supported him. "You must return. Arn Abbas' murder will shake the whole Empire!"
Gordon had turned with her to start back down the gangway. But Them Eldred, his green face wearing a hard, taut expression, suddenly whipped out and extended a little glass weapon.
It was a short glass rod on whose end was mounted a glass crescent that had two metal tips. He darted it toward Gordon's face.
"Zarth, it's a paralyzer. Look out!" cried Lianna, who recognized the menace of the weapon where Gordon did not.[6]
The tips of the glass crescent touched Gordon's chin. Lightning seemed to crash through his brain with a paralyzing shock.
He felt himself falling, every muscle frozen, consciousness leaving him. He had a dim sensation of Lianna's voice, of her staggering against him.
There was only darkness in Gordon's mind then. In that darkness he seemed to float for ages before finally light began to dawn.
He became aware that his body was tingling painfully with returning life. He was lying on a hard, flat surface. There was a steady, loud droning sound in his ears.
Gordon painfully opened his eyes. He lay on a bunk in a little metal cabin, a tiny lighted room with little furniture.
Lianna, her face colorless and her eyes closed, lay in another bunk. There was a little porthole window from which he saw a sky of blazing stars. Then Gordon recognized the droning sound as the throb of a star-ship's powerful atomic turbines and drive-generators.
"Good God, we're in space!" he thought. "Them Eldred stunned us and brought us-"
They were in the Markab, and from the high drone of its drive the light cruiser was hurtling through the galactic void at its utmost speed.
Lianna was stirring. Gordon stumbled to his feet and went to her side. He chafed her wrists and face till her eyes opened.
The girl instantly became aware of their situation, with her first glance. Remembrance came back to her.
"Your father murdered!" she cried to Gordon. "And they think you did it, back at Throon!"
Gordon nodded sickly. "We've got to go back. We've got to make Them Eldred take us back."
Gordon stumbled to the door of the cabin. It would not slide open when he tried it. They were locked in.
Lianna's voice turned him around. The girl was at the porthole, looking out. She turned a very pale face.
"Zarth, come here!"
He went to her side. Their cabin was near the bows of the cruiser, and the curve of the wall allowed them to look almost straight forward into the vault of stars into which the Markab was racing.
"They're not taking us toward Fomalhaut Kingdom!" Lianna exclaimed. "Them Eldred has betrayed us!"
Gordon stared into the blazing jungle of stars that spread across the sky ahead.
"What's the meaning of this? Where is Them Eldred taking us?" Gordon asked.
"Look to the west of Orion Nebula, in the distance ahead of us!" Lianna exclaimed.
Gordon looked as she pointed through the round window.[7] He saw, far away in the starry wilderness ahead of their racing ship, a black little blot in the heavens. A dark, brooding blotch that seemed to have devoured a section of the starry firmament.
He knew instantly what it was. The Cloud! The distant, mysterious realm of semi-darkness within which lay the stars and planets of that League of the Dark Worlds of which Shorr Kan was master, and that was hatching war and conquest for the rest of the galaxy.
"They're taking us to the Cloud!" Lianna cried. "Zarth, this is Shorr Kan's plot!"
11: Galactic Plot
The truth flashed over Gordon's mind. All that had happened to him since he had taken up the impersonation of Zarth Arn had been instigated by the cunning scheming of that master plotter who ruled the Cloud.
Shorr Kan's plots had reached out to involve him in gathering conflict between the giant galactic confederations, through many secret agents. And one of those agents of the powerful master of the Dark Worlds must be Them Eldred!
"By Heaven, I see it now!" Gordon exclaimed, to the stunned girl. "Them Eldred is working for the Cloud, and has betrayed Commander Corbulo!"
"But why should they do this, Zarth? Why implicate you in the murder of your own father?"
"To compromise me hopelessly so that I can't return to Throon!" gritted Gordon.
Lianna had paled slightly. She looked up at him steadily, though.
"What is going to happen to us in the Cloud, Zarth?" she asked.
[6]
[7]