Gordon felt an agony of apprehension for her. It was his fault that she was in this deadly danger. She had been trying to help him, and had incurred this peril.
"Lianna, I knew you shouldn't have come with me! If anything happens to you-"
He stopped and swung around, as the door slid open. Them Eldred stood there.
At sight of the tall Sirian standing and regarding them with a cynical smile on his pale green face, Gordon started forward in an access of hot rage.
Them Eldred quickly drew one of the little glass weapons from his jacket.
"Please note this paralyzer in my hand," he advised dryly. "Unless you want to spend more time unconscious, you'll restrain yourself."
"You traitor!" raged Gordon. "You've betrayed your uniform, your Empire!"
Them Eldred nodded calmly. "I've been one of Shorr Kan's most trusted agents for years. I expect to receive his warmest commendations when we reach Thallarna."
"Thallarna? The mysterious capital of the League?" said Lianna. "Then we are going to the Cloud?"
The Sirian nodded again. "We'll reach it in four days. Luckily, knowing the patrol-schedules of the Empire fleet as I do, I am able to follow a course that will prevent unpleasant encounters."
"Then Arn Abbas was murdered by you League spies!" Gordon accused harshly. "You knew it was going to happen! That's why you were in such a hurry to get us away!"
The Sirian smiled coolly. "Of course. I was working on a schedule of split-seconds. It had to look as though you had murdered your father and then fled. We just pulled it off."
Gordon raged. "By heaven, you're not to the Cloud yet! Corbulo knows I didn't commit that murder! He'll put two and two together and be out to track you down!"
Them Eldred stared at him, then threw back his head in a roar of laughter. He laughed until he had to wipe his eyes.
"Your pardon, Prince Zarth, but that's the funniest thing you've said yet!" he chuckled. "Corbulo after me? Why, haven't you guessed yet that Corbulo himself planned this whole thing?"
"You're mad!" Gordon exclaimed. "Corbulo is the most trusted official in the Empire!"
Them Eldred nodded. "Yes, but only an official, only Commander of the fleet. And he has ambitions beyond that post, has had them a long time. For the last few years, he and a score of others of us officers have been working secretly for Shorr Kan."
The Sirian's eyes gleamed. "Shorr Kan has promised that when the Empire is shattered, we shall each of us have a star-kingdom of our own to rule. And Corbulo is to have the biggest."
Gordon's angry incredulity somehow faded a little, before the ring of truth in the Sirian's voice.
Horrified, Gordon realized that it might be true! Chan Corbulo, Commander of the Empire's great navy, might be a secret traitor for all he knew.
Evidence pointing that way rose swiftly in Gordon's mind. Why else had Corbulo broken his duty and helped him to escape? Why, at the very moment when Arn Abbas' assassination was imminent?
Them Eldred read something of what passed in Gordon's mind, from his face. And the Sirian laughed again.
"You begin to realize now what a dupe you've been. Why, it was Corbulo himself who shot down Arn Abbas last night! And Corbulo will swear that he saw it done by you, Zarth Arn!"
Lianna was pale, incredulous. "But why? Why implicate Zarth?"
"Because," smiled the Sirian, "it's the most effective way to split the Empire and leave it wide open to the Cloud's attack. And there's another reason that Shorr Kan will explain to you."
The malice and triumph in Them Eldred's eyes detonated the rage that gathered in John Gordon's mind.
He plunged forward, heedless of Them Eldred's warning shout. He managed by a swift contortion of his body to avoid the glass paralyzer that the other jabbed at him. His fist smashed into the Sirian's face.
Them Eldred, as he sprawled backward, had Gordon atop him like a leaping panther. But the Sirian had managed to cling to his weapon. And before Gordon could carry out his intention of wrestling it away, Them Eldred desperately jabbed up with it again.
The crescent at the end of the glass rod touched Gordon's neck. A freezing shock smote like lightning through his body. He felt his senses darken swiftly.
When Gordon for a second time came back to consciousness, he was again lying in one of the bunks. This time, the freezing ache in his body was more painful. And this time, Lianna was sitting beside him and looking down at him with anxious gray eyes.
Her eyes lighted as he opened his own. "Zarth, you've been unconscious more than a day! I was beginning to worry."
"I'm-all right," he muttered. He tried to sit up, but her little hands quickly forced him back down onto the pad.
"Don't, Zarth-you must rest until your nerves recover from the electroshock."
He glanced at the porthole window. The vista of blazing stars outside seemed unchanged. He could glimpse the black blot of the Cloud, looking only a little larger in the distant forest of suns.
Lianna followed his glance. "We are travelling at tremendous speed, but it will still require a few days before we reach the Cloud. In that time, we may encounter an Empire patrol."
Gordon groaned. "Lianna, there's no hope for that. This is itself an Empire cruiser and could pass any patrol. And if Corbulo is really leader of this treachery, he'd have his patrols arranged so that this ship could pass unseen."
"I've thought and thought about it and I still can hardly believe it," Lianna said. "Corbulo a traitor! It seems fantastic! And yet-"
Gordon himself no longer doubted. The evidence was too overwhelming.
"Men will betray any trust when ambition drives them, and Corbulo is ambitious," he muttered. Then, as deeper realization came to him, "Good God, this means that if the League does attack the Empire, the Commander of the Empire forces will sabotage their defense!"
He rose painfully from the bunk despite Lianna's protestations.
"If we could only get word back to Throon somehow! That would at least put Jhal Arn on his guard!"
Lianna shook her ash-golden head a little sadly. "I fear there's no chance of that, once we're prisoners in the Cloud. Shorr Kan is not likely to let us go."
It all spun in John Gordon's mind in a bewildering chaos of known and unknown factors, in the hours that followed.
A few things, though, stood out clearly. They all, everyone in this universe, thought that he was Zarth Arn. And thus it was believed that he knew the secret of the Disrupter, that mysterious scientific weapon known only to Arn Abbas and his two sons.
That was why Corbulo had risked the plot that was sending him and Lianna now as prisoners to the Cloud! Once Shorr Kan had that secret, mysterious weapon, he would have nothing to fear from the Empire whose fleet was commanded by his own man. He would attack them at once!
The Markab droned on and on. When the ship bells signaled evening of the arbitrary "day," the aspect of the starry firmament had changed. Orion Nebula flamed now in all its titan glory far in the east.
Straight ahead, far in the distance against the remotest suns of the galaxy, brooded the black blot of the Cloud. It was visibly larger than before, and its gigantic dimensions were now becoming more clearly apparent.
Neither Them Eldred nor any of his officers or men entered the cabin. There was no opportunity for a second attack. And after searching vainly through the room, Gordon conceded defeatedly that there was nothing in it that might facilitate escape.
Sick anxiety for Lianna's safety deepened in him. He reproached himself again for letting her accompany him on this flight.
But she did not seem afraid as she looked up at him. "Zarth, at least we're together for a little while. It may be all of happiness we'll get."
Gordon found his arms instinctively starting to go around her, his hand touching her shining hair. But he forced himself to step back.