"Lianna, you'd better get some sleep," he said uncomfortably.
Lianna, looked at him with a wondering little smile. "Why, Zarth, what's the matter?"
Gordon had never in his life wanted anything so much as to reach forth to her. But to do so would be the blackest treachery.
Treachery to Zarth Arn, who had trusted his body, his life, to Gordon's pledge! Yes, and treachery to Lianna herself.
For if he were able to reach the Earth laboratory, it would be the real Zarth Arn who would come back to her-Zarth Arn, who loved Murn and not Lianna.
"That won't ever happen!" whispered a subtle, tempting voice in Gordon's mind. "You and she will never escape from the Cloud. Take what happiness you can, while you can!"
Gordon desperately fought down that insinuating voice. He spoke huskily to the puzzled girl.
"Lianna, you and I will have to forget all talk of love."
She seemed stricken by amazement, unbelief. "But Zarth, at Throon that morning you told me you loved me!"
Gordon nodded miserably. "I know. I wish to God I hadn't. It was wrong."
Little clouds began to gather in Lianna's gray eyes. She was white to the lips.
"You mean that you are still in love with Murn, after all?"
Gordon forced the answer to that out of strained, desperate resolve. He spoke what he knew was the exact truth.
"Zarth Arn does still love Murn. You have to know that, Lianna."
The incredulity in Lianna's white face gave way to a hurt that went deep in her gray eyes.
Gordon had expected stormy resentment, wrath, bitter reproach. He had steeled himself against them. But he had not expected this deep, voiceless hurt, and it was too much for him.
"To the devil with my promise!" he told himself fiercely. "Zarth Arn wouldn't hold me to it if he knew that situation-he couldn't!"
And Gordon stepped forward and grasped the girl's hand. "Lianna, I'm going to tell you the whole truth! Zarth Arn doesn't love you-but I do!"
He rushed on. "I'm not Zarth Arn. I'm an entirely different man, in Zarth Arn's body. I know it sounds incredible, but-"
His voice trailed off. For he read in Lianna's face her quick disbelief and scorn.
"Let us at least have no more lies, Zarth!" she flared.
"I tell you, it's true!" he persisted. "This is Zarth Arn's physical body, yes. But I am a different man!"
He knew from the expression on her face that his attempt had failed. He knew that she did not believe and never would believe.
How could he expect her to believe it? If positions had been reversed, would he have credited such a wild assertion? He knew he wouldn't.
No one in this universe would credit it, now Vel Quen was dead. For only Vel Quen had known about Zarth Arn's fantastic experiments.
Lianna was looking at him, her eyes now calm and level and without a trace of emotion in her face.
"There is no need for you to explain your actions by wild stories of dual personality, Zarth. I understand clearly enough. You were simply doing what you conceived to be your duty to the Empire. You feared lest I might refuse the marriage at the last moment, so you pretended love for me to make sure of me and of Fomalhaut's support."
"Lianna, I swear it isn't so!" Gordon groaned. "But if you won't trust me to speak truth-"
She ignored his interruption. "You need not have done it, Zarth. I had no thought of refusing the marriage, since I knew how much depended on my kingdom supporting the Empire.
"But there's no further need for stratagems. I will keep my promise and so will my kingdom. I will marry you, but our marriage will be only a political formality as we first agreed."
John Gordon started to protest, then stopped. After all, the course she proposed was the only one he could take.
If the real Zarth Arn returned, his marriage with Lianna could not be anything more than political pretense.
"All right, Lianna," Gordon said heavily. "I repeat, that I never lied to you. But it all doesn't make much difference now, anyway."
He gestured, as he spoke, toward the porthole. Out there in the star-blazing void ahead of the rushing cruiser, the monster blot of the Cloud was looming ever bigger and closer.
Lianna nodded quietly. "We do not have much chance of escaping Shorr Kan's clutches. But if a chance does present itself, you will find me your ally. Our personal emotions mean little compared to the urgent necessity of getting back with a warning to the Empire."
Gordon saw less and less chance of that, in the hours that followed. For now the Markab, its velocity at great heights, was rushing ever nearer the Cloud.
That "night" when the ship lights dimmed, he lay in his bunk thinking bitterly that of all men in history he had had the most ironic joke played upon him.
The girl across the cabin loved him, and he loved her. And yet soon a gulf of space and time incredible might forever separate them, and she would always believe him faithless.
12: In The Cosmic Cloud
Next "morning" they woke to find that the cloud was colossal now ahead. Its vast blotch loomed across half the firmament, a roiling gloom that reached out angry, ragged arms of shadow like an octopus whose dark tentacles clutched at the whole galaxy.
And the Markab now was being companioned through space by four massive black battleships with the black disk of the League of Dark Worlds marked on their bows. They were so close, and maintained so exactly the same speed, they could be clearly seen.
"We might have known that Shorr Kan would send an escort," Lianna murmured. She glanced at Gordon. "He thinks that he has the secret of the Disrupter almost in his hands, in your person."
"Lianna, set your mind at rest on one thing," Gordon told her. "He'll never get that secret from me."
"I know you are not traitor to the Empire," she said somberly. "But the League scientists are said to be masters of strange tortures. They may force it from you."
Gordon laughed shortly. "They won't. Shorr Kan is going to find that he had made one bad miscalculation."
Nearer and nearer the five ships flew toward the Cloud. All the universe ahead was now a black, swirling gloom.
Then, keeping to their tight formation, the squadron plunged into the Cloud.
Darkness swept around the ship. Not a total darkness but a gloomy, shadowy haze that seemed smothering after the blazing glory of open space.
Gordon perceived that the cosmic dust that composed the Cloud was not as dense as he had thought. Its huge extent made it appear an impenetrable darkness from outside. But once inside it, they seemed racing through a vast, unbroken haze.
There were stars in here, suns that were visible only a few parsecs away. They shone wanly through the haze, like smothered bale-fires, uncanny witch-stars.
The Markab and its escort passed comparatively close to some of these star-systems. Gordon glimpsed planets circling in the feeble glow of the smothered suns, worlds shadowed by perpetual twilight.
Homing on secret radar beams, the ships plunged on and on through the Cloud. Yet it was not until next day that deceleration began.
"We must be pretty nearly there," Gordon said grimly to the girl.
Lianna nodded, and pointed ahead through the window. Far ahead in the shadowy haze burned a dull red, smoldering sun.
"Thallarna," she murmured. "The capital of the League of Dark Worlds, and the citadel of Shorr Kan."
Gordon's nerves stretched taut as the following hours of rapid deceleration brought them closer to their destination.
Meteor-hail rattled off the ships. They twisted and changed course frequently. The shrilling of meteor-alarms could be heard each few minutes, as jagged boulders rushed upon them and then vanished in the automatic trip-blast of atomic energy from the ship.