Her faith could not overcome the chill realization in Gordon's mind that his hare-brained scheme was almost impossible.
He might be dooming both Lianna and himself by trying it. But they were doomed anyway unless he betrayed the real Zarth Arn and the Empire, and the momentary temptation to do that had left Gordon forever.
He slept heavily, well into the next day. It was dusk when Shorr Kan and Durk Undis finally came.
"Durk Undis has all his orders, and the phantom is ready," Shorr Kan told Gordon. "You should get to Earth in five days, and be back here in eleven."
His face lit. "Then I'll announce to the galaxy that we have the Disruptor secret and that Zarth Arn has joined us, and will give Corbulo the secret signal and launch the League's attack!"
Two hours later, from the huge Thallarna spaceport, the slim, shining phantom-cruiser on which Gordon and Lianna had embarked rose from its dock and plunged headlong out through the Cloud.
16: Sabotage in Space
When Gordon and Lianna had entered the Dendra, the phantom-cruiser that was to bear them on the mission, they were led to the mid-deck corridor by Durk Undis.
The fanatic young Cloud-man bowed stiffly to them and gestured toward the door of a small suite of two tiny cabins. "These cabins will be your quarters. You will remain in them until we reach Earth."
"We will not remain in them!" Gordon flared. "The princess Lianna is already suffering from the confinement of the voyage here. We'll not stay cooped up in those tiny rooms for days more."
Durk Undis' lean face hardened. "The commander gave orders that you were to be strictly guarded."
"Did Shorr Kan say we were to be imprisoned in two tiny rooms every minute?" Gordon demanded. He saw the slight uncertainty in Durk Undis' face, and pressed his attack. "Unless we have a chance to get a little exercise, we'll refuse to carry out this whole plan."
The fanatic Cloud-man hesitated. Gordon had guessed rightly that Durk Undis did not want to go back to his superior and report the mission aborted by such a slight difficulty.
Finally, Durk Undis said grudgingly, "Very well, you will be permitted to walk in this corridor twice each day. But you will not be allowed in it any other time, or when we're running 'dark.' "
The concession was not as much as Gordon had wanted but he guessed that it was the most he could obtain. So, with anger still assumed, he followed Lianna into the cabin-suite and heard the lock click after them.
As the Dendra rose from Thallarna and started arrowing out at high speed through the gloomy hazes of the Cloud, Lianna looked inquiringly at Gordon.
"The confinement does not really bother me, Zarth. You have some plan?"
"No more than the plan I already mentioned, of somehow drawing the attention of an Empire patrol to this ship so that it'll be discovered and captured," he admitted.
He added determinedly, "I don't know yet how it can be done, but there must be a way."
Lianna looked doubtful. "This phantom undoubtedly has super-sensitive radar equipment, and will be able to spot ordinary patrols long before they spot us. It will dark-out till we're past them."
The steady drone of big drive-generators building up velocity became an unwavering background in the following hours.
The Dendra plunged through hails of tiny meteor-particles, through dust-currents that made it pitch and toss roughly. It often changed direction as it threaded its way out through the Cloud.
It was the middle of the following day before they emerged from the gloomy haze into the vast, clear vault of star-gemmed space. At once, the phantom-cruiser picked up still greater speed.
Gordon and Lianna looked from the window at the brilliant galactic spectacle ahead. To their astonishment, the distant spark of Canopus lay out of sight far on their left. Ahead of the Dendra glittered a vault of strange stars in which Orion Nebula glowed in flaming glory.
"We're not heading straight back into the Empire," Lianna said. "They're going to avoid the most guarded Empire frontier by swinging up west of Orion Nebula and on past the Marches of Outer Space to curve in toward Sol."
"Going the long way around to sneak into the Empire by the back way!" Gordon muttered. "It's probably the way that Cloud ship came that tried to kidnap me from Earth."
His faint hopes sank. "There's less chance of an Empire patrol catching us, if we're going through a little-travelled region."
Lianna nodded. "We are not likely to meet more than a few patrol cruisers, and Durk Undis can slip past them under dark-out."
Discouragedly, Gordon stared out at the brilliant scene. His gaze shifted to the direction in which he knew Canopus must lie.
Lianna caught the direction of his gaze and looked up at him questioningly. "You are thinking of Murn?"
It startled Gordon. He had almost forgotten the dark, lovely girl whom the real Zarth Arn loved.
"Murn? No! I was thinking of that black traitor Corbulo, spinning his plots back there on Throon and just waiting his chance to murder Jhal Arn and wreck the Empire's defenses."
"That is the greatest danger," Lianna agreed soberly. "If they could only be warned of Corbulo's treachery, the League's plan of attack could still be foiled."
"And we're the only ones who can warn them," Gordon muttered.
Yet on the third day after this, he had to confess to himself that it seemed more than ever an impossibility.
The Dendra was by now well inside the boundaries of the Empire, beating northward on a course that would take it just west of the gigantic, glowing Orion Nebula.
Once beyond the great Nebula, they would fly northwestward along the little-travelled edges of the Marches of Outer Space. Few Empire warships would be in the region bordering that wild frontier of unexplored star-systems. And Sol and its planet Earth would be nearby, then.
Twice during these three days, an alarm bell had rung through the Dendra as its radar operators detected Empire warships nearby. Each time, in their cabins, Gordon and Lianna had seen the whole vault of space outside the window suddenly blacked out.
Gordon had exclaimed in astonishment when it first happened. "What's wrong? All space has gone dark!"
Lianna looked at him in surprise. "They've turned on the dark-out of our ship. You surely remember that when a phantom-cruiser runs dark, those inside it can see nothing of outside space?"
"Oh, of course," Gordon said hastily. "It's been so long since I've been in one of these craft that I'd forgotten."
He understood now what was happening. The new, loud whine that permeated the cruiser was the sound of the dark-out generators that were flinging an aura of potent force around the ship.
That aura slightly refracted every ray of light or radar beam that struck it, so that the phantom-cruiser could neither be seen or ranged by radar. Of necessity, that deflection of all outside light left the cruiser moving in utter darkness.
Gordon heard the dark-out generators down in the lower deck whining for nearly an hour. They apparently required almost all the power of the ship, the drive-machinery merely purring and the ship moving almost on inertia.
The thing happened again the following morning, when the Dendra was drawing up closer to the west borders of Orion Nebula. That glowing mass now stretched billions of miles across the firmament beside them.
Gordon saw many hot stars inside the Nebula. He recalled that it was their electron-barrage that excited the hazy dust of the Nebula to its brilliant glow.
That "evening," he and Lianna were walking in the long corridor under the close scrutiny of an armed Cloud-man when the alarm bell again rang sharp warning through the ship.