The young captain stiffened. "I am Captain Dar Carrul of the Empire navy and I arrest you for the assassination of the late emperor and for treason!"
Gordon, dazed as he was, found his voice at that. "I didn't murder Arn Abbas! And I didn't join the Cloud-I was held prisoner by these Cloud-men and only just escaped before you came!"
He pointed at the corpse of Durk Undis. "He tried to kill me before letting me escape! And what brought you to this planet searching? An untuned signal-wave from here, wasn't it?"
Dar Carrul looked startled. "How did you know that? Yes, it is true that our operators detected such a signal coming from this uninhabited world, when we were searching space west of the nebula."
"Zarth sent that signal!" Lianna told him. "He used that method to attract Empire ships here!"
Dar Carrul looked a little bewildered. "But everyone knows you killed your father! Commander Corbulo saw you do it! And you fled from Throon-"
"I didn't flee, I was carried off," Gordon declared. He cried earnestly, "All I ask is to be taken to Throon to tell my story!" Dar Carrul seemed more and more perplexed by the unexpected turn of the situation.
"You will certainly be taken to Throon for trial," he told Gordon. "But it is not for a mere squadron captain to handle such a grave matter as this one. I will take you under guard to our main squadron and report for instructions."
"Let me talk at once by stereo to my brother, to Jhal Arn!" pleaded Gordon tautly.
Dar Carrul's face tightened. "You are a proclaimed fugitive, charged with the gravest of crimes against the Empire. I cannot allow you to send messages. You must wait until I receive instructions."
He made a gesture, and a dozen soldiers with drawn atom-guns stepped forward around Gordon and Lianna.
"I must ask you to enter our ship at once," the young captain said clippedly.
Ten minutes later, the cruiser took off from the nebula-world of horror. With the other three Empire cruisers, it raced out westward through the vast glow of Orion Nebula.
In the cabin in which they two had been placed under guard, Gordon paced furiously to and fro.
"If they only let me tell Jhal Arn of the danger, of Corbulo's treachery!" he rasped. "If that has to wait till we're taken to Throon, it might be too late!"
Lianna looked worried. "Even when we get to Throon, it may not be easy to convince Jhal Arn of your innocence, Zarth."
Gordon's taut anger was chilled by that. "But they've got to believe me! They surely won't credit Corbulo's lies when I tell them the truth?"
"I hope not," Lianna murmured. She added with a flash of pride, "I will corroborate your story. And I am still princess of Fomalhaut Kingdom!"
Hours seemed to drag as the cruisers hurtled headlong out of Orion Nebula, and on westward through open space.
Lianna slept exhaustedly after a time. But Gordon could not sleep. His very nerve seemed taut as he sensed the approaching climax of the gigantic galactic game in which he had been but a pawn.
He must convince Jhal Arn of the truth of his story! And he must do so quickly, for as soon as Shorr Kan learned that he had escaped to tell the truth, the master of the Cloud would act swiftly.
Gordon's head ached. Where would it all end? Was there any real chance of his clearing up this great tangle and getting to Earth for the re-exchange of bodies with the real Zarth Arn?
Finally the cruisers decelerated. Orion Nebula was now a glow in the starry heavens far behind them. Close ahead lay the shining clusters of suns of the Pleiades. And near the Pleiades' famous beacon-group there stretched a far-flung echelon of tiny sparks.
The sparks were ships! Warships of the Mid-Galactic Empire's great navy cruising here off the Pleiades, one of the many mighty squadrons watching and warding the Empire's boundaries!
Lianna had awakened. She looked out with him as the cruiser slowly moved past gigantic battleships, columns of grim cruisers, slim phantoms and destroyers and scouts.
"This is one of the main battle-fleets of the Empire," she murmured.
"Why are we being kept here, instead of letting us give our warning?" sweated Gordon.
Their cruiser drew up alongside a giant battleship, the hulls grating together. They heard a rattle of machinery.
Then the cabin door opened and young Dar Carrul entered. "I have received orders to transfer you at once to our flagship, the Ethne."
"But let us talk first by stereo to Throon, to the Emperor!" Gordon cried. "Man, what we have to tell may save the whole Empire from disaster!"
Dar Carrul shook his head curtly. "My orders are that you are to send no messages but are to be transferred immediately. I presume that the Ethne will take you at once to Throon."
Gordon stood, sick with disappointment and hope delayed. Lianna plucked his arm.
"It won't take long for that battleship to reach Throon, and then you'll be able to tell," she encouraged.
The two went with guards around them down through the cruiser to a hatchway. From it a short tubular gangway had been run to the battleship.
They went through it under guard of soldiers from the battleship. Once inside the bigger ship, the gangway was cast off and the airlock closed.
Gordon looked around the vestibule chamber at officers and guards. He saw the hatred in their faces as they looked at him. They too thought him assassin of his father, traitor to the Empire!
"I demand to see the captain of this battleship immediately," he rasped, to the lieutenant of guards.
"He is coming now," answered the lieutenant icily, as a tramp of feet came from a corridor.
Gordon swung toward the newcomers, with on his lips a fiery request to be permitted to call Throon. He never uttered it.
For he was looking at a stocky, uniformed figure, a man whose grizzled, square face and bleak eyes he knew only too well.
"Corbulo!" he cried.
Commander Corbulo's bleak eyes did not waver as his harsh voice lashed out at Gordon.
"Yes, traitor, it is I. So you two have been caught at last?"
"You call me traitor!" Gordon choked. "You yourself the greatest traitor in all history-"
Chan Corbulo turned coldly toward the tall, swarthy Arcturian captain who had entered with him and was glaring at Gordon.
"Captain Marlann, there is no need to take this assassin and his accomplice to Throon for trial. I saw them murder Arn Abbas! As Commander of the Empire fleet, I adjudge them guilty by space-law and order them executed immediately!"
21: Mutiny in the Void
Gordon's mind rocked to disastrous realization. As he stared frozenly into Chan Corbulo's grim triumphant face, he understood what had happened.
As Commander of the Empire navy, Corbulo had received the report of the capture of Gordon and Lianna. The arch-traitor had known that he must not let Gordon return to Throon with what he knew. So he had swiftly come here and ordered the two captives brought aboard his own flagship to do away with them before they could tell what they knew.
Gordon looked wildly around the circle of officers. "You've got to believe me! I'm no traitor! It was Corbulo himself who murdered my father and who is betraying the Empire to Shorr Kan!"
He saw hard, cold unbelief and bitter hatred in the officers' faces. Then Gordon recognized one familiar face.
It was the craggy red face of Hull Burrel, the Antarian captain who had saved him from the Cloud-raiders on Earth. He remembered now that for that, Hull Burrel had been promoted aide to the Commander.
"Hull Burrell, you surely believe me!" Gordon appealed. "You know that Shorr Kan tried to have me kidnapped before."
The big Antarian scowled. "I thought then he did. I didn't know then you were secretly in league with him, that all that was just pretense."