Hull Burrel slid open the door of an austere little room. "My own cabin, Prince Zarth. I beg you'll use it till we reach Throon."
Left alone, John Gordon felt a slight relaxing of the extreme tension under which he had been laboring for hours.
They had left Earth as soon as Vel Quen's burial was over. And every moment of the hours since then had impressed on Gordon the vital necessity of playing a part.
He could not tell the weird truth about himself. Zarth Arn had insisted that to tell anyone would bring disaster on both Gordon and himself. Why was it so dangerous? Gordon couldn't guess, as yet.
But he was sure that he must heed that warning, must let no one suspect that he was the prince only in physical body. Even if he told, they wouldn't believe him! Old Vel Quen had said that Zarth Arn's weird experiments had been wholly secret. Who would credit such a crazy story?
Gordon had determined that his only possible course of action was to play the part of Zarth Arn as best he could at Throon, and return as soon as possible to the tower-laboratory on Earth. Then he could plan a way to re-effect the exchange of minds.
"But it seems that I'm being sucked into some crazy tangle of galactic conflict that'll make it hard to get away," he thought, dismayed.
Lying on the padded bunk, Gordon wondered wearily if any man since time began had ever found himself in such a situation as this.
"There's nothing for it but to bull ahead and play it out as Zarth Arn, if I can," he thought. "If Vel Quen had only lived!"
He felt again a pang of regret for the old scientist. Then, tired and unstrung, he fell asleep.
When Gordon awoke, he unconsciously expected to see the familiar plaster ceiling of his New York apartment overhead. Instead, he looked at a glittering metal ceiling and heard a deep, steady drone.
He realized then it had been no wild dream. He was still in Zarth Arn's body, in this big warship that was racing through the galaxy toward a doubtful reception for himself.
A uniformed man who bowed respectfully when he entered brought him food-an unfamiliar red substance that seemed to be synthetic meat, fruit, and the chocolate-like drink he already knew.
Hull Burrel came in then. "We're making almost two hundred parsecs an hour and will reach Canopus in three days, highness."[5]
Gordon did not venture any reply other than a nod. He realized how fatally easy it would be to make slips of pure ignorance.
That possibility was a weight on his mind in the hours that followed, adding to the already superhuman strain of his imposture.
He had to go through the big cruiser as though such a ship was familiar to him, he had to accept references to a thousand things which Zarth Arn would know, without betraying his ignorance.
He carried it off, he hoped, by wrapping himself in brooding silence. But could he carry it off at Throon?
On the third day, John Gordon entered the spacious bridge to be dazzled by a blinding flare of light that forced a way even thorough the heavy filter-screens across the windows.
"Canopus at last," remarked Hull Burrel. "We shall dock at Throon in a few hours."
Again, wild bugle-calls of excitement soared in Gordon's mind as he looked through the windows at a tremendous spectacle.
It was worth all risk and danger, it was worth that nightmare traverse from body to body across the gulf of time, for a man of the 20th Century to look on such a sight as this!
The majesty of Canopus was a thundering impact on his senses. The colossal sun revised all his limited ideas of grandeur. It blazed here in white splendor like a firmament aflame, drenching the warship and all space with a glorious, supernal radiance.
Gordon's senses reeled, as he tried to keep his face impassive. He was only a man of the past and his brain was not used to such a shock of wonder as this.
The drone of the great pressure-ray generators dropped in key as the cruiser swung in around an Earth-sized planet that was one of a dozen worlds circling this monster star.
And this was Throon. This world of green continents and silver seas spinning in opalescent white sunshine was the heart and brain of the Empire that stretched half across the galaxy.
"We'll dock at Throon City, of course," Hull Burrel was saying. "Commander Corbulo has stereoed me to bring you to Arn Abbas at once."
Again, Gordon tensed. "I will be glad to see my father," he ventured.
His father? A man he had never seen, a ruler who governed the titanc expanse of suns and worlds behind him, and who was parent of the man in whose physical body Gordon now lived?
Again, Zarth Arn's remembered warning steadied Gordon. Tell no one the truth-no one! Brazen through this incredible imposture somehow, and get back to Earth for the re-exchange as soon as he could-
The silvery seas and green continents of Throon rushed up toward the Caris as the warship made planetfall with massive disregard of preliminary deceleration.
Gordon caught his breath as he looked down. From the edge of a silver ocean rose a lofty range of mountains that flashed and glittered as though of glass. They were of glass, he saw a moment later, a towering range formed by extrusion of vast masses of molten silicates from the planet.
And perched on a plateau of these Glass Mountains high above the sea was a fairy, unreal city, Its graceful domes and towers were like bubbles of colored glass themselves. Pinnacles and terraces took the light of Canopus and flashed it back in a glory of quivering effulgence. Throon City, this-the core and capital of the Empire.
The big cruiser sank toward a huge spaceport just north of the fairy city. In its sunken docks and quays brooded scores, hundreds, of the Empire's star-roving warships. Massive, thousand-foot long battleships, heavy cruisers, fast destroyers and slim phantom-cruisers and ponderous, tub-shaped monitors with huge guns-all these craft wore the shining comet-emblem of the Mid-Galactic Empire.
Gordon stepped out of the Caris with Hull Burrel and the respectful officers, into sunlight so weirdly white and beautiful that not even the urgency of his situation prevented him looking about in increased wonder.
The brooding bulks of the great battleships loomed up in the docks all around him, their batteries of grim atom-guns silhouetted against the sky. In the distance rose the incredible, shimmering domes and spires of the city.
Hull Burrel's puzzled voice jerked Gordon from his petrification, recalling him to the necessities of the present. "The car is waiting for us in the tubeway, highness," reminded the Antarian captain.
"Of course," Gordon said hastily, forcing himself to move.
He had to watch the trend of Hull Burrel's direction, so as not to go astray. They made their way between the looming ships, past great mobile cranes, respectfully saluting officers, uniformed men standing at rigid attention.
Every minute John Gordon felt more strongly the hopelessness of what he had set out to do. How could he maintain his impersonation, when everything here was so stunningly new and strange?
"Disaster for both of us if you tell!" That warning of Zarth Arn-the real Zarth Arn-rang through his mind again with a chilling, steadying effect.
"Bull it through!" he told himself. "They can't dream that you're not the prince, no matter what mistakes you make. Watch every moment-"
They reached the opening of a lighted stair that led down beneath the tarmac of the spaceport. Below were round metal tunnels branching off into the darkness. A cylindrical metal car waited.
[5]