Gordon, even in his dismay, had to choose his words. "I want to do my duty. But what help can I give?"
"It's Lianna that father is referring to," Jhal Arn said seriously. "You have dodged your duty there, Zarth."
He added, as though anticipating objections from Gordon. "Oh, I know why-I know all about Murn. But the Fomalhaut Kingdom is vital to the Empire in this crisis. You'll have to go through with it."
Lianna? Murn? The names had no meaning to John Gordon. They were mystery, like everything else in this mad imposture.
"You mean that Lianna-," he began, and left the words hanging in hope of provoking further explanation from Jhal Arn.
But Jhal only nodded. "You've got to do it, Zarth. Father is going to make the announcement at the Feast of Moons tonight."
He clapped Gordon on the back. "Buck up, it's not as bad as all that! You look as though you'd been condemned to death. I'll see you at the Feast."
He turned back into the inner room, leaving Gordon staring blankly after him.
Gordon stood, bewildered and badly worried. What kind of tangled complications was his involuntary impersonation of Zarth Arn getting him into? How long could he hope to carry it through?
Hull Burrel had gone into the inner room when Gordon came out. Now as Gordon stood frozenly, the big Antarian came out too.
"Prince Zarth, I owe you good fortune!" he exclaimed. "I expected to get reprimanded by Commander Corbulo for putting off my regular patrol course to touch at Sol."
"And he didn't reprimand you?" Gordon said mechanically.
"Sure he did-gave me the devil with bells on," Burrel grinned. "But your father said it turned out so lucky in giving me a chance to rescue you, that he's appointed me aide to the Commander himself!"
Gordon congratulated him. But he spoke perfunctorily, for his mind was upon his own desperately puzzling position.
He couldn't just stand here in the anteroom longer. Zarth Arn must have apartments in this great palace, and he'd be expected to go to them. The devil of it was he had no idea where there were!
He couldn't let his ignorance be suspected, though. So he took leave of Hull Burrel and walked confidently out of the anteroom by a different door, as though he knew quite well where he was going.
Gordon found himself in a corridor, on a gliding motowalk. The motowalk took him into a great circular room of shining silver. It was brilliantly illuminated by white sunlight pouring through high crystal windows. Around its walls marched black reliefs depicting a wilderness of dark stars, embers of burned out suns and lifeless worlds.
John Gordon felt dwarfed by the majesty and splendor of this great, somber chamber. He crossed it and entered another vast room, this one with walls that flamed with the glowing splendor of a whirling nebula.
"Where the devil are Zarth Arn's quarters in this place?" he wondered.
He realized his helplessness. He couldn't ask anyone where his own quarters were. Neither could he wander aimlessly through this vast palace without arousing wonder, perhaps suspicion.
A gray-skinned servant, a middle-aged man in the black livery of the palace, was already looking at him wonderingly across this Hall of the Nebula. The man bowed deeply as Gordon strode to him.
Gordon had had an idea. "Come with me to my apartments," he told the servant brusquely. "I have a task for you."
The gray man bowed again. "Yes, highness."
But the man remained there, waiting. Waiting for him to walk ahead, of course!
Gordon made an impatient gesture. "Go ahead! I'll follow."
If the servant found it strange he let none of that feeling appear in his masklike face. He turned and proceeded softly out of the great nebula room by another door. Gordon followed him into a corridor and onto a motowalk that glided upward like a sliding ramp. Swiftly and quietly the moving walk took them up through splendid, lofty corridors and stairs.
Twice they confronted groups coming downward by the return walk-two brilliantly-jeweled white girls and a laughing, swarthy naval captain in one; two grave gray officials in the other. All of them bowed in deep respect to Gordon. The motowalk switched off down a shimmery, pearl-walled passageway. A door ahead slid softly open of its own accord. Gordon followed through it into a high chamber with pure white walls.
The gray servant turned inquiringly toward him. "Yes, highness?"
How to get rid of the man? Gordon cut that problem short by taking the easiest method.
"I find I won't need you after all," he said carelessly. "You may go."
The man bowed himself out of the room, and Gordon felt a slight relaxing of his tension. Clumsy, his stratagem-but at least it had got him to the temporary refuge of Zarth Arn's apartments.
He found himself breathing heavily as though from exhausting effort. His hands were shaking. He had not realized the nervous effort his impersonation cost him. He mopped his brow.
"My God! Was any man ever in a position like this before?"
His tired mind refused to grapple with the problem now. To evade it, he walked slowly through the rooms of the suite.
Here was less splendor than he had seen elsewhere in the great palace. Apparently, Zarth Arn had not been of luxurious tastes. The rooms were comparatively austere.
The two living rooms had silken hangings and a few pieces of metal furniture of beautiful design. There was a rack of hundreds of thought-spools and one of the thought-spooclass="underline" "readers." A side room held much scientific apparatus, was in fact a small laboratory.
He glanced into a small bedroom, then went on toward tall windows that opened on a terrace gay with green verdure and flooded by sunlight. Gordon went out onto the terrace, and then froze.
"Throon City! Good Lord, who ever dreamed of a place like this!"
The little garden-terrace of his suite was high in the west wall of the huge, oblong palace. It looked out across the city.
City of the great star-empire's glory, gathering in itself an epitome of the splendor and power of that vast realm of many thousand star-worlds! Metropolis of grandeur so great that it stunned and paralyzed the eyes of John Gordon of little Earth!
The enormous white disk of Canopus was sinking toward the horizon, flashing a supernal brilliance across the scene. In that transfiguring radiance, the peaks and scarps of the Glass Mountains here above the sea flung back the sunset in banners and pennons of wild glory.
And outshining even the stupendous glory of the glassy peaks shone the fairy towers of Throon. Domes, minarets, graceful porticoes, these and the great buildings they adorned were of shimmering glass. Mightiest among the structures loomed the gigantic palace on whose high terrace he stood. Surrounded by wondrous gardens, it looked out royally across the great metropolis and the silver ocean beyond.
In the radiant sunset out there over the glittering peaks and heaving ocean there flitted swarms of fliers like shining fireflies. From the spaceport to the north, a half-dozen mighty battleships rose majestically and took off into the darkening sky.
The full grandeur and vastness of this star-empire hammered into Gordon's mind. For this city was the throbbing heart of those vast glooms and linked stars and worlds across which he had come.
"And I am supposed to be one of the ruling house of this realm!" he thought, dazed. "I can't keep it up. It's too vast, too overpowering-"
The enormous sun sank as Gordon numbly watched. Violet shadows darkened to velvet night across the metropolis.
Lights came on softly all through the glittering streets of Throon, and on the lower terraces of this giant palace.
Two golden moons climbed into the heavens, and hosts of countless stars broke forth in a glory of unfamiliar constellations that rivaled the soft, throbbing lights of the city.