The Star Kings cotsk-1 Read online

  "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-spool: "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.

  "Highness, it grows late!"

  Gordon turned jerkily, startled. A grave servant, a stocky man with bluish skin, was bowing.

  One of Zarth Arn's personal servants, he guessed. He would have to be careful with this man!

  "Yes, what of that?" he asked, with an assumption of impatience.

  "The Feast of Moons will begin within the hour," rem
inded the servant. "You should make ready, highness."

  Gordon suddenly remembered what Jhal Arn had said of a Feast. A royal banquet, he guessed, to be held this night.

  What was it Jhal had said of some announcement that Arn Abbas was to make? And what had been the talk of "Murn" and "Lianna" and his duty?

  Gordon braced himself for the ordeal. A banquet meant exposing himself to the eyes of a host of people-all of whom, no doubt, knew Zarth Arn and would notice his slightest slip. But he had to go.

  "Very well, I will dress now," he told the servant.

  It was at least a slight help that the blue-skinned servitor procured and laid out his garments for him. The jacket and trousers were of silky black, with a long black cloak to hang from his shoulders.

  When he had dressed, the servant pinned on his breast a comet-emblem worked in wonderfully-blazing green jewels. He guessed it to be the insignia of his royal rank in the Empire.

  Gordon felt again the sense of unreality as he surveyed his unfamiliar figure, his dark, aquiline face, in a tall mirror.

  "I need a drink," he told the servant jerkily. "Something strong."

  The blue servant looked at him in faint surprise, for a moment.

  "Saqua, highness?" he asked, and Gordon nodded.

  The brown liquor the man poured out sent a fiery tingle through Gordon's veins.

  Some of the shaky strain left his nerves as he drank another goblet of the saqua. He felt a return of reckless self-confidence as he left the apartment.

  "What the devil!" Gordon thought. "I wanted adventure-and I'm getting it!"

  More adventure than he had bargained for, truly! He had never dreamed of such an ordeal as was now ahead of him-of appearing before the nobility of this star-flung Empire as its prince!

  All the mammoth, softly-lit palace seemed astir with soft sound and laughter and movement, as streams of brilliantly-garbed men and women moved along its motowalks. Gordon, to whom they bowed respectfully, noted their direction and went forward casually.

  The gliding walks took him down through the lofty corridors and halls to a broad vestibule with wonderful golden walls. Here councilors, nobles, men and women high in the Empire, drew aside for him.

  Gordon nerved himself, strode toward the high doors whose massive golden leaves were now thrown back. A silk-garbed chamberlain bowed and spoke clearly into the vast hall beyond.

  "His highness, Prince Zarth Arn!"

  6: The Feast Of Moons

  Gordon stopped stock still, shaken by an inward quaking. He stood on a wide dais at the side of a circular hall that was of cathedral loftiness and splendor.

  The vast, round room of black marble held rows of tables which themselves glowed with intrinsic light. They bore a bewildering array of glass and metal dishes, and along them sat some hundreds of brilliantly-dressed men and women.

  But not all these banqueters were human! though humans were dominant, just as they were throughout the galaxy, there were also representatives of the Empire's aboriginal races. Despite their conventional garb, those he could see clearly looked grotesquely alien to Gordon-a frog-like, scaly green man with bulging eyes, a beaked, owl-faced winged individual, two black spidery figures with too many arms and legs.

  John Gordon's dazed eyes lifted, and for a moment he thought this whole vast room was open to the sky. High overhead curved the black vault of the night heavens, gemmed with thousands of blazing stars and constellations. Into that sky, two golden moons and one of pale silver hue were climbing toward conjunction.

  It took a moment for Gordon to realize that that sky was an artificial planetarium-ceiling, so perfect was the imitation. Then he became aware that the eyes of all these folk had turned upon him. On the dais, there was a table with a score of brilliant people, Jhal Arn's tall figure had risen and was beckoning impatiently to him.

  Jhal Arn's first words shocked him back to realization of how badly his caution and self-control had slipped.

  "What's the matter, Zarth? You look as though you'd never seen the Hall of Stars before!"

  "Nerves, I guess," Gordon answered huskily. "I think I need another drink."

  Jhal Arn burst into laughter. "So you've been fortifying yourself for tonight? Come, Zarth, it isn't that bad."

  Gordon numbly slid into the seat to which Jhal Arn had led him, one separated by two empty chairs from the places where Jhal sat with his lovely wife and little son.

  He found grizzled Commander Corbulo on his other side. Across the table sat a thin, nervous-eyed and aging man who he soon learned was Orth Bodmer, Chief Councilor of the Empire.

  Corbulo, a stern figure in his plain uniform, bowed to Gordon as did the other people along this raised table.

  "You're looking pale and downcast, Zarth," rumbled the grizzled space-admiral. "That's what you get, skulking in laboratories on Earth. Space is the place for a young man like you."

  "I begin to think you're right," muttered Gordon. "I wish to Heaven I was there now."

  Corbulo grunted. "So that's it? Tonight's announcement, eh? Well, it's necessary. The help of the Fomalhaut Kingdom will be vital to us if Shorr Kan attacks."

  What the devil were they talking about, John Gordon wondered bitterly? The names "Murn" and "Lianna" that Jhal Arn had mentioned, this reference to Fomalhaut star-kingdom again-what did they portend?

  Gordon found a servant bending obsequiously over his shoulder, and told the man, "Saqua, first."

  The brown liquor spun his brain a little, this time. He was aware, as he drank another goblet, that Corbulo was looking at him in stern disapproval, and that Jhal Arn was grinning.

  The brilliant scene before him, the shining tables, the splendid human and unhuman throng, and the wonderful sky-ceiling of stars and climbing moons, held Gordon fascinated. So this was the Feast of Moons?

  Music that rippled in long, haunting harmonies of muted strings and woodwinds was background to the gay, buzzing chatter along the glittering tables. Then the music stopped and horns flared a loud silver challenge.

  All rose to their feet. Seeing Jhal Arn rising, Gordon hastily followed his example.

  "His highness, Arn Abbas, sovereign of the Mid-Galactic Empire, Suzerain of the Lesser Kingdoms, Governor of the stars and worlds of the Marches of Outer Space!

  "Her highness, the Princess Lianna, ruler of the Kingdom of Fomalhaut!"

  The clear, loud announcements gave John Gordon a shock of astonishment even before the giant, regal figure of Arn Abbas strode onto the dais, with a girl upon his arm.

  So "Lianna" was a girl, a princess-ruler of the little western star-kingdom of Fomalhaut? But what had she to do with him?

  Arn Abbas, magnificent in a blue-black cloak upon which blazed the glorious jewels of the royal comet-emblem, stopped and turned his bleak eyes angrily on Gordon.

  "Zarth, are you forgetting protocol?" he snapped. "Come here!"

  Gordon stumbled forward. He got only a swift impression of the girl beside the emperor.

  She was tall, though she did not look so beside Arn Abbas' giant height. As tall as himself, her slim, rounded figure perfectly outlined by her long, shimmering white gown, she held her ash-golden head proudly high.

  Pride, beauty, consciousness of authority-these were what Gordon read in the chiseled white face, the faintly scornful red mouth, the cool, clear gray eyes that rested gravely on him.

  Arn Abbas took Gordon's hand in one of his, and Lianna's in the other. The towering sovereign raised his voice.

  "Nobles and captains of the Empire and our allied star-kingdoms, I announce to you the coming marriage of my second son, Zarth Arn, and the Princess Lianna of Fomalhaut!"

  Marriage? Marriage to this proudly beautiful star-kingdom princess? Gordon felt as though hit by a thunderbolt. So that was what Jhal Arn and Corbulo had been referring to? But good God, he couldn't go through with this! He wasn't Zarth Arn-

  "Take her hand, you fool!" snarled the emperor. "Have you lost your wits?"

  Numbly, John
Gordon managed to grasp the girl's slim, ring-laden fingers.

  Arn Abbas, satisfied, stalked forward to take his seat at the table. Gordon remained frozen.

  Lianna gave him a sweet, set smile, but her voice was impatient as she said in an undertone, "Conduct me to our place, so that the others can sit down."

  Gordon became aware that the whole host in the Hall of Stars remained standing, looking at himself and the girl.

  He stumbled forward with her, clumsily handed her into her chair, and sat down beside her. There was the rustle of the hosts re-seating themselves, and the rippling music sounded forth again.

  Lianna was looking at him with fine brows arched a little, her eyes clouded by impatience and resentment.

  "Your attitude toward me will create gossip. You look positively appalled!"

  Gordon nerved himself. He had to keep up his imposture for the time being. Zarth Arn was apparently being used as a political pawn, was being shoved into this marriage and had agreed to it.

  He had to play the real Zarth's part, for now. He'd find some way of getting back to Earth to exchange places with the real Zarth Arn, before the marriage.

  He drained his saqua goblet again, and leaned toward Lianna with a sudden recklessness.

  She expected him to be an ardent fiancé, to be Zarth Arn. All right, blast it, he would be! It was no fault of his if there was deception in it. He hadn't asked to play this role!!

  "Lianna, they're so busy admiring you that they don't even look at me," he told her.

  Lianna's clear eyes became puzzled in expression. "I never saw you like this before, Zarth."

  Gordon laughed. "Why, then, there's a new Zarth Arn-Zarth Arn is a different man, now!"

  Truth enough in that assertion, as only he knew! But the girl looked more perplexed, her fine brows drawing together in a little frown.

  The feast went on, in a glow of warmth and color and buzzing voices. And the saqua Gordon had drunk swept away his last trace of apprehension and nervousness.

  Adventure? He'd wanted it and he'd gotten it, adventure such as no man of his time had ever dreamed. If death itself were the end of all this, would he not still be gainer? Wasn't it worth risking life to sit here in the Hall of Stars at Throon, with the lords of the great star-kingdoms and a princess of far-off suns at his side?