Battle for the Stars

It was well called the Dragon's Throat, thought Kirk. Throat of fire, of burning suns, a cosmic blind-alley into danger!

You made your decision. You threw a ship, a hundred men, your officers, your friends, your own Commander's badge you threw them all down on the gamble. But when the stakes were stars....

He said to himself, "The hell with it, we're committed."

He said aloud, "Radar?"

Joe Garstang, standing on the bridge beside him, answered without turning. "Nothing has been monitored yet. Not
yet
."

Kirk's palms itched. If they were running into an ambush, if Orion heavy cruisers were waiting for them, they'd soon know it. There could be ships all around them. Radar wasn't too dependable, in the howling vortices of force-field energy flung out around this jungle of stars.

Through the broad bridge-windows—the "windows" that were really scanners cunningly translating faster-than-light probe rays into visual images—there beat upon his face the light of a thousand suns.

It was Cluster N-356-44, in the Standard Atlas. It was also hellfire made manifest, to starmen. It was a hive of swarming suns, pale green and violet, white and yellow-gold and smoky red, blazing so fiercely that the eye was robbed of perspective and these stars seemed to crowd and jostle and rub each other. Up against the black backdrop of the firmament they burned, pouring forth the torrents of their life-energy to whirl in terrific cosmic maelstroms. The merchant ships that boldly drove the great darks between ordinary star-worlds would recoil aghast from the navigational perils here. Only a fool—or a cruiser—would go in here.

There was a narrow cleft between cliffs of stars, with the flame-shot glow of an immense nebula roofing it. The only possible way into the heart of the cluster, this Dragon's Throat of starman legend. But others had gone in this way. At least, so said the rumors, rumors that had reached the squadron as far away as the Pleiades. Rumors too factual, too alarming, to be ignored.

Rumors of cruisers from the squadrons of Orion Sector, that had gone into this cluster. Rumors of a secret base, on a hidden world. The ships of Orion Sector had no business here. Neither, for that matter, did the ships of Kirk's own Lyra Sector. This cluster was no-man's land, part of the buffer zones that were supposed to reduce friction between the five great Sectors of the galaxy. Actually, these stellar wildernesses were the scenes of constant, nameless little wars.

The five governors of the five great Sectors were, all of them, ambitious men. Solleremos of Orion, Vorn of Cepheus, Gianea of Leo, Strowe of Perseus, Ferdias of Lyra—they watched each other jealously. Five great barons of the galaxy, paying only a lip-service allegiance to the shadowy Central Council far away on a half-forgotten world called Earth, in reality independent satraps of the stars, hungry for space, hungry for power. Yes, even Ferdias, thought Kirk. Ferdias was the man he served, respected, and even loved in a craggy sort of way. But Ferdias, like the others, played a massive game of chess with men and suns, moving his squadrons here and his undercover operatives there, laboring ceaselessly to hold on to what he had and perhaps enlarge his domain, just a little, a solar system here and a minor cluster there....

And the game went on. Right now, Kirk thought he was probably heading into a trap. But if Orion cruisers
were
in here, he had to know it. A hostile base here, if left to grow, could dominate all the star-lanes from Capella to Arcturus. It was up to him as a squadron-commander, to go in and find out.

Kirk looked at the looming, overtopping cliffs of stars that went up to the glowing nebula above and down to the black pit of absolutely nothing below.

He thought of Lyllin, waiting for him back at Vega. A starman had no business with a wife.

He said again, "Radar?"

"Still nothing," said Garstang. His square face was no less grim than Kirk's. He was captain of this flagship
Starsong
, and what happened to her was important to him. "If there is a base here," he said, "we should have come in with the whole squadron."

Kirk shook his head. He had made his decision and he was not going to start doubting it now, no matter how lonely and exposed he felt.

"That could be exactly what Solleremos wants. With the right kind of ambush, a whole squadron could be clobbered in this mess. Then Lyra would be wide open. No. One ship is enough to risk."

"Yes, sir," said Garstang.

"The hell with you, Joe," said Kirk. "Say what you're thinking."

"I am thinking that the rumor mentioned cruisers, plural, indefinite. We'd better catch them while they're all asleep."

The
Starsong
forged her way onward toward the two red suns at the end of the Dragon's Throat. And Kirk thought that if he had made the wrong decision, if the
Starsong
never came back again, Ferdias would be very angry. But that would not then make any difference to him.

Looking up at the flaring, tumbling waves of the nebula, like the underside of a burning ocean, Kirk said to Garstang:

"Does it seem to you the pace is speeding up? I mean, this jockeying for power between the Sectors has gone on a long time, ever since Earth lost real authority. But it seems different lately, somehow. More incidents, more feeling of something driving ahead toward a definite goal, a plan and a pattern you can't quite see. You know what I mean?"

Garstang nodded "I know."

The computer banks clicked and chattered. Relays kicked, compensating power, compensating course, compensating tides of gravitic force quite capable of breaking a ship apart like a piece of flawed glass. The two red binaries gave them a final glare of malice and were gone. They were clear of the Throat.

A star the color of a peacock's breast lay dead ahead.

"Ready for approach," said Garstang.

"Stand by," said Kirk. "We'll wait until the last possible minute to shift. If they haven't picked us up already, maybe they won't."

Garstang gave his orders. Kirk watched the blaze of peacock-blue grow swiftly. No ambush in the Throat, so now what? Ambush on the world of the blue star? Or nothing? A wild-goose chase, time and money wasted? Or maybe Solleremos had planted those rumors to draw Kirk's attention while a strike was made somewhere else.

Suddenly Kirk felt very old and very tired. He had been in the squadron for twenty years, ever since he was sixteen, and in all these twenty years the great game of stars, the strain, the worry, had never let up.

It must have been nice in a way, Kirk thought, in the old days a couple of centuries ago when Earth still governed in fact, and all the star-squadrons were part of the Galactic Navy, and the great battle was with the galaxy itself and not with one another.

"We're getting close," said Garstang.

Kirk shook himself and got down to business. There followed a few minutes of split-second activity, and then the
Starsong
had shuddered out of overdrive and was plunging toward a bright world almost dangerously close to her. There was still no sign of any enemy, and the communicators remained silent.

An hour later by ship's chrono they had located the one port of entry listed for the planet and they had set the
Starsong
down in the middle of a large piece of natural desert that served well enough for what space traffic ever came here.

It was night on this side of the planet. There was no moon, but on a cluster world a moon is a useless luxury. The sky blazes with a million stars, so that day is replaced not by darkness but by the light of another sort, soft and many-colored, full of strange glimmers and flitting shadows. In this eery star-glow a town was visible about a mile away. Otherwise there was nothing. No ships.... No legions of Orion Sector.

"The ships could be hidden somewhere," Garstang said. "Maybe halfway around the planet, but waiting to jump us as soon as they get word."

Kirk admitted that was possible. He put on his best dress uniform of blue-and-silver, and strapped a portable communicator between his shoulders. It rather spoiled the effect, but there was no help for that. Garstang watched him.

"How many men will you want?" he asked.

"None. I'm going in alone."

Garstang's eyes widened. "I won't come right out and say you're crazy."

"I was here once before," said Kirk. "When old Volland was commander and I was an ensign. These people are poor but proud. They have traditions of long-ago splendor, claim their kings ruled the whole cluster and so on. They dislike strangers, and won't let many in."

"But if Solleremos' men are already here—"

"That's the reason for the porto." Kirk frowned, trying to plan ahead. "Exactly twenty minutes after I enter the town I'll contact you, and I'll continue to do so at twenty-minute intervals. If I'm so much as a minute late, take off and buzz hell out of the place. It'll give me a bargaining point, anyway."

Garstang said dourly, "A lot can happen in twenty minutes. Suppose you're not able to bargain?"

"Then you're on your own."

In the airlock, open now and filled with a dry, stinging wind, Kirk paused, looking toward the distant town, a lonely blot of darkness between the star-blazing sky and the gleaming sand. Here and there in it lights burned, but they were few and somehow not welcoming.

"She's all yours," he said to Garstang. "If anything looks wrong to you, don't wait for me. Take her away."

"Yes, sir," said Garstang.

Kirk smiled. He climbed down into the sand and began to walk.

The town took shape as he approached it. The stone-built houses, mostly round or octagonal, were scattered out with no particular plan. Under the red and gold and diamond-colored stars that burned above them as bright as moons, they looked curiously remote and evil, like old wizards in peaked hats, peering with little winking eyes. The dry wind blew, laden with alien scents. Apart from the wind there was no sound.

Three men met him at the edge of the town. They wore pale cloaks and carried long staffs tipped with horn. They were all of seven feet tall. They wore their hair high on their heads to accentuate this height, and they were slender and graceful as reeds, walking along with a light dancing step as though the wind blew them. But their faces in the star-glow were smooth and secret, their eyes as expressionless as bits of shiny glass.

"What does the man from outside desire?" asked one of them, in the universal speech.

Kirk said, "He desires to speak with those others from outside who enjoy your hospitality."

But they were not going to make it that easy for him. Their faces remained impassive, and the one who had just spoken said coolly, "Our lord has wisdom in all matters. Perhaps he will understand your words. I do not."

They fell in around Kirk and moved with him into the wide sandy space that went between the wandering houses. The nerves tightened up in Kirk's belly, and his back felt cold. He looked at his wrist chrono, carefully. There was no sound but the whispering of sand under their feet. Garstang would be watching with the 'scope, but once he was in among the houses he could no longer be seen.

That was almost at once. The tall men walked on with their light swaying stride, so that he had to move at an undignified trot to keep up. The stone houses with their high roofs closed in behind him. This dark and brooding town ill accorded with old tales of cluster-kings, he thought. Yet the past held many things.

When they were close to the center of the town, the leader stopped beside a round structure from whose open door came light.

"Will the man from outside enter the dwelling of our lord?"

Kirk breathed a little easier as he went through the door. Apparently there was no truth to the rumors that....

A chopping blow took him on the back of the head. He fell forward. He was stunned but not unconscious, and he tried to roll over, thrashing out blindly with his fists and feet. But at once there were men on top of him, heavy solid men grinding his face into the gritty carpet, pounding the wind out of him, holding him down.

In a minute his hands were tied tight behind him and his ankles lashed together. They cut the straps of the porto and pulled it off him. Then, like a sack of meal, he was dragged to the wall and propped upright.

In an absolute fury of rage, he spat blood out of his mouth and looked up dizzily into the light.

There were three or four men here, obviously not natives of this planet, but he did not pay much attention to them. The one he looked at stood apart, directly in front of Kirk, a lean dark iron-faced man with very alert eyes, and the easy, dangerous manner of one who enjoys his work because he is so admirably well fitted for it, as a cat enjoys hunting.

He said to Kirk, "My name is Tauncer."

Kirk nodded. He looked with feral interest at this most famous of Solleremos' agents. "I should be flattered, shouldn't I?"

Tauncer shrugged. "We all do what we can, Commander. Each in his own way."

"Well," said Kirk. "What do you want?"

"The answer to one simple question."

His face came closer to Kirk's, very tense, very keen, searching for any sign of evasion.

He asked his question.

"What is Ferdias planning to do about Earth?"