Shorr Kan dismissed Durk Undis and the guards, and quickly greeted Gordon.

“You've slept, rested? That's good. Now tell me what you've decided.”

Gordon shrugged. “There was no decision to make. I can't give you the secret of the Disruptor.”

Shorr Kan's strong face changed slightly in expression, and he spoke after a pause.

“I see. I might have expected it. Old mental habits, old traditions-even intelligence can't conquer them, sometimes.”

His eyes narrowed slightly. “Now listen, Zarth. I told you yesterday that was an unpleasant alternative if you refused. I didn't go into details because I wanted to gain your willing cooperation.

“But now you force me to be explicit. So let me assure you first of one thing. I am going to have the Disruptor secret from you, whether you give it willingly or not.”

“Torture, then?” sneered Gordon. “That is what I expected.”

Shorr Kan made a disgusted gesture. “Faugh, I don't use torture. It's clumsy and undependable, and alienates even your own followers. No, I have quite another method in mind.”

He gestured to the older of the two nervous-looking men nearby. “Land Allar there, is one of our finest psycho-scientists. Some years ago he devised a certain apparatus which I've been forced to utilize several times.

“It's a brain-scanner. It literally reads the brain, by scanning the neurones, plotting the synaptic connections, and translating that physical set-up into the knowledge, memories and information possessed by that particular brain. With it, before this night is over, I can have the Disruptor secret right out of your brain.”

“That,” said John Gordon steadily, “is a rather unclever bluff.”

Shorr Kan shook his dark head. “I assure you it is not. I can prove it to you it you want me to. Otherwise, you must take my word that the scanner will take everything from your brain.”

He went on, “The trouble is that the impact of the scanning rays on the brain for hour after hour in time breaks down the synaptic connections it scans. The subject emerges from the process a mindless idiot. That is what will happen to you if we use it on you.”

The hair bristled on Gordon's neck. He had not a doubt now that Shorr Kan was speaking the truth. If nothing else, the pale, sick faces of the two scientists proved his assertion.

Weird, fantastic, nightmarishly horrible-yet wholly possible to this latter-day science. An instrument that mechanically read the mind, and in reading wrecked it.

“I don't want to use it on you, I repeated.

Shorr Kan was saying earnestly. “For as I told you, you'd be extremely valuable to me as a puppet emperor after the galaxy is conquered. But if you persist in refusing to tell that secret, I simply have no choice.”

John Gordon felt an insane desire to laugh. This was all too ironic.

“You've got everything so nicely calculated,” he: told Shorr Kan. “But again, you find yourself defeated by pure chance.”

“Just what do you mean?” asked the League ruler, with dangerous softness.

I mean that I can't tell you the secret of the Disruptor because I don't know it.”

Shorr Kan looked impatient. “That is a rather childish evasion. Everyone knows that as son of the emperor you would be told all about the Disruptor.”

Gordon nodded. “Quite true. But I happen not to be the emperor's son. I'm a different man entirely.”

Shorr Kan shrugged. “We are gaining nothing by all this. Go ahead.”

The last words were addressed to the two scientists. At that moment Gordon savagely leaped for Shorr Kan's throat!

He never reached it. One of the scientists had a glass paralyzer ready, and swiftly jabbed it at the back of his neck.

Gordon sank, shocked and stunned. Only dimly, he felt them lifting him onto the metal table. Through his dimming vision, Shorr Kan's hard face and cool black eyes looked down.

“Your last chance, Zarth. Make but a signal and you can still avoid this fate.”

Gordon felt the hopelessness of it all, even as his raging anger made him glare up at the League commander.

The paralyzer touched him again. This shock was like a physical blow. He just sensed the two scientists busy with the massive metal cone above his head, and then darkness claimed him.

Chapter XIV. Dark-World Menace

GORDON came slowly to awareness of a throbbing headache. All the devil's triphammers seemed to be pounding inside his skull, and he felt a sickening nausea.

A cool glass was held to his lips, and a voice spoke insistently in his ear.

“Drink this.”

Gordon managed to gulp down a pungent liquid. Presently his nausea lessened and his head began to ache less violently.

He lay for a little time before he finally ventured to open his eyes. He still lay on the table, but the metal cone and the complicated apparatus were not now in sight.

Over him was bending the anxious face of one of the two Cloud scientists. Then the strong features and brilliant black eyes of Shorr Kan came down in his field of vision.

“Can you sit up?” asked the scientist. “It will help you recover faster.”

The man's arm around his shoulders enabled Gordon weakly to slide off the table and into a chair.

Shorr Kan came and stood in front of him, looking down at him with a queer wonder and interest in his expression.

He asked, “How do you feel now, John Gordon?”

Gordon started. He stared back up at the League commander.

“Then you know?” he husked.

“Why else do you think we halted the brain-scanning?” Shorr Kan retorted. “If it weren't for that, you'd be a complete mental wreck by now.”

He shook his head wonderingly. “By Heaven, it was incredible. But the brain scanner can't lie. And when the first minutes of its reading drew out the fact that you were John Gordon's mind in Zarth Arn's body, and that you did not know the Disruptor secret, I stopped the scanning.”

Shorr Kan added ruefully. “And I thought I had that secret finally in my grasp. The pains I've taken to fish Zarth Arn into my net, and all for nothing. But who'd dream of a thing like this, who'd guess that a man of the ancient past was inside Zarth's body?”

Shorr Kan knew. John Gordon tried to rally his dazed faculties to deal with this startling new factor in the situation.

For the first time, someone in this future universe was cognizant of the weird imposture he had carried out. Just what would that mean to him?

Shorr Kan was striding to and fro. “John Gordon of ancient Earth, of an age two hundred thousand years in the past, here inside the brain and body of the second prince of the Empire. It still doesn't make sense.”

Gordon answered weakly. “Didn't your scanner tell you how it happened?”

The League commander nodded. “Yes, the outlines of the story were clear after a few minutes' scanning, for the whole fact of your imposture was uppermost in your mind.”

Ht uttered a soft curse. “That young fool Zarth Arn. Trading bodies with another man across time. Letting his crazy scientific curiosity about the past take him ages away, at the very moment his Empire is in danger.”

He fastened his gaze again on Gordon. “Why in the devil's name didn't you tell me? “

“I tried to tell you, and got nowhere with it,” Gordon reminded him.

Shorr Kan nodded. “That's right, you did. And I didn't believe. Who the devil would believe a thing like this, without the brain-scanner's proof of it?”

He paced to and fro, biting his lip, “Gordon, you've upset all my careful plans. I was sure that with you I had the Disruptor secret.”

John Gordon's mind was working swiftly now as his strength slowly returned. The discovery of his true identity changed his whole situation.

It might give him a remote chance of escape. A chance to get away with Lianna and warn the Empire of Corbulo's treachery and the imminent danger. Gordon thought he dimly saw a way.