Star Bridge by James Gunn Read Free Book Online Page A

Denver, so that it would be nearer the stars. Like Eron, it ruled the known world. Legend says that a great barbarian leader sacked Sunport in its greatness. He led his nomad bands upon it, the legend says, and tore it down and gave it back to the sun, its might and its oppression.”
    â€œEron, too, can be destroyed,” Horn said.
    â€œA straw man.” Wu chuckled. “Legend is not to be trusted. Sunport was dead long before then. Created by a historic need, it died when its job was done. That tribal hero cremated a corpse.”
    Horn shrugged. There were immediate problems; he was intent upon the crowded surface of the sealed ruins.
    Across giant doors in the black cube’s face was a broad platform. Obviously temporary, it had the solidity of permanence. Like the broad steps that led up to it, the platform was gleaming, golden plastic. Emerging from under it and stretching far across the field were deep, metal-lined tracks. Facing the platform were concentric semicircles of bleachers, their tiers capable of seating many thousands.
    Pavilions were a riot of color everywhere. Milling among them were the Golden Folk. Surely there were more of them here, Horn thought, than had ever been gathered together before. Below him was the aristocracy of Eron, the heirs of the universe, proud, powerful, arrogant—and effeminate. Not one of them could have done what he had done to get here.
    The voices rose to Horn, their laughter, their gaiety, high-pitched, nervous. It sounded like the music for a last palsied dance before dissolution.
    They were leeches, bloodsuckers. It would be pleasant to have the power to crush them all. The white, anemic worlds would bless him and grow strong again. But only one of them was to die. There would be time for only one.
    The Golden Folk were no threat. Danger lay only in the strength they bought. Guards, sprinkled thickly, outnumbered their masters. They lined the perimeter of the paved mesa, alert and watchful. Units were posted in strategic spots. They clustered around the base of the black cube. They seemed unusually tall there, even at this distance. They were the Elite Guard, Horn realized, the three-meter Denebolan lancers.
    It wasn’t a question of being afraid of them. They were only a complication to be considered.
    Monoliths ringed the edges of the mesa. They were the tall, black spires of battleships, their one-hundred-meter diameters and half-kilometer lengths dwarfed only by the monument. Two broad, golden bands, fore and aft, adapted them to passage through the Tube. Nothing projected beyond them; it was understood that they kept the ship from touching the Tube’s deadly walls.
    There were nine of the monoliths, each one a sleek, efficient, ruthless fighting machine. Each one carried twelve thirty-inch rifles. The thrust of their unitron helices could throw twelve-ton projectiles at velocities sufficient to vaporize them on impact. One shot would have split apart a mountain.
    Only the rifles, normally retracted into flat turrets in the N-iron hulls, were busy, roaming restlessly in search of targets in the pale sky or on the mountains beyond that seemed close but were actually kilometers away. They found nothing to stop their searching.
    Other ships were in the sky and on the ground: cruisers, scoutships.… Eron guarded its rulers thoroughly.
    One small pistol against the massive power that had crushed a star cluster. It was not too uneven. Horn wasn’t fighting with battleships, and brute power isn’t efficient at swatting gnats. It takes only one small bullet to kill a man.
    They thought eight hundred meters was an impossible range for a portable weapon. Horn smiled grimly. Eron didn’t know its own devices.
    Something whined above him. Instinctively, Horn threw himself down in the brush-covered hollow and turned his head to glance upward. The fantastic black mass of a battleship was poised above them, its hull rippling with iridescent