ECLIPSING BINARIES

  

 Volume eight of The classic Family d'Alembert series

  

 By E.E. ‘Doc' Smith

 With Stephen Goldin

  

 Chapter 1

 The War Against SOTE

  

 Being summoned to Lady A's office was never a casual matter. Tanya Boros had to pass

 an ID and weapons checkpoint before she was even allowed into the elevator tube taking

 her down to the lowest basement level. There she passed a human-supervised retina

 scope check and a weapons detector scan. Then she had to walk alone down a brightly

 lit L-shaped corridor with camera eyes watching her every step of the way. The walls

 were gray and completely bare except for the innocuous-looking small projections she

 assumed were blaster barrels pointed directly at her.

  

 As she turned right at the far end of the hallway, she came abruptly to the heavy gray

 magnisteel door that was the final barrier to Lady A's office. There were some

 people-ones who had made serious mistakes on their assignments-who had gone

 through this door and never been seen alive again, though admittedly such cases were

 rare. Lady A normally dealt with faulty subordinates in a more efficient manner, letting

 others on her staff do the dirty work. More often a visit to Lady A meant a tongue-lashing

 for some slipup, some operation that had gone less smoothly than planned even if it was

 ultimately successful. Most of Lady A's plans did go smoothly, but she was a

 perfectionist and did not tolerate even minor faults in her hirelings.

  

 Even at best, being called to this office merely meant another hard, demanding job from

 a taskmaster who was never satisfied. There was still much to do if the conspiracy was

 to topple the Stanley dynasty from the Imperial Throne, and Lady A could never quite

 understand why her inferiors did not measure up to her own impeccable standards.

  

 For all these reasons, Tanya Boros was understandably nervous as she stood before the

 ponderous gray door. As far as she knew she'd done nothing wrong-but innocence was

 not always an alibi in Lady A's court. The woman who ran this vast, galaxy-wide

 conspiracy had been in a foul mood for the last six months, ever since the failure of

 Operation Annihilate. All plans had been put into abeyance while the conspiracy was

 evaluated from top to bottom and its goals reassessed. Things were now starting to

 move again-but Tanya Boros didn't know what place she would fill in the new

 organization, and that bothered her.

  

 Nervously she inserted her comparison disc into the appropriate slot and put her eyes to

 the viewer so the retina scope could check her pattern. Even after all the previous

 precautions, no one was permitted into Lady A's office without undergoing one final

 identity check; Lady A was too thorough for anyone to catch her unawares.

  

 Boros's retinal patterns matched the ones on her identity card, which the door returned

 to her. Then the heavy security portal swung slowly outward and Lady A said, "Come in,

 Tanya. I've been expecting you." Tanya Boros obeyed.

  

 The office was quite dim after the bright lighting of the corridor outside. Three of the

 walls were covered with cream-colored raw silk but were otherwise bare of adornment.

 The fourth wall, opposite the door, was one large triscreen bearing the image of a

 mist-shrouded stream tumbling between ancient eroding mountains.

  

 The floor was hard and black, polished smooth as ice; it was difficult to walk on it without

 making noise, and impossible to move quickly without slipping. Two black lacquered

 chairs-neither very comfortable-and a black lacquered table between them were the only

 concessions to a visitor's comfort.

  

 At the far end of the room near the left-hand corner stood a large, glowing green egg.

 Carved from solid jade, it pulsated slightly from internal illumination. As the egg pivoted

 slowly, Boros could see a computer terminal and keyboard built into the interior, which

 had been hollowed out to form a comfortable seat. The computer terminal, it was

 rumored, allowed instant access to all the conspiracy's files as well as a direct telecom

 link to the mysterious person known only as C. That immense jade egg represented the

 very heart of the conspiracy-and seated within this egg, back straight and looking as

 though she'd been born to rule the universe, was Lady A.

  

 The woman who ran the greatest conspiracy in human history was of average height-but

 that was the only thing average about her. Tanya Boros, never modest and renowned for

 her own attractiveness, always felt plain in the presence of this magnificent woman. Her

 figure and face were of classic beauty, mature but unwrinkled, and there was something

 inhumanly cold about them. She wore a tight-fitting dress of jade green silk one shade

 darker than the egg about her, with gold and silver phoenixes embroidered on the

 shoulders and sleeves. Her jet black hair, tightly braided, was draped casually across her

 left shoulder, and her green eyes peered out from beneath those arching black brows

 with painful intensity.

  

 As the door closed behind her, Tanya Boros stood in this regal presence not knowing

 what to say. Even though she'd been raised in the upper echelons of galactic nobility,

 she'd never met anyone else who was as awe-inspiring as Lady A.

  

 "Don't just stand there, child," Lady A said. "Have a seat." She gestured with a perfectly

 manicured hand at one of the two black lacquered chairs.

  

 "Thank you," Boros said, taking the indicated seat. The two women sat in silence for a

 long moment. Boros grew increasingly uncomfortable at the appraising scrutiny she was

 being given. It felt as though Lady A were weighing her very soul and finding it a feather's

 weight this side of perfection.

  

 "We haven't had much chance to talk recently, have we?" Lady A said at last, breaking

 the unbearable silence. "No, ma'am."

  

 "Not since Gastonia, really."

  

 Boros's eyes widened a little. "That really wasn't my fault. I did everything expected of

 me. . . ."

  

 Lady A raised a hand to silence her. "No one's blaming you for anything. Don't start

 looking for excuses where none are due; it's bad form. No, everything on Gastonia itself

 went as scheduled. You performed admirably. The reason for failure lay elsewhere."

  

 She settled back in the glowing egg, but her body never fully relaxed. "To be candid, I

 suppose I should admit the fault was mine."

  

 "Oh no," Boros said quickly. "It was purely accidental .   .   . "

  

 "No." Lady A slammed her left fist on the side of the egg with a force that echoed

 through the quiet room. "If I won't accept that excuse from my inferiors, I have no right to

 lean on it myself. There are no accidents; there's only sloppy planning or inadequate

 execution."

  

 Unexpectedly she stood up and walked a few paces from her egg, staring out at the

 triscreen with her back to Boros. "We've spent the last six months analyzing the failure,

 both from our side and from the reports we've seen in the Empire's records. If I needed

 an excuse, I could blame it on that robot who's now so conveniently destroyed, for its

 failure to make certain Commander Fortier was dead before proceeding with its plans.

 That was the pivotal factor.

  

 "But to be honest, I must look beyond that to the errors in planning that made such a

 mistake not only possible, but fatal to our plans. The fact is, the operation was over

 planned. In trying to be so clever, we outfoxed ourselves. We had the force and the

 resources to make the attack work. If we'd just gone ahead and bulled our way through,

 it would have worked. Instead, we tried too hard for finesse, and it threw us just enough

 off balance to let the Imperial forces recover. We lost a great deal in that disaster, more

 than just the seventy-five percent of our fleet. But it's a mistake that will not happen

 again-I swear it by the throne I intend to take."

  

 Tanya Boros felt distinctly uneasy. Lady A was not known for being particularly

 introspective, or for admitting weaknesses or imperfections in front of her subordinates.

 Why was she behaving so uncharacteristically in front of Boros'? What had caused her to

 reveal this unexpected side of her nature'?

  

 The mask of perfection was suddenly back in place as though it had never been awry.

 Lady A turned abruptly away from the triscreen and returned to the jade egg to face

 Boros.

  

 "All this, of course," she said, "is of only peripheral interest to you. You need not concern

 yourself, at present, with matters of policy. That will come later, if you develop as well as

 I hope. In the meantime, I have to know whether you are prepared to begin assuming

 responsibility for your proper role in this conspiracy."

  

 "My proper role?" Boros was puzzled. "I don't understand. I've always taken your orders,

 since you first contacted me on Gastonia. I didn't like being forced to stay there, but, as

 you said, it was out of the way and no one noticed me. What do you consider my `proper

 role' to be?'

  

 Lady A gave her a long, frowning stare. "Have you forgotten your heritage this

 easily-you, the only child of Emperor Stanley Nine's oldest son? You have a better claim

 to the throne than the silly little snip who sits there now!"

  

 A trace of Boros's old haughtiness returned. Straightening her back, she said, "Of course

 I haven't forgotten. But it didn't seem to matter to anyone else."

  

 "It matters to me," Lady A said with conviction. "This revolution is dedicated to restoring

 the proper order of things. "

  

 "Am I to be made Empress, then?" No matter how sincere the woman's voice was,

 Boros could not bring herself to believe Lady A was going to all this trouble purely for her

 benefit.

  

 A tiny hint of a smile touched the corners of Lady A's lips. "Well, perhaps not yet. I was

 reserving that for myself. But you will receive a position commensurate with your

 heritage. I have special plans for you, my dear, that you can't even begin to guess."

  

 "And what does C say to all this?"

  

 The smile broadened on Lady A's face. "To show you how much I trust you, I'll let you in

 on the best-kept secret in the Galaxy: There is no one named C. He is purely a myth

 created to confuse our enemies into thinking the conspiracy is more complex than it really

 is. All orders from C are my orders relayed through a special switchboard to appear as

 though they're coming from elsewhere. No such human being exists. You're now only the

 second person in the universe to know that."

  

 Again Boros felt uneasiness creep over her. Lady A was being far too open, and that

 was suspicious. "Why are you telling me all this?" she asked.

  

 Lady A's mood shifted instantly to anger. "I open my heart to you and receive distrust."

 She stood again, and in three long strides she was before Boros's chair. Lifting the

 younger woman effortlessly by the front of her tunic collar, Lady A held her a few

 centimeters off the ground and said with crystalline enunciation, "You now have two

 choices, my dear. You either pledge me your unswerving, undivided loyalty and love, or

 I'll crush your skull until your brains trickle down your neck. You do not leave this room

 alive until I am assured the information you have is safe. You betrayed your father with a

 few inadvertent words; I'll not have you do the same to me. Do I make myself clear?"

  

 For a long moment, Tanya Boros was too frightened to say anything. She knew her life

 was dangling by a very slender thread, and the wrong word-or even the right word with

 the wrong inflection-would give that thread a sudden snap. She considered her next

 words very carefully.

  

 "Yes, ma'am," she said slowly. "I am completely loyal to you. No one can doubt that. I've

 obeyed you completely from the first moment I met you on Gastonia. It's just ... I didn't

 expect ... I ... I was surprised . . . I'm sorry. It won't happen again."

  

 Another eternity passed as those intense green eyes pierced all the way to her soul.

 Then slowly Lady A lowered the younger woman to the floor and loosened her grip on

 the front of the tunic. Boros was shaken. She had not known her superior was that

 strong. Even now, looking at the other woman's slender frame, she found it difficult to

 believe.

  

 "You must never question me or my motives again," Lady A said in calm tones as she

 resumed her place in the glowing egg. "I have reasons for everything I do and say. It's

 not your place to understand them, merely to obey commands. If you do, you'll be richer

 for it; if you don't, you'll be dead. That should be reason enough."

  

 "Yes, Gospozha."

  

 The traces of a smile returned to Lady A's lips. "That's much better. Always respect your

 elders, child. Now that I've made my point, I will explain some of my thinking not because

 you asked, but because I think it's better if you know something of what's going on.

  

 "As I was saying, the failure of Operation Annihilate hurt our cause badly. We are not

 strong enough to make another frontal attack on the Empire for quite some time. We're

 far from defeat-the Empire still does not realize how thoroughly we have infiltrated and

 undermined their structure-but we'll have to return to more guerilla-style tactics for a

 while.

  

 "What we need primarily is time to build up our strength again. We were able to do that

 the first time because SOTE spent so much time chasing your father we could work in

 virtual obscurity. Given those conditions, we could rebuild our forces in just a short while.

  

 "Unfortunately, we no longer have such an effective smokescreen. The Service of the

 Empire now knows we exist, and they won't stand idly by and let us re-arm ourselves.

 We have the power to cause such chaos that SOTE would be too busy fighting a

 thousand different small fires to pay much attention to us-but that would tip our hand

 prematurely. That is something we will not do; we must preserve a few secrets until the

 final confrontation is assured.

  

 "Therefore we must declare war on SOTE itself. So far the Service has been but an

 annoying pest, but it distracted us just enough from our true goal that we miscalculated.

 The time has come to rid ourselves of the peskier elements within that organization. You

 will play a key part in that campaign. We have a command post called Battle station G-6.

     .   .   . "

  

 "That's one of the automated ones. isn't it?" Boros blurted.Lady A stopped and looked

 hard at the younger woman. "I can see," she said after a moment, "that our internal

 security needs tightening. That was supposed to be secret. Don't worry, the fault is not

 yours," she added as Boros began to quiver again. "You can't help what you overhear.

 It's the people who did the talking who are in trouble." Her fingers moved quickly over the

 keyboard in the side of the egg as she entered into the computer a reminder to deal with

 the problem.

  

 "But returning to your question, yes, G-6 is almost entirely automated. You will be the

 only person aboard. I want a live person there to supervise the activities."

  

 To say that Tanya Boros was disappointed with her assignment would have been a vast

 understatement. She was a social creature who liked to have other people around

 her-particularly men. Even among Earth's decadent elite, she had been notorious as one

 of the more promiscuous members. Gastonia had been a hardship for her. Even though

 Lady A had arranged for her to stay at the command house rather than in the village with

 the other condemned traitors and Boros still could not understand why she'd been so

 favored-there had been no men except the guards, and they were an unimaginative

 group at best. Occasionally she had kidnaped men from the village for her pleasure. Of

 course, since only a few people in the village were allowed to know about the house's

 existence, she couldn't let the kidnaped men return, and had been forced to have them

 killed after a while. Still, Gastonia had provided her with some of life's simple pleasures.

  

 But now she was being sent to an automated battle station; with no companionship

 except robots and computers. It seemed she was merely trading one exile for another.

  

 She was quite careful, though, not to let her disappointment show on her face. She'd

 already experienced Lady A's anger once, and she wasn't about to risk it a second time.

 She merely said, in as neutral a voice as she could muster, "What's my assignment?"

  

 "Your orders will be waiting for you there when you arrive; that way, if anything should

 happen to you en route you can't give away the plan. You'll travel in a special ship that

 will allow you to dock with the battle station. That is the only ship the station will allow to

 approach it; any others will be before they can get close. The station can defend itself

 automatically; you'll be perfectly safe once you get there."

  

 Tanya Boros left Lady A's office feeling scarcely better than when she'd entered.

  

 Weeks later, many parsecs away on the planet Arcta in Sector Twenty-Nine, a call came

 into SOTE's planetary headquarters. Its priority coding was Class Six, "critical," so it

 received instant attention from Colonel Patrick Hein, the officer in charge. Even if it had

 been coded as Class One, however, Hein would have paid attention-for the call came

 from two agents who identified themselves only as Wombat and Periwinkle.

  

 Those two codenames commanded instant respect within the Service of the Empire, for

 it was known they were the organization's best undercover agents. Only a handful of

 people in the upper echelons knew their true identities, but everyone in the Service knew

 those two agents were to be obeyed. Their investigations were key to the security of the

 Empire, and they had to have utmost cooperation at the local levels if they were to be

 efficient.

  

 The call came in via an official Service scrambler, so Hein got on the vidicom and spoke

 directly. "What can I do for you'?" he asked.

  

 There was no visual image coming from the sender, but that was only to be expected;

 these agents would want to keep their identities hidden. "How many people do you have

 here on Arcta?" a man's voice asked.

  

 "There are nine currently available, myself included." "I'm not talking about `currently

 available.' I mean total, if you pull everyone off current duty for a special assignment.

 How many?"

  

 Hein barely hesitated. "Fourteen, but some of them are on pretty important missions . . ."

  

 "That might just be enough. Periwinkle and I have pretty important missions, too. We'll

 need everyone you've got. We've got a gang of traitors trapped in their hideout, but we'll

 need help prying them out." He gave the location and continued, "Can you get all your

 people there within three hours?"

  

 "If you want them, you've got them." Pulling some of his people out of their present

 assignments was a big sacrifice and months of work would be lost-but assisting Wombat

 and Periwinkle always took top priority. By helping them he could hope to win some good

 words in the official report of their mission.

  

 Without further word of explanation, Agent Wombat cut the circuit. Colonel Hein didn't

 consider it rude; agents in the field didn't always have time for the niceties. Within a few

 minutes he was arranging calls to all his own agents, giving them the rendezvous

 coordinates. Once that was done, he had to arrange for weapons and transportation.

 Wombat hadn't told him how large a mob he'd be facing, so he picked armament with

 maximum firepower and versatility.

  

 The last thing he did before leaving his office was to enter a record of the call in his

 official daily report. This sounded like a dangerous job; if he didn't come back, there had

 to be some record so Headquarters on Tellus would know what had been going on.

  

 Arcta was a cold world, circling its red dwarf star near the outer limits of the zone of

 habitability. Its north polar ice cap was a barren stretch of glacial ridges and valleys,

 almost totally uninhabited. Here, in the midst of a howling gale, was the spot where

 Wombat had asked to rendezvous on the top of a bluff overlooking a narrow valley

 carved out by a river that was currently frozen. By the side of the frozen river was a

 two-story prefab building, presumably the hideout Wombat had mentioned.

  

 Hein and his agents were gathered on the bluff within the time allotted. It hadn't been

 easy, and some of the agents had been forced to come here ill-prepared for the freezing

 weather. Most of them sat in their copters with the heaters on, awaiting further

 instructions. Hein looked around for some sign of the two agents who'd summoned them

 all here.

  

 A copter appeared hovering overhead and the vidicom in Hein's vehicle came to life.

 "Have you got them all?" the voice of Wombat asked.

  

 "All present and accounted for," Hein said proudly. "Good. The gang we're after is holed

 up in there, as you may have guessed. There are somewhere between fifteen and

 twenty of them-a bit too many for us to tackle ourselves. We want your people to go in

 and get them.

  

 Take as many alive as possible-we hope to get some good information out of them."

  

 "What about you?" Hein asked.

  

 "Periwinkle and I have decided it's best not to show our faces just yet. We'll hover up

 here and keep the area covered in case any of them escape and get past you."

  

 "Smooth," the colonel nodded. He looked over the valley with a practiced eye and then

 gave the deployment order to his shivering troops. Within minutes, the team from SOTE

 had moved out and down the sides of the bluff in an attack on the criminal headquarters.

  

 Going down the face of the bluff was the most dangerous part of the assault, for the

 agents were easy targets against the cliff. They drew no enemy fire, however, and Hein

 prayed his luck would continue. Maybe the enemy had no long-range weapons, or maybe

 they just wanted to save themselves for the closer battle. In any case, he knew his

 agents were trained and ready to cope.

  

 When the entire assault team was down on the valley floor, they started moving across

 the white, lightly packed snow toward the building. They crept in, bending low and taking

 advantage of any natural cover this sparse landscape presented. Still there was no

 enemy fire. That could be a good or a bad sign, and Hein was becoming nervous. As a

 good commander, he had to assume the worst.

  

 "Are you sure they're in there?" he asked over his portable comlink to the copter hovering

 above.

  

 "They're there, all right," Wombat said. "They're trying to lull you into a false sense of

 security. Don't be fooled." Slowly Hein and his team closed in on the quiet building,

 blasters at the ready to return enemy fire that never came. At last they were right up

 against the walls, stationed on either side of the doors and windows of the first floor. At

 a silent signal from Hein, they burst through the openings, steeled to meet tough

 resistance.

  

 The ground floor of the building was deserted. Perplexed, Hein pointed for some of his

 agents to go upstairs while he returned to the comlink. "The place seems empty," he

 reported.

  

 "Are all your people in there? Have they checked everywhere?"

  

 "That's what they're doing right now."

  

 A single blaster beam from the waiting copter lashed downward, striking a bundle of

 explosives planted on the roof.

  

 With a ground-shattering roar that touched off avalanches seven kilometers away, the

 building exploded in a blinding flash of light. Dust and debris were thrown high into the air,

 only to fall again like a blanket of new snow upon the ruins of what had once been a

 building.

  

 The copter circled for several minutes over this scene of desolation, checking to make

 sure there was not the slightest sign of life in the wreckage. Once convinced, the craft

 and its passengers flew off, content with their day's work.

 Chapter 2

 Deadly Doubles

  

 The small spaceship approached the asteroid belt at great speed. The space debris

 ahead was not so densely packed that it was an impassable hazard, but it did serve as a

 natural obstacle course to be successfully astrogated. A wrong move could be fatal. It

 would take fast reflexes and steady nerves to make it through without mishap.

  

 In the co-pilot's seat, Jules d'Alembert asked, "Are you sure you're ready for this?"

  

 The pilot, his brother-in-law, took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "If I don't do it now,

 I never will," Pias Bavol said. "I've gone through here at cruising speed, but I'll have to do

 better than that. Lady A won't let me cruise along casually if she gets me in her sights."

  

 "Eh, bien," Jules said. "The show's all yours."

  

 Pias stretched his fingers and swivelled his shoulders a few times to limber them up, then

 leaned forward to concentrate on the control screen. The panel extended before him, a

 broad expanse covered with buttons, knobs, switches, screens, dials, gauges, and

 glowing lights. Pias extended the protective screens to their limits to shield the ship from

 a stream of particles too small to be detected on the sensors. He cut off the rear

 scanners and focused all the vessel's detection capacity to a rapid forward scan. He

 wasn't worried about asteroids overtaking him from the rear-but the defensive shields

 would be useless against a flying piece of rock more than a couple of meters in

 diameter.

  

 After one last millisecond of hesitation, he turned off the automatic pilot and took

 complete manual control of the spacecraft. The autopilot would have been useful for

 dodging one rock at a time, at slow speeds, but it tended to overcompensate; in

 swerving to avoid one oncoming asteroid it could very well steer them directly into

 another and not be able to correct in time. Fine tuning like that was still the province of

 human reflexes.

  

 Reflexes were one of Pias's greatest assets. Both he and Jules were natives of planets

 whose gravity was three times stronger than that of Earth. Over the generations, nature

 had bred their ancestors for lightning reactions. Pias, Jules, and all their kin could move

 at speeds that dazzled people from normal gravity worlds.

  

 The first obstacles were starting to appear on the scanners now, along with

 computer-generated arcs showing their orbits relative to the ship. No danger so far; the

 closest would miss by more than a kilometer. Pias had arbitrarily set himself a safety

 range of two hundred meters. Anything closer than that would be avoided; beyond that

 limit, he refused to worry about it.

  

 In the seat beside him, he knew Jules was watching the screen as intently as he was. At

 the slightest hint that Pias might not be able to handle the situation, Jules was prepared

 to switch control over to his co-pilot's board and get them out of trouble. It was

 comforting, in a way, to have such a backup, because Pias knew Jules was an expert

 pilot. All the same, he was hoping it wouldn't be necessary. More obstacles were

 appearing on the scanner now, ranging in size from small boulders to large mountains.

 Pias ignored the size and mass data also displayed on the screen; all he cared about

 was how close the object's path would come to his ship's.

  

 The first indication of something that would come within the safety limits appeared. Even

 though the computer said it would miss the ship by a good seventy-five meters, Pias

 wanted to take no chances at this stage. His hand moved to the attitude controls and

 made ever so minor a course correction; they flew past the rock without trouble.

  

 They were starting to reach the thickest part of the belt. The asteroid zone within the

 DesPlainian solar system was not nearly as thick as that in Earth's solar system, nor was

 it as dense. In order to make this a fair test, they were approaching the belt at an

 oblique angle that would cause them to spend a minimum of an hour traversing the

 densest part of the swarm.

  

 That first course deflection was merely the beginning. All too quickly the asteroids were

 flying past them at distances of fifty meters or less. Pias's hands were playing across his

 console like those of a concert pianist at a keyboard. This was where all his training was

 coming in handy. He had spent every spare moment for the last few months practicing at

 these controls. The intellectual knowledge of where each control was located on the

 board was of no use; his fingers had to know their way there by instinct, had to make the

 proper adjustments-no more, no less-by sheer eye-to-hand coordination, bypassing the

 conscious mind completely. The problem was immeasurably complicated by the fact that

 he was dealing with three dimensions rather than two; he had to worry, not only about

 right and left, forward and back, but also up and down.

  

 Each correction he made altered the relative paths of the other rocks around him so that

 their new courses had to be checked. Sometimes his changes actually brought him into

 danger from asteroids that would have missed by a wide margin if he hadn't swerved to

 avoid a previous one.

  

 There was sweat on his forehead and a drop trickled down into his eye, burning it. He

 tried to blink it away; he dared not take his hands from the control board long enough to

 wipe at it. For a while he was piloting with only one good eye, which diminished his depth

 perception and made his movements slightly less reliable. After a few moments his eye

 watered sufficiently to dilute the sweat and the discomfort eased. It was to his credit that

 not once during that time did Jules make a move to take control away from him.

  

 Then they were through the worst part of the belt, and Pias's breathing started returning

 to normal. He made a casual maneuver to slide gracefully away from one approaching

 asteroid-and suddenly found himself facing an onrushing behemoth head on. It appeared

 out of nowhere on the scanner and came straight toward him at a speed nearly equal to

 his own.

  

 If Pias had stopped to think, he and Jules might have ended up as slime on the face of

 the space rock. His hands moved with a life of their own, swerving the ship's direction so

 quickly that he was nearly knocked out of his chair. He imagined he could hear the

 asteroid scraping along the side of the ship as they passed one another, even though the

 distance was nearly ten meters. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Jules's hands

 poised over the co-pilot's controls; the more experienced man would have taken over in

 another fraction of a second-but even that might have been too late.

  

 Then abruptly they were out of the zone and into what was considered open space

 again. The sensors indicated' completely empty space ahead, so Pias reduced speed;

 switched on the autopilot once more, and sagged limply back in his seat.

  

 "Must have been a rogue," Jules said calmly beside him. "Most of the asteroids within the

 zone are moving approximately in the same direction and speed. Occasionally a free one

 gets captured moving the other way. It doesn't usually last too long because it collides

 with the rocks going the other way, just like it nearly collided with us."

  

 Pias paused to regain his breath, then asked, "Well, how'd I do?"

  

 "We're alive and unscratched-that's all that really matters. The Service doesn't give

 points for neatness." He smiled as he added, "Next time, of course, you'll have to

 practice dodging while firing back at them at the same time. "

  

 "You're so encouraging." Pias plotted the course back to DesPlaines and spent the next

 two hours relaxing after his ordeal.

  

 Landings, as he had learned, were the hardest part of flying any air or

 spacecraft-particularly landings on a three-gee world where the ground comes up to

 meet you at a dizzying speed. This was the maneuver he'd practiced most often, and it

 still made him slightly nervous. He moved with special care as he brought the ship down

 to a perfect landing on the small private spaceport field that adjoined Felicite, the ducal

 manor house of the d'Alembert family. As the two men climbed out of the ship, a

 groundcar pulled up to the edge of the field and their wives waved at them.

  

 Yvette Bavol and Vonnie d'Alembert were the other halves of what were acknowledged

 to be the two best undercover teams in the Service of the Empire. All four were high-grav

 natives, with all the speed, strength, and agility that implied. All four were intelligent and

 resourceful, highly trained, and highly motivated. In addition, Jules and his sister Yvette

 were members of the extraordinary Family d'Alembert, with its tradition of loyalty and

 devotion to the Empire and its rulers.

  

 "I see you both made it back intact," Vonnie shouted as the groundcar drove onto the

 landing field to meet the two men.

  

 The car pulled to a stop and each of the spacefarers kissed his wife in greeting. "How

 can you ladies have ever doubted me'?" Pias asked immodestly.

  

 "I had no doubt whatsoever that you'd brag about it afterwards," his wife laughed. "It

 was the part in between takeoff and landing that worried us."

  

 "I had to teach him something," Jules said. "There's only so many times you can save the

 Empire on dumb luck alone. "

  

 The incident he referred to had happened six months ago during the coronation of

 Empress Stanley Eleven, while the forces of Lady A's conspiracy had been massing to

 attack Earth. Pias, alone in a space vessel he didn't know how to pilot, had been the only

 one in position to warn the Imperial Fleet that they were heading for an ambush. He'd

 accomplished the feat by pushing buttons at random and piloting his craft in the most

 absurd way possible so that the Imperial Fleet stopped short of the ambush site to

 investigate.

  

 It was an achievement of special daring-but afterwards, all concerned agreed that it

 would be best if, in the future, the young Gospodin Bavol learned how to fly a spacecraft

 accurately. They'd been fortunate that, because of the rout of the conspiracy's forces,

 there was a quiet period with no assignments, giving Pias time to learn the needed skills.

  

 His intensified course under Jules's watchful eye had made him into a very good pilot in a

 surprisingly short time. The four young people were laughing as they climbed into the

 groundcar for the short ride to the manor house itself. The past few months had been a

 welcome and much needed vacation after the strenuous assignments that culminated

 with the coronation. The entire Empire had been shaken by the bold attack on Earth, but

 it had held on and had not toppled. There followed a period of peace that allowed

 everyone a chance to breathe more easily--even though the agents knew such a state of

 affairs could not last forever.

  

 The call they'd feared came that very night, after they finished dinner. The frequency and

 the coding of the subetheric transmission left no doubt that the call came from the Head

 of the Service himself. The d'Alemberts and the Bavols adjourned quickly to the

 mansion's coin room to receive their assignments in privacy.

  

 There, seated in upholstered leather chairs around a large table with built-in computer

 terminals, they acknowledged receipt of the signal. The decoding device unscrambled the

 incoming message and a shape slowly materialized in the air above the center of the

 table-the familiar face of Grand Duke Zander von Wilmenhorst, Head of the Service of

 the Empire.

  

 The Grand Duke's most striking feature was that his head was completely shaven, giving

 a dramatic effect to the lean, lined face. A closer observer, however, would notice the

 brightness in his eyes, a depth of keen intelligence that was restive, ever thinking. The

 Head was relentless in his pursuit of the Empire's enemies; now in his fiftieth year, he

 combined his native intellect with long experience, and though comparatively few within

 the Empire knew the crucial role he played in its affairs, he was regarded in the highest

 echelons as the government's premier strategist.

  

 The agents were prepared to greet their boss cheerfully, but the grim expression on the

 Head's face made them realize something was seriously amiss. Dispensing with the usual

 formalities, Jules asked quickly, "What's wrong?"

  

 "We've been wondering what little game the conspiracy would play next, after their

 defeat on Coronation Day," von Wilmenhorst said. "We had the Service braced for

 almost anything, anywhere, and still they've managed to surprise us. They've launched an

 attack against the Service itself using the most diabolical, insidious weapon they could

 find. "

  

 "I almost hate to ask, but what is it?" Yvette said. "You," the Head replied. As the agents

 stared back at him, perplexed, he added, "Or rather, some people impersonating you."

  

 "How can they?" Vonnie asked. "Nobody knows what we look like."

  

 "That's precisely what they're counting on," the Head told them. "Fifty-five days ago, the

 Service headquarters on Bolshaya received a high priority call that all the local agents

 were supposed to gather at a remote location for an important assignment. The chief

 officer on Bolshaya logged the call into his records, exactly as he was supposed to, and

 assembled his people according to instructions. When we heard nothing from Bolshaya

 for several days, we had agents from nearby Rellan go over to investigate. It seems our

 personnel on Bolshaya were ambushed and massacred all of them. They were not

 inexperienced people; the only reason they walked into the ambush without the slightest

 suspicion was because the call came from Agents Wombat and Periwinkle."

  

 Jules and Yvette exploded with indignation. "We were never anywhere near there!" Jules

 exclaimed, and Yvette added, "We've been here on DesPlaines for the last six months. "

  

 "I know all that," the Head nodded. "Let me continue. Precisely twenty-six days later, on

 Blodgett, events repeated themselves. All the agents except one, who was in the hospital

 recovering from surgery, were lured to a remote location and slaughtered by two people

 claiming to be Wombat and Periwinkle. Then three days ago-exactly twenty-six days

 after the massacre on Blodgett-the same thing happened on Arcta."

  

 "I don't like having our names taken in vain." Anyone who knew Jules could have told

 from the cold fury in his voice that someone was going to pay heavily.

  

 "And I don't like the fact that fifty-three good, decent people were senselessly murdered

 simply for serving the cause of justice," the Head told them. His anger was not as visible

 as Jules's, but his voice was equally determined. "I know you're not involved in this-if you

 wanted to betray the Service you could have thought of better and subtler ways. But we

 cannot allow this imposture to continue. "

  

 "I presume you want us to take care of it," Pias said. The Head paused, a rare trace of

 indecision on his face. "That's what I called to discuss. I'm not completely sure that would

 be the right thing to do. As I see it, this whole maneuver is a trap aimed specifically at

 Jules and Yvette." "How can you tell?" Vonnie asked.

  

 "We know the conspiracy has been tapped into our information for some time. They

 know a great deal about us, but I don't think they know absolutely everything. They do

 know the agents codenamed Wombat and Periwinkle are the two best we have, and that

 there are standing orders for everyone in the field to give them the utmost, unquestioning

 cooperation. But I don't think they know your identities, because that is not generally

 known; to the best of my knowledge it's never been written down or entered in any

 records. We thought this would be the safest course of action; it gave you total

 anonymity to act as you felt necessary, yet it gave you access to the Service's resources

 when you needed them.

  

 "Lady A wants to destroy your effectiveness, either by handicapping your operations or

 by killing you outright. Look at the choices we have open to us:

  

 "We could do nothing at all, in which case they'd probably go on wiping out station after

 station. That is unacceptable; too many people have already died because of this

 subterfuge.

  

 "Or we could put out the order that anyone identifying themselves as Wombat or

 Periwinkle should be shot on sight. That would keep our agents from being duped by the

 imposters, but it wouldn't make your job very easy. If we gave you new codenames,

 there's no guarantee the conspiracy wouldn't learn them and pull the same trick over

 again.

  

 "Or we could take a middle tack by saying that orders from Wombat and Periwinkle need

 not be obeyed unquestioningly. We could either circulate your description or make the

 local branches more reluctant to give you assistance-but that would hamper your

 activities. Any of these choices would end up restricting your effectiveness in some way

 that could only benefit the conspiracy."

  

 "There's another solution," Yvette said. "You could send us out to get them. We're the

 only agents who wouldn't be fooled because we know who the real Wombat and

 Periwinkle are."

  

 The Head sighed. "Yes, that thought occurred to me, too. But that's exactly what Lady A

 wants. Just look at the pattern. Each of the three systems hit so far is about ten parsecs

 away from the previous one along a straight line. The events are spaced exactly

 twenty-six days apart, and the method is the same in each case. It's ridiculously easy to

 predict where, when, and how they will strike next. They might as well put up a gigantic

 sign advertising themselves. And they know that only the real Wombat and Periwinkle

 could challenge their impostors without hesitation. They'll be waiting for you."

  

 "In a way," Jules said, "it's flattering to think they'd go to so much trouble just for us."

  

 "I could do very nicely without such flattery," his sister commented. "Particularly when I

 think we're indirectly responsible for the deaths of fifty-three of our fellow agents. If it

 weren't for the system established to help us, they'd still be alive today."

  

 "There you have it," von Wilmenhorst said. "I admit to being in a bit of a quandary. I know

 what I'd like to do-but I hate playing into that woman's hands. I'd like your opinions on

 this matter; it could affect either your jobs or your lives."

  

 "In large measure," Yvette said, "our jobs are our lives. I can't speak for Jules, but I don't

 want to give in to sneaky blackmail like this."

  

 "You can speak for me, and very well," Jules said. "I agree completely. We have to

 prove to Lady A and her mokoes that they can't laugh in our faces. They manipulated us

 badly on our last encounter, we can't let them do that again."

  

 "But isn't that exactly what they are doing?" Pias pointed out. "Don't you think they're

 counting on our pride to make us come straight to them?"

  

 "Pias is right," the Head said. "I think that's exactly what they're banking on. They know

 our reactions entirely too well and they're setting us up."

  

 "Still," Yvette said, "as you yourself admitted, what other choice do we have? If we give

 in here, they'll only put pressure on us somewhere else. They'll push us back and back

 until we have no farther to go. If the line is going to be drawn at all, we might as well

 draw it now. "Besides," she added, "they may force the direction we're going in, but they

 can't always guess how fast or how far we'll go. Lady A has miscalculated before,

 remember. "

  

 "So have we," Pias muttered, but the others pretended not to hear him.

  

 The Head talked to them for a little while longer, giving them the pertinent details of the

 case. He signed off with the Service toast, "Here's to tomorrow, fellows and friends. May

 we all live to see it!" He acted as though this were just an ordinary assignment, even

 though no case the d'Alemberts and Bavols worked on could be called ordinary.

  

 But this one was special, and all four knew it. For the first time they would be walking

 into a trap designed specifically for them; they would need courage, strength, and not a

 little luck to escape this particular menace.
 Chapter 3

The Trail To C

  

 Captain Paul Fortier of Naval Intelligence hadn't allowed himself the luxury of a six-month

 vacation after the attack against Earth on Coronation Day. He'd been offered a long

 vacation and an important assignment at Luna Base, but he'd asked that they be

 postponed. He'd been in the middle of a long-standing assignment, to destroy the pirate

 network, when the emergency to the Empire occurred. Even though he'd dealt

 spectacularly with the invasion, he considered his work incomplete. The pirates had been

 dispersed and their major operations disbanded, but there were still loose ends to be

 wrapped up. He was the person with the most intimate knowledge of the pirates' opera-

  

 tions, having worked undercover in their organization for several years, and so he was

 the logical choice to supervise the mopping up. The Imperial Navy, proud of his dedica-

  

 tion, agreed to give him the opportunity.

  

 Under the name "Rocheville," Fortier had worked his way up to being one of pirate leader

 Shen Tzu's chief lieutenants. As such, he had detailed information about many of the

 people the pirates dealt with on the local level, planet to planet; and much of what he

 didn't know was supplied by the pirates' own records when their base was captured.

 Now he was set on tracking down those intermediaries, making sure they'd be put away

 where they couldn't hurt society again.

  

 The pirate network had been widespread, and Fortier's job was vast. He could not do it

 all himself. Instead, he was put in charge of a task force, with five other officers of Naval

 Intelligence working under him. The group worked in cooperation with planetary police

 forces, and Fortier coordinated the joint effort. He chafed at this; he had joined Naval

 Intelligence because he enjoyed the adventure of work in the field, and he hated being

 stuck behind a desk. He therefore took every opportunity to get out and do some of the

 actual work himself.

  

 When the pirates had been smashed, their contacts, realizing that they would now be

 wanted by the law, tried to vanish into the regular criminal underground that existed on

 nearly every civilized planet. Some were more successful at this than others. Many of

 them had been legitimate businessmen except for their dealings with the pirates, and

 weren't familiar with the criminal networks. They were picked up almost immediately. The

 tougher ones were those with previous criminal records, with long experience at hiding

 from the authorities. These required dogged determination to track down-a quality that

 was fortunately not lacking in Fortier and his people.

  

 It was in a dimly lit, foul-smelling bar on the planet Lateesta that a major breakthrough

 occurred. Fortier and his police contact, Detective Nikopolous, had staked out the

 underworld hangout on a tip that Fortier's fugitive, a man named Guitirrez, would be there

 that evening. They waited a while and, as predicted, Guitirrez entered the bar and sat

 down alone at one of the battered tables. He looked as though he might be waiting for

 someone; he kept glancing at the door and checking the time. In view of this behavior,

 Fortier and Nikopolous decided not to arrest Guitirrez immediately; he might inadvertently

 lead them to bigger fish in his scummy pond.

  

 Their hunch paid off. Forty-five minutes later, a woman joined Guitirrez at his table. She

 was Junoesque, in her early fifties, with graying hair, and a hard expression on her face.

 Neither Fortier nor Nikopolous had ever seen her before, but Fortier made sure to snap

 several pictures of her with his tiny hidden camera.

  

 The meeting broke up after a few minutes. Guitirrez sat nursing his drink while the

 woman got up and left the bar. Fortier left his associate to tend to the routine task of

 arresting Guitirrez; he was much more interested in tailing this mysterious woman to find

 out more about her. She might be just a routine friend of Guitirrez, having no connection

 to any illegal activities-but Fortier was not one to give up on a lead until it was proved to

 be false.

  

 The woman walked briskly to the nearest tubeway station; Fortier was hard pressed to

 keep pace with her and not make himself conspicuous at the same time. He just

 managed to catch the same turbotrain, staying as far away from her in the car as

 possible and making sure to avoid eye contact. She sat calmly as the turbotrain rode

 through several stations, and Fortier was able to rely on his peripheral vision to let him

 know when she made any moves.

  

 She got off the tubeway where it connected to the monoliner station and went

 immediately into the ladies' restroom. Fortier cursed his luck and used his personal

 minicom to call for a female assistant as backup. The monoliner station security had a

 woman officer to him within three minutes, and he sent her in to check the restroom. The

 woman he'd been tailing was not there.

  

 This particular lavatory had two entrances, one from the station and one from the street.

 The woman had obviously gone out the second door and given him the slip. She could be

 anywhere by now.

  

 Dejected at his failure, Fortier returned to police headquarters, where Guitirrez was

 being held for interrogation. Although it didn't take much effort to get Guitirrez to admit

 his part in the piracy, he insisted he knew nothing about the woman he'd met in the bar.

 He'd been told to call a certain number whenever he was in trouble. He'd done so on

 several previous occasions and had been given instructions on how to hide out safely. On

 this last occasion, the person at the other end had told him to wait in this bar for a

 woman who'd give him further orders. The woman had come as promised and told him a

 ticket offplanet in the name of Martinez was waiting for him at the spaceport. He'd been

 arrested before he could leave the bar and pick up the ticket. That was all he claimed to

 know about the matter.

  

 The police did what they could to verify the man's story. There was indeed a starship

 ticket at the spaceport reserved in the name of Martinez; it would have taken the fugitive

 halfway across the Empire and might have helped him elude capture for a considerable

 time. The vidiphone number had been assigned to a name that turned out to be fictitious,

 and there was no way to trace it to anyone. The police even gave Guitirrez a shot of

 detrazine, the strongest legal truth serum known, but his story remained the same.

  

 Fortier decided to concentrate on the woman who'd met Guitirrez in the bar. She was

 obviously a connection to higher, more important channels. He passed the photos around

 within the detective division, but no one could ever recall having seen her before. Copies

 of the pictures were made and circulated to all police personnel on Lateesta.

  

 Descriptions were sent to all spaceport security people to prevent the woman from

 leaving the planet, although Fortier was convinced he was locking the barn door after the

 rustling. In the meantime, he locked himself away in an office, spread the photos across

 the top of the empty desk, and studied them himself to pry loose any pertinent infor-

  

 mation he could.

  

 After staring hopelessly at the pictures for a while, his eye noticed a detail it had missed

 before. It was very tiny, and he ordered the photos enlarged to see it more clearly. The

 enlargements showed the mysterious woman wearing around her neck a thin gold chain

 that held a small integrated circuit chip dangling from its center.

  

 In the past few months since the near disaster on Coronation Day, NI and SOTE had

 buried most of their interservice rivalry. A great deal of information was now flowing

 between the two organizations, and one of the items SOTE strongly stressed to Naval

 Intelligence was that there was a well-organized conspiracy trying to topple the Stanley

 dynasty. One of its recognition symbols was a necklace just like the one this mysterious

 lady was wearing. Ever since the attack on Earth it was known that the pirates had been

 somehow involved with this conspiracy but this development led to new, and perhaps

 unexpected, connections. It was certainly worth checking further.

  

 Even as he was congratulating himself on spotting that tiny detail, Fortier received his

 second big break on the case. A call arrived for him from none other than the

 Superintendent of Police for Lateesta. "I just had a chance to look at the photos you

 circulated, and I must say I was shocked to see her here in a cheap bar associating with

 known criminals this way."

  

 "You can identify the woman, then?" Fortier asked eagerly.

  

 "Certainly," the Superintendent said. "I spoke with her just three months ago at a law

 enforcement symposium on Corian. That's Elsa Helmund, Commissioner of Police for the

 planet Durward."

  

 Fortier did not have a ship of his own available, and had to settle for commercial

 transportation. He booked passage on the next connecting flights to Durward, inwardly

 fuming that it would take a full nine days to reach his destination. He could have made a

 subetheric call ahead and had the investigation started by local officials, but Elsa

 Helmund was so highly placed and the case against her was so tentative he didn't dare

 risk spooking her. The Commissioner of Police for an entire planet would be a major cog

 in the conspiracy's machinery, and she might lead to other important members. The more

 people who knew what he was after, the more chance there'd be a leak.

  

 For obvious reasons he did not contact the Durward police to let them know he'd be

 coming. He did let the local SOTE office know, and they promised him the utmost

 cooperation when he arrived. For now, he trusted no one but himself with the possibility

 that Elsa Helmund was a traitor.

  

 On reaching Durward he checked in with SOTE immediately. The local Service chief tried

 to be helpful. She called for the files on Elsa Helmund, but was bluntly informed that

 those files were classified, and only people with an F-17 security clearance or higher

 would be allowed to see it. That excluded her.

  

 Fortier, however, had a G-8 security rating. He inserted his identity card and comparison

 disc, then put his eyes to the retina scope so the machine could verify him. His identity

 was acknowledged but the machine still refused to yield the desired information. When

 Fortier demanded an explanation, the computer indicated that such information had been

 erased from the memory.

  

 Furious, Fortier turned to the SOTE chief and asked if she had any personal knowledge

 of Helmund's background. "She's been Police Commissioner here for about ten years,

 and she seems to have done a good job," the woman said. "I've met her briefly at a

 couple of official functions. I do know she's not native to Durward. She came specifically

 for the post of Police Commissioner. The competition was open to outsiders-the Duke

 wanted the best person he could find, and Elsa Helmund filled the bill. Her references

 said she'd had a long, distinguished career with the police on her native world, Preis: she

 also had letters of reference-I know I've got copies of those-from both the Grand Duke

 of Sector Four and his Sector Marshal that were glowing with praise. She was far and

 away the best qualified candidate, so she got the job. As far as I know, there've been no

 complaints about her performance."

  

 "Can you get hold of her file from Preis for me?" Fortier asked.

  

 "Why the sudden interest in Gospozha Helmund?"

  

 In answer, Fortier showed her photos of Helmund with the necklace clearly visible. The

 SOTE officer asked no further questions. "It may take a few hours to get what we need,"

 she apologized.

  

 "That's smooth," Fortier said grimly. "I'll wait."

  

 The information from Preis, when it finally did arrive, was equally frustrating. There

 simply was no information about anyone named Elsa Helmund-no record of her birth, no

 record of her having worked for the police department there, no record of anyone

 matching that description ever even existing on the planet.

  

 "I think it's time I had a talk with Gospozha Helmund," Fortier mused, and the officer from

 SOTE agreed.

  

 Fortier called Helmund's office, only to be told that the Commissioner had been away on

 vacation for the past three weeks and was expected back tomorrow. Fortier decided to

 make a surreptitious visit to Helmund's home before the woman returned.

  

 The apartment was quite normal. Elsa Helmund lived alone and had simple tastes. The

 only thing at all out of the ordinary was a telecom unit and teletype connected to a

 computer terminal in the wall-a link-up that had the potential to connect her with anyone

 in the Galaxy. In a wastebasket beside the teleprinter was a burned scrap of paper that

 Fortier took back to SOTE headquarters. "Can you do anything with this?" he asked

 them.

  

 The SOTE technicians were miracle workers. Though the scrap, to the naked eye, was

 little more than a flimsy piece of charcoal, they were able to differentiate between the

 plain paper and the chemicals that had gone into the ink printed on it. Some of the words

 were completely burned away, but enough was there to make out the name Guitirrez, the

 planet Lateesta, and something about a ticket. The note was signed with the single initial,

 C.

  

 The Police Commissioner did not show up in her office the next day as her aides

 expected. Fortier guessed that someone or something must have tipped her off. Elsa

 Helmund would not be returning to her office, ever. There was no point waiting around

 here.

  

 Fortier's next port of call was Preis, the capital planet of Sector Four. It seemed odd to

 him that someone could come to a strange place with such blatantly false credentials. It

 also disturbed him greatly that the Grand Duke and the Sector Marshal for all of Sector

 Four would have written such extravagant praise for someone who, according to official

 records, did not exist. Fortier was determined to find out why, and whether those people,

 too, were part of the conspiracy.

  

 The Grand Duke for this sector, like many other Grand Dukes, spent much of his time

 back on Earth at the center of Imperial administration. He was thus unavailable to be

 interviewed. The Sector Marshal, a man named Herman Stanck, was scarcely less

 difficult to get hold of. As the chief administrative officer of one of the most populous

 sectors of the Empire, he was responsible for overseeing the harmonious government of

 scores of planets as well as the relationship between Sector Four and all the other

 sectors. Fortier had to use every bit of influence he had just to be granted a five-minute

 interview with the Sector Marshal.

  

 Stanck's office was spacious and comfortable. The back wall was one large picture

 window looking out over the capital city of Aachen; the other walls held series of shelves

 filled with enough bookreels to put any library to shame. Stanck's enormous solentawood

 desk was crowded but orderly. There were several chairs and a couch grouped about

 the desk.

  

 Stanck seemed out of place in such a comfortable office, a brusque man with thinning

 brown hair and a hawk nose. He greeted Fortier with a brisk handshake and guided him

 to a chair. "Well, Captain, what can I do for you?" he asked as he sat down behind his

 desk.

  

 Fortier had to be discreet. He had no direct evidence against this man, and if he moved

 too far too fast he could be in serious trouble. "I know your time is valuable, sir, so I'll be

 brief. What do you know of Elsa Helmund?"

  

 "I don't recall the name offhand."

  

 "In a letter of reference you gave her, you called her a close personal friend and the

 most efficient police official you'd ever known."

  

 Stanck shook his head. "I have no memory of ever doing so."

  

 "You deny writing the letter, then?" "How long ago was this, Captain?"

  

 "Ten years."

  

 Stanck leaned forward in his seat. "Do you have any idea, Captain, how many people I

 meet and deal with every day, let alone over a ten-year period? I have to keep my mind

 free of clutter; if I don't deal with a name on a frequent basis I forget about it or store it

 in my files. I may very well have written the letter you claim I did. I simply have no

 recollection of it."

  

 Fortier handed him a copy of the letter. "Is that your signature?"

  

 Stanck glanced at it, then handed the document back. "It looks like it. Either that or a

 very good forgery."

  

 "If you had written this letter, would you have a copy in your files?"

  

 "Most likely. I keep permanent records of everything I do.

  

 "May I see those records, please?"

  

 "No, you may not." Stanck's tone became even more brusque. "I am not in the habit of

 letting strangers roam at will through my private files. Those records are kept for my

 benefit alone. Some of them are highly confidential. They are not public records, and no

 one but me has the right to examine them."

  

 "Gospodin Stanck, this is a matter of the highest Imperial security. .   .   . "

  

 "Then may I suggest you proceed through the proper channels? Unless, of course,"

 Stanck's eyebrows narrowed, "you're accusing me of some impropriety, in which case

 you'll find I make a very formidable enemy."

  

 Fortier refused to be intimidated. "So do I, sir."

  

 "The time for your audience is up, Captain." Stanck buzzed for one of his aides to come

 and escort Fortier from the room. "If we meet another time," was his parting shot, "you

 had better come armed with more than sly innuendos. "

  

 will, Stanck, I will, Fortier thought with determination. For the next few days, Herman

 Stanck became an obsession with Fortier. He pored over the man's lengthy file in the

 SOTE computers until he'd virtually memorized it. In fifteen years of service as Sector

 Marshal, Stanek's record was unblemished. A dedicated public servant, he had never

 married, preferring to devote his entire life to the administration of Sector Four's affairs.

 There were many newsroll accounts of his public actions, and a long list of awards and

 honors he'd received. His private life was kept strictly private, but there'd never been the

 breath of a scandaland that in itself was some kind of a record for a man who'd served in

 public life as long as Stanck.

  

 To all appearances, the Sector Marshal was as loyal as anyone could wish. Accusing

 him of treason would be like strangling orphans or drowning kittens; Fortier dared not

 move against him until he had strong proof on his side. And yet, an undercover agent

 lived by his instincts-and all of Fortier's well-trained intuition told him Stanck's hostility

 masked some guilty secret. It was inconceivable to Fortier that a man could write such a

 glowing report about someone and not remember it later, even after ten busy

 years-particularly when that person had never existed in the first place.

  

 There were no clues in Stanck's professional record, so Fortier dug even more deeply

 into the man's personal file. Stanck was a solitary sort, and no one knew him really well.

 There was nothing in these files, either, that would mark him as a traitor.

  

 In desperation, Fortier turned to the financial report. Stanck lived modestly, well within his

 means. He didn't gamble or squander his salary, and had made some shrewd

 investments that left him a reasonably wealthy man-but there was no indication of any

 impropriety there, just sound business dealings. Fortier was about to abandon this

 avenue of inquiry too when his eye noticed one small, obscure detail that almost escaped

 notice because it was so hidden. Stanek's assets revealed that he was, upon retirement,

 owed a fortune in sick leave pay because it had accumulated without being used.

  

 Fortier called up the pay records, and they told an amazing story. In the fifteen years

 that Stanck had been Sector Marshal, he had not missed a day of work because of

 illness. There were no records of any sort before Stanck took the job, merely the cryptic

 entry that the man had been appointed especially by the Grand Duke.

  

 These were anomalies that Fortier could sink his teeth into. For the second time in this

 case, he'd run into someone with no past. He was even more intrigued by Stanek's

 phenomenal health. It would be incredible enough for a man in his early twenties-but for

 someone in his middle years, it was downright unbelievable.

  

 Fortier asked for the medical records on his subject, only to find that there weren't any.

 Stanck had never visited a doctor in all the years he'd been Sector Marshal. Under

 normal circumstances, every public employee had to undergo a physical examination

 before being hired, but a cryptic note on Stanek's file said that this requirement had been

 waived in his case by direct order of the Grand Duke.

  

 An idea was forming in Fortier's mind, one he didn't like a bit. He knew all too well that

 the conspiracy was capable of creating robot duplicates of people and substituting them

 for the real ones; he himself had been impersonated by a robot during the few months

 preceding the attack against Earth, and the experience had nearly been fatal. What if

 Stanck were such a robot, infiltrated into the management of Sector Four? It would

 explain why he'd never been ill and why he'd never gone to see a doctor. It would explain

 the man's solitary lifestyle, his precise and punctual work habits-and his hostility to

 anyone like Fortier who tried to peer too closely into his background. If Stanck was

 indeed a robot he would have to be handled very cautiously. The robots had superhuman

 strength and were immune to stun weapons. Only a blaster would bring a robot down,

 and it could cause untold destruction if not controlled quickly once its identity was

 uncovered. The first step was to prove conclusively that Stanck was a robot. The local

 SOTE office was most cooperative about providing Fortier with the long range sensor

 equipment he asked for, and the naval officer set about the difficult task of getting

 readings on Stanek's body. The trouble was that Stanek rarely went out in public. He

 was either in his office, in his car, or in his apartment-places where it was difficult for

 Fortier's equipment to get a clear reading uncluttered by surroundings.

  

 After a week, Fortier's patience paid off. Stanck was scheduled to give a speech at the

 local sports stadium before a series of charity games. Fortier attended, and was able to

 get close enough to train his instruments on the Sector Marshal. The readings confirmed

 Fortier's worst suspicions: Stanck was not a living human being, but a complex artificial

 mechanism covered with plastiderm. All of Sector Four was being administered by a

 robot agent of the deadly conspiracy.

  

 Fortier weighed his next moves very carefully. He was out of his depth in this matter, and

 he knew it. Tracking down treason was really SOTE's business; Naval Intelligence was

 responsible for rooting out pirates, smugglers, and other miscreants who used the

 spaceways for illegal purposes. In all honesty, he should have turned the case over to

 SOTE when he had discovered the Helmund connection, but his teeth were too solidly

 into it to let go; he wanted to keep with this matter now to its conclusion. Consequently

 he did not inform SOTE of his newly- found information. Instead, he went to the local

 naval station and recruited some colleagues to capture the robot. They approached

 Stanck one morning in his underground garage just as he was getting into his groundcar

 to go to the office. As an important official, Stanck had a cluster of bodyguards around

 him; Fortier had taken the precaution of bringing with him a squad of twenty Planetary

 Patrolmen. As the two groups approached one another amid the concrete pillars of the

 underground garage, tension developed instantly.

  

 "Hold it, Stanck," Fortier called. "You're not going anywhere. "

  

 "You have no jurisdiction here, Captain," the other said icily. "If your people don't back

 away instantly, I'll have you court-martialed so fast your circuits will fuse."

  

 "I know you're a robot," Fortier continued despite the threat. "You're part of a conspiracy

 to overthrow the Stanley dynasty."

  

 "I've been accused of many things in my time, but that's the most ridiculous charge I've

 ever heard." Stanck turned his back on the officer and started to enter his car.

  

 Fortier gave a signal, and his group suddenly drew their weapons. This brought an

 immediate reaction from the Sector Marshal's bodyguards, and within seconds the air

 was filled with the sounds of a stun-gun battle. The robot, however, did not wait to

 observe the outcome. It slipped into the car and sped hastily away from the scene of the

 battle before anyone could stop it.

  

 Captain Fortier, too, hurried away, leaving the fighting to his comrades. He had not

 intended to capture Stanck just yet; he was hoping to panic it into making some hasty

 mistake. In a direct confrontation, the robot would have allowed him to destroy it rather

 than tell him anything and, with its strength and immunity to stun-guns, there was almost

 no way to capture it "alive." His only hope was that the robot would lead him to yet a

 bigger connection before he was forced to destroy it.

  

 Fortier had a copier waiting hidden on the street a block away. The pilot saw him coming

 and revved up the motor, so they were able to take off the instant Fortier jumped into the

 passenger seat. Within seconds they were airborne and ready to follow the robot's car

 wherever it might lead them. Fortier cautioned the pilot not to get too close; they didn't

 want the robot to realize it was being tailed.

  

 The Sector Marshal's groundcar had an automatic priority device, damping the motors of

 surrounding cars to let it pass by them unhindered. It sped out of Aachen in record time,

 the robot trusting to its computer-fast reflexes to drive more recklessly than any human

 would dare. Even in a copier Fortier had trouble keeping up, and he no longer had to

 caution his pilot to hang back. They had to fly at top speed if they didn't want to lose their

 quarry.

  

 Out in the open countryside, the robot drove even faster. The car was practically a blur

 on the highway. But it soon became obvious that its destination was the estate of the

 Grand Duke himself. Fortier found himself licking his lips. He'd been hoping this was

 where the trail would lead. The Grand Duke's name had also been on Helmund's

 references, and it had been at his specific direction that Stanck was hired as Sector

 Marshal.

  

 Stanck's car was scanned and identified, so it drove through the grounds of the estate

 unimpeded, screeching to a halt before the large doors of the main house. The robot

 jumped out of the car and disappeared into the mansion just as Fortier's copier was

 coming in for a quick landing.

  

 The Grand Duke's guards came running out to inspect this unknown intruder. Fortier had

 his identity card out and flashed it at the security officers. "Naval Intelligence," he shouted

 urgently. "The Sector Marshal is a fugitive and an impostor. We can't let him get away!"

  

 The conflicts in their loyalties, both to the Grand Duke and to the Empire, caused the

 guards to hesitate as they tried to decide whether to stop this intruder or help him. That

 slight pause was all Fortier needed to dodge past them and slip through the doors. He

 had his blaster drawn, prepared for any surprises the robot might throw at him.

  

 He caught a fleeting glimpse of the robot turning left at the far end of the long marble

 corridor ahead, and he raced in pursuit. When he reached the crossing hallway where

 the sector marshal had turned, his quarry had vanished from sight. There were, however,

 some startled servants standing mystified at Stanek's hurried flight. Fortier ran to the

 nearest one and flashed his ID card again. "I'm Captain Fortier, Naval Intelligence.

 Stanck is a traitor to the Empire and a fugitive. Which way did he go?"

  

 The woman was a bit flustered at the odd events of the last few seconds. "He . . . he

 went into the security council chamber over there.

  

 Fortier ran to the indicated door, but found it locked. The door itself was carved wood

 reinforced with magnisteel. The woman who'd pointed the way explained, "No one is

 permitted in there except the Grand Duke and the Sector Marshal. The door opens only

 to their touch."

  

 Fortier gave no thought to the consequences of what he was doing. He knew he was

 already committed to the largest gamble of his career. If he was wrong about any of his

 assumptions, court-martial would be the least serious thing that would happen to him.

 Grand Dukes were the highest rank of nobility below the Empress herself. $y invading

 this estate without legal authority, he'd put his neck on the block and sharpened the blade

 for the headsman; the only excuse he could offer for his various improprieties was that

 he'd been in "hot pursuit." It would be a feeble excuse if his guesses were wrong.

  

 With so much already at stake, there was no point in letting a door stand in his way.

 Aiming his blaster point blank at the lock, he burned through it in just a second and

 pushed the door inward with a loud crash.

  

 The Sector Marshal was bent over a computer terminal by a desk at the far side of the

 room. It looked up as Fortier came charging in, and reached to its side, as though for a

 weapon. The naval officer did not hesitate, firing his blaster with deadly accuracy at the

 robot's chest. The blazing beam sizzled through the air and struck the treacherous

 creation on target. The robot lurched backward against the wall, then slumped quietly to

 the ground.

  

 Fortier walked over to the desk and examined the terminal where the robot had been

 working. It looked as though Stanek had been trying to erase certain information and

 documents from the memory tiles, but had not yet had time to complete the job. Fortier

 called up those files; it took only a casual glance at their contents to realize he'd been

 correct in his assumptions. The Grand Duke was personally involved in this conspiracy.

  

 The Captain looked up to find himself staring into the muzzle of a blaster being wielded

 by the Grand Duke's chief of security. "You killed the Sector Marshal," the man said.

  

 "Check that more closely," Fortier replied. "The being you thought was Herman Stanck

 was a robot, a tool of a galaxy-wide conspiracy to overthrow the Stanley dynasty.

 Furthermore, if you'll look at this display, there's evidence against the Grand Duke

 himself."

  

 The security chief had one of his guards verify the information about Stanck, then he read

 the display on the computer terminal over Fortier's shoulder. His eyes slowly widened in

 astonishment, and he lowered his gun. Fortier relaxed with relief, but did not let it show.

  

 "Go back to business as normal," he told the security chief. "Under no circumstances

 should you inform the Grand Duke of what's happened here until I consult my superiors

 and decide what to do."

  

 The security chief nodded and ordered his people back to their duties. He himself backed

 slowly out of the room, leaving Fortier alone.

  

 The captain spent the next half hour checking the files, becoming more and more awed

 by how high an official he had reached within the criminal organization. The computer

 memory banks contained names, dates, places-all sorts of records that would totally

 demolish the conspiracy's forces. There were cryptic entries about a woman known only

 as Lady A, and the indication that the Grand Duke signed himself with the codename of

 C.

  

 The time had come for Fortier to bring his superiors into the case. He had gone as far as

 he could on his own authority-and actually quite a bit beyond. He dared not move against

 anyone as highly placed as a Grand Duke, even on evidence as tight as this, without

 backup from Luna Base.

  

 He was not surprised to find a subcom unit built into this office. This was obviously one of

 the nerve centers for the conspiracy, and the Grand Duke would want to stay in touch

 with developments all over the Galaxy. Fortier used that same subcom set to beam a

 message back to Admiral Trejas, Director of Naval Intelligence, at Luna Base.

  

 Fortier had to bull his way past innumerable secretaries and aides by insisting his

 information was important enough for Admiral Trejas to deal with it personally.

 Fortunately, he had enough of a reputation from his heroic actions during the Coronation

 Day Incursion that he was listened to, and eventually he got Admiral Trejas personally on

 the line.

  

 Captain Fortier gave his superior a carefully edited version of his story. One reason for

 the editing was that the call was not being scrambled, and he didn't want the

  

 information spread about too quickly; another was that he wanted to gloss over some of

 his own more unorthodox behavior. Nevertheless, he was able to give his superior an

 accurate rundown of his activities and a summary of the evidence he'd uncovered.

  

 The admiral's eyes widened at the mention of C and the linkage with the Grand Duke of

 Sector Four. "Are you positive of your facts?" he asked the captain again.

  

 Fortier could only repeat the information he had discovered within the Grand Duke's very

 household.

  

 Admiral Trejas rubbed his forehead and sighed. "Khorosho, I believe you. But we can't

 act too hastily in this matter. Moving against a Grand Duke is a serious undertaking. I'll

 have to get authorization from higher up."

  

 "If you get the authorization," Fortier said, "I'd like to be in on the arrest, if possible."

  

 "I'll get back to you as quickly as I can," the admiral promised as he broke the

 connection. Then he leaned back in his chair and contemplated the terrible burden that

 had fallen on his shoulders.

  

 Arresting a Grand Duke for treason would be a difficult proposition in any case. But this

 was infinitely worse, because Admiral Trejas was one of a small number of people who

 knew that the Grand Duke of Sector Four, Zander von Wilmenhorst, was actually the

 Head of the Service of the Empire. Arresting him would be no slight matter indeed.

 Chapter 4

 The Arrest of von Wilmenhorst

  

 After pausing a few minutes to collect his wits and his courage, Admiral Trejas put in a

 call to his own superior, Lord Admiral Cesare Benevenuto, the chief military officer of Her

 Imperial Majesty's Navy. Benevenuto listened to the report with a cold feeling in his heart.

 Grand Duke Zander was an old and respected acquaintance, but the evidence came

 from an impeccable source. Benevenuto promised Trejas a quick decision on the matter

 and promptly placed another call to move the information further up the line.

  

 Except during time of war or Imperial emergency, the Lord Admiral did not report directly

 to the Empress; instead, protocol demanded that he inform Duke Mosi Burr'uk, currently

 serving as Prime Councilor of the Imperial Council under Empress Stanley Eleven, just as

 he had served under her father until her accession to the Imperial Throne six months ago.

 Although the Empress held full authority, it was the P.C.'s job to screen those items that

 required her immediate attention and to handle those matters that could be dealt with on

 a lower level.

  

 The Duke was a small black man in his late fifties. He listened to Benevenuto's report

 with the same sense of impending fear that the two admirals had felt before him. As

 Head of SOTE, Zander von Wilmenhorst was also a member of the Imperial Council; he

 and Duke Mosi had often disagreed on matters of policy, sometimes violently. It galled

 Burr'uk that Stanley Ten, and now his daughter Edna, seemed to side with von

 Wilmenhorst more often than with him. Even so, this news hurt him. If it were true that

 von Wilmenhorst was the mysterious C, it meant there were no Imperial secrets or

 matters of policy that the conspiracy had not known or shaped. It made him shiver at the

 thought of how utterly the Empire might have been betrayed.

  

 With no little trepidation, then, Duke Mosi called for an urgent personal meeting with Her

 Imperial Majesty. Because of the importance of the subject, she agreed to cancel other

 appointments and see him in half an hour.

  

 The meeting took place in the private conference chamber of the Imperial Palace in

 Moscow. It was a room designed for work, devoid of the splendor of the more public

 rooms. Heavy gold and brown velvet tapestries with designs of unicorns and griffins

 covered the soundproofed walls, dampening noise in here still further. Gilded wooden

 chairs circled a leather-topped oval conference table that dominated the chamber. It was

 a coldly majestic place, reflecting the mood of its owner. The Prime Councilor, true to his

 nature, had arrived early and was waiting respectfully as Edna Stanley, ruler of the

 Empire of Earth, entered the room.

  

 The Empress, supreme ruler of an empire more vast than any other in human history,

 was barely twenty-six years old. She was not beautiful, but there was a charm about her

 appearance that caused most of her subjects to love her on sight. She wore a

 cream-colored suede jumpsuit and carried herself with royal confidence and pride. If her

 face was set in severe lines, it was because she bore the heaviest burden mankind had

 ever devised-total and absolute control over an entire Galaxy.

  

 Edna Stanley took her accustomed seat at the head of the oval table. "Well, my lord,"

 she said to her Prime Councilor, "what have you to say that's so important?"

  

 Duke Mosi made his presentation as simple and understated as he could. The facts were

 horrifying enough; they needed no elaboration. The Empress listened without once

 interrupting-a trait she'd picked up from her fatheralthough her face became increasingly

 drawn and grave as the story unfolded.

  

 She was silent for more than a minute after the Duke had finished his report. The calm

 expression on her face gave no indication of the war raging within her soul. At last she

 looked squarely at Burr'uk and said, "You realize, I presume, the seriousness of your

 accusations."

  

 "No one more so than I, Your Majesty. But I am only repeating what others have

 reported."

  

 "You've frequently disagreed with Zander at Council meetings. I'm sure you'd appreciate

 the removal of his opposition."

  

 The Duke's reaction was instantaneous. He approached the Empress' chair and knelt

 before, it with his head bowed. "Your Majesty, our disagreements, while often loud and

 volatile, have always been honest ones over the best ways to preserve the peace and

 safety of the Empire. If you think I take any joy in this news, I assure you you are

 mistaken. Quite the contrary-I'd hate to think our worst enemy has been privy to so many

 of our secrets. If you think I had some hand in fabricating evidence against Grand Duke

 Zander, then I hope you'll accept my resignation right now, for a Prime Councilor cannot

 function without the trust of his sovereign."

  

 "Get up, Mosi," the Empress said. "My father wouldn't have chosen you as Prime

 Councilor if he wasn't convinced of your integrity, and I wouldn't have reaffirmed you in

 the position if I had any doubts. I know you'd never stoop to tactics like these just to get

 rid of someone you disagree with."

  

 She shook her head. "It's just that . . . Zander! He's been like a dear uncle to me all my

 life. It's hard to believe he could be plotting against me."

  

 The Duke rose and straightened his gold-rimmed glasses. "The source is Captain Fortier,

 whom I believe you personally decorated for saving the Empire at your coronation. He

 emphasized to his superiors that he believes the evidence is unassailable, obtained from

 the Grand Duke's own files."

  

 The Empress nodded. "Perhaps I'm having trouble believing it because I don't want to

 believe it. If Zander is C, that means he knows everything about us, all our weak points,

 all our problems. It also means he has the power to mislead and misdirect us. The

 Service of the Empire is one of the most powerful tools in our arsenal. It's our eyes and

 ears. Without it, we'd drift helplessly and the Empire would probably crumble in a matter

 of months. SOTE is what makes an empire this large possible. . . ."

  

 She shivered and looked directly at the man before her. "Well, that's peripheral to our

 problem at the moment. We have a situation that must be dealt with. As my Prime

 Councilor, what do you recommend we do'?"

  

 "I think prudence dictates we operate on the worst possible assumption for the

 moment-that is, we must assume the information is true and Grand Duke Zander is your

 archenemy. If so, steps must be taken to neutralize him immediately."

  

 "I will not condemn him without seeing the evidence firsthand," the Empress insisted.

  

 "Of course not, Your Majesty," Duke Mosi hastily assured her. "I wouldn't do that, either.

 Arrangements will be made to obtain copies of the incriminating files for our examination

 as soon as possible. But in the meantime, Grand Duke Zander has intelligence sources

 of his own, and he is bound to hear what has happened at his own estate. If he is the

 man behind the conspiracy, he may have some contingency plans that he can set into

 effect. Since he knows all our weak points, he would know precisely where to act to

 cripple us most severely. We must put him under arrest immediately and hope to isolate

 him from his organization. If the evidence later turns out to be false-and I wish it no less

 than you do-we can release him with our apologies, and no permanent harm is done. If

 the information is correct, we'll have done what we could to keep him from causing

 further damage to the Empire. "

  

 "No permanent harm,"' the Empress mused, echoing Duke Mosi's phrase. "I wonder

 about that. Zander is someone whose trust and friendship I value; there aren't many

 people I can say that about. How can I accuse him of the highest crimes in the Galaxy,

 then release him later and expect to keep his loyalty and trust?"

  

 "The Zander von Wilmenhorst I know would understand your position perfectly," the

 Prime Councilor said. "Were he in my position, he'd be the first to say that Imperial

 security must rank ahead of friendship."

  

 "You're right about that. But if he is guilty . . ." She paused to consider the ramifications.

 "If he is guilty, how much of SOTE is in this with him? Helena is his chief assistant; she

 may be part of the same conspiracy. But the rest of the Service-has he been selecting

 people who are loyal to him, or to me? If they turn against me, the stability of the

 Imperial Throne is in serious jeopardy. The matter must be handled with the utmost

 delicacy." "There is another question, Your Majesty," Duke Mosi said. "We could not

 allow the Grand Duke the luxury of a trial, not in a matter this sensitive. If you preside

 over a High Court of Justice with the other Grand Dukes rendering a verdict, von

 Wilmenhorst's role as Head of SOTS will have to be revealed. If he is condemned-even if

 he's the only member of SOTE involved-the organization will have to be completely

 overhauled. If nothing else, its headquarters will have to be moved out of the Hall of

 State for Sector Four, where it is now. There will be a period of inevitable turmoil, and

 there are entirely too many people who'd be willing to take advantage of that. A trial,

 even in camera, would bring out too many things we'd want to keep hidden. You and you

 alone must decide the case and pronounce sentence."

  

 The Empress accepted her adviser's opinion thoughtfully, making no immediate

 comment. Her face was a mask of regal solemnity that gave no indication of the thoughts

 behind it. "Khorosho, my lord. Here are my instructions, which are to be carried out to

 the letter. Grand Duke Zander von Wilmenhorst and the Duchess Helena are to be

 placed under house arrest as quickly as possible. There is to be no force used unless

 they resist arrest, and then only the minimum force needed to carry out orders. They are

 to be held totally incommunicado, and the case against them must be spelled out to them

 in detail so they'll have a chance to explain. They are to be treated at all times with the

 deference and courtesy befitting their ranks. Find out who is number three at SOTE

 Headquarters. I'll contact that person myself and explain that Zander and Helena are

 indisposed, and that he is to be in charge until further notice. If we can keep SOTE in the

 dark about this, at least for a while, it may minimize any threat from that direction.

  

 "If I hear of any unwarranted mistreatment of either Zander or Helena, someone will wish

 he hadn't been born. I'll take what steps I must to protect the security of the Empire, but

 I will not hurt two people I love unless the charges against them can be thoroughly

 proved."

  

 "Yes, Your Majesty. And I'll pray fervently that our worst assumption turns out to be

 wrong." The Prime Councilor bowed deeply to his sovereign and left the room.

  

 You and I both, Mosi, the Empress thought as she watched him depart.

  

 Edna Stanley had been trained since birth to keep her emotions well hidden in public.

 First as Crown Princess, and now as Empress, she had known she would be the center

 of attention. In any difficult situation, people would look to her for a reaction. If she was

 weepy or hysterical, the fear would be contagious. If she, as focal point of the Empire,

 was calm and confident, morale would remain high. The Empire would ultimately have

 only as much strength as she, its symbol, could project. And fortunately for the Empire,

 she had the inner resources to keep it strong.

  

 But the private Edna Stanley, seen by only a privileged few, was tossed into a sea of

 turmoil over this revelation of possible treachery by her most trusted advisor, ally, and

 friend. The doubts and fears gnawed at her innards. Had she done the right thing? How

 secure was the Imperial Throne-and, for that matter, her very life? Who could be trusted

 if Zander turned out to be a traitor?

  

 In a crisis like this, there was only one person with whom she could be totally at ease:

 her husband Liu. The Emperor-Consort was a man of quiet strength and dignity more

 than a match for her own. He was a fully ordained priest of the mystical religion of his

 native planet, Antares, and a philosopher of no mean talents. Because he did not bear

 the responsibility of the Empire on his shoulders, he could be strong when she herself felt

 weak, and she had drawn on that strength many times in the past.

  

 It was not precisely love that had drawn her to him out of her many possible suitors; love

 had little room in the life of a person who would rule the Galaxy. To be sure, love of a

 fashion had bloomed between them since their meeting; she cared about him, she felt

 comfortable in his presence, she knew she could depend on him to support her in her

 times of need. To the extent that these factors constituted love, then love was present.

 But to the extent that love encompassed passion, it was never there. Edna knew that,

 and at odd moments she felt the loss-but then she herself was hardly what anyone would

 call a woman of passions, and those moments passed quickly. She had picked Liu as her

 consort because of his wisdom and his strength, and she had never regretted her choice.

  

 The Empress' private bedchamber was decorated to look like the inside of a comfortable

 cave. The walls were carved of volcanic rock with lush ferns growing in niches around the

 room. Brightly colored silk pillows were scattered about the polished obsidian floor and

 the bed was a raised platform covered by futon mats. Covering the back wall behind the

 bed, a sisal macrame hanging held hundreds of crystal globes filled with glowing votive

 candles.

  

 Alone there with Liu that evening, Edna unburdened her troubles to him. The

 Emperor-Consort listened as impassively as Edna had listened to the Prime Councilor

 earlier that day. The Empress paced the room as she talked, her tone becoming more

 uncertain as she speculated on the consequences. "I've known Zander since I was a

 baby. My father knew him and trusted him even before that. If he wanted the throne,

 there are many easier ways he could have gotten it. He's third in line of succession

 himself now. All he'd have had to do was arrange three 'accidental' deaths-that would

 have been child's play for someone with his brains and resources. It doesn't make sense

 for him to act this way."

  

 "Sense is not an inherent quality of isolated facts," Liu said quietly. "Only when all things

 are known can the patterns be sorted out. Even then, consistency is rare." He walked

 over to his wife and put his hands gently around her shoulders. "When dealing with

 human beings, sense is the last thing anyone should expect."

  

 "And yet I keep thinking that, in a way, it does make sense," Edna said with a slight

 sniffle. "The conspiracy knows almost everything SOTE does, and we've never been able

 to trace the leaks. Zander's people have filled up the holes when we've come into

 danger, but the margin seems to get thinner each time. At my coronation, his strategy

 seemed sound, but it came damned close to backfiring on us. Is he playing some subtle

 game`? Does he enjoy moving us all around for some perverted thrill of his own'?"

  

 "I have long suspected he could play a three-dimensional chess game on a

 two-dimensional board," Liu said. "But capability should not be confused with actuality. If

 we executed everyone with a potential for outwitting us, we'd end up first on our own

 list."

  

 Edna turned around and buried her face in his chest. "What can I do about this?"

  

 "Your options are limitless. If you want to know what you should do, however, I suggest

 waiting." "Waiting?" She gave a bitter laugh. "It seems that's all I've been doing. We've

 known for years that they're out there somewhere, an entire conspiracy aimed at me,

 and all I've been able to do is wait and see where they'll try to hit me next. They tried at

 our wedding, they tried at my coronation, who knows when they'll try again? Maybe I

 should call my father, ask his advice . . . "

  

 "He had sixty-some years of the anxiety you have now, knowing that your Uncle Banian

 was somewhere out there waiting for him to slip. The six months since his abdication has

 been the only vacation he's ever really had. Do you feel it's proper to interrupt it with your

 troubles?"

  

 Edna kissed him lightly on the neck. "You're right, as usual. The responsibility is mine

 now, not his. He had to live forty-five years making decisions like these. Now I have to

 get used to it. He may not always be around to help me; I must learn to do without a

 crutch." She sighed, and added, "What did you mean about waiting?"

  

 "It seems to me that our enemy's forte is patience. He remains hidden in shadows and

 occasionally throws something at us to see how we react. So far, our reflexes have been

 excellent, and we have intercepted all his attempts. But if ever we should overreact, if we

 lean over too far unbalanced, I am sure our enemy will be happy to push us the rest of

 the way."

  

 "Are you suggesting we do nothing? I can't take that chance. If, by some incredible

 misfortune, Zander really is C, I can't just let him go free. With everything he knows, he

 might destroy us."

  

 "You have given much thought to the possibility of Zander's being guilty. Have you

 considered the alternative'?" Edna moved away from her husband and faced the

 macrame wall. One away Liu's greatest-and at the same time most infuriating-qualities

 was that he never handed her the answers she wanted. He viewed his role in her life as

 one of teacher, and he kept trying to make her reach for the answers herself, to stretch

 her mental capacity beyond the safe, normal limits. In the long run she was grateful to

 him for it, but at times like this, when he obviously had a suggestion, it was frustrating to

 have to guess at it herself. "Of course it's something I'd like very much," she mused

 aloud. "But you're talking about more than my personal feelings, aren't you? Khorosho,

 let's assume Zander is innocent for a moment. What does that tell us?"

  

 She paused and stared at the glowing candles. "It tells us," she continued, "that there is

 something wrong with the case against him. Either the source of the information, or the

 information itself-or both-is not to be trusted. Now the source is Captain Fortier. we know

 he's a smart, honest, and dedicated officer. He wouldn't deliberately mislead us. For the

 moment, I'll assume Captain Fortier is giving us the situation precisely as he sees it.

  

 "That would leave the information itself. Fortier got it directly from the computer in

 Zander's own office at home. If that's wrong, it means the conspiracy went to great

 trouble to plant it there, because Zander's security is very tight. Why would they go to

 such trouble? Well, they know Zander is Head of SOTE, and they know I'd have to

 suspend him on the basis of this evidence. Without Zander, SOTE's operations will be

 seriously impaired, which means the conspiracy will be able to move much more freely. I

 see what you mean; assuming Zander's innocence leads to very interesting conclusions."

  

 She sat down on the edge of the bed and continued to think aloud. "The trouble is, I'm

 caught in a fork. I can't take the chance that he's innocent, because if he isn't he can use

 SOTE to destroy me. But if he is innocent I'm needlessly taking him away from his duties

 and SOTE will suffer anyway. Either way, I lose. I wish I were able to consult Zander on

 this; he's so good at figuring a way out of such tricky situations. But I'm cut off from him,

 so I must do the thinking on my own."

  

 She was quiet for a long while, staring vacantly into

  

 space. Liu sat cross-legged on a pillow in the corner of the room, not wanting to disturb

 her meditation. His expression showed his confidence in his wife's abilities.

  

 "I think I see what you meant by patience," Edna said at last. "If Zander's guilty, just

 holding him may force his organization to do something to free him-and they'll be the

 ones extending themselves for a change. If Zander's innocent, then it figures they've set

 him up and they'll be waiting to see how we react. If we only take minimum action, they

 may try to push things a little further, and again they may tip their hand." She turned and

 looked gratefully at her husband. "Thank you, Liu."

  

 The Emperor-Consort merely shrugged. "I was but the signpost. You walked the road

 yourself. I have learned to trust your ability to make the right decision. I hope someday

 you will learn to have the same faith in yourself."

  

 "Maybe I will yet," Edna said. "After all, I've got a wonderful teacher."

  

 Meanwhile, the instructions the Empress had given earlier that day were being carried

 out with the typical efficiency of the Imperial Navy. Orders were relayed from the Prime

 Councilor to Admiral Benevenuto; from Benevenuto to Admiral Trejas; and from Trejas all

 the way back to Preis and the anxiously waiting Captain Fortier, who lost no time in

 seeing they were carried out.

  

 His first priority, to which he'd been attending while awaiting further orders, was to make

 copies of all the incriminating records and have them transmitted back to Luna Base.

 That task completed, he had begun interrogating the Grand Duke's house staff when the

 orders came in.

  

 At this particular time, Grand Duke Zander von Wilmenhorst happened to be traveling in

 the Preis system. While he spent most of his life on Earth near the center of activity at

 the Imperial Court, von Wilmenhorst made periodic trips back to his capital to deal with

 government functions that could not easily be delegated to others. His private space

 cruiser, the Anna Libeling, was even now calmly approaching the planet Preis, its

 occupants unaware that they were at the eye of a transgalactic storm.

  

 Captain Fortier, leading a small fleet of naval gunships, approached the Anna Libeling

 just two days after Zander von Wilmenhorst had given the assignment to the d'Alemberts

 and the Bavols. The order was given to the Anna Libeling's Captain Hetsko to halt the

 cruiser's motion and permit boarders. The ship offered no resistance and Captain Fortier

 boarded it with a stun-gun in his holster but prepared for any trouble that might develop.

  

 The Anna Libeling was a large ship, basically a giant rectangular box a hundred and

 twenty-five meters long by fifty meters wide and deep. It was never intended to land;

 there were small auxiliary boats for that which were even capable of interstellar flight in

 an emergency. The private ship dwarfed the naval vessels that swarmed around it; it was

 also better-armed than they were, though Fortier did not know that. In a fight, the Anna

 Libeling could hold its own against anything but the largest naval destroyers. But there

 was no such fight now. The personnel within the Anna Libeling followed the Navy's

 orders graciously.

  

 For personal comfort, the ship's ultragrav had been set at one gee. Captain Fortier and a

 few of his officers were escorted down the crowded, art-lined corridors into the main

 salon. This was a large room of stark Scandinavian design. The sofas and chairs were of

 teakwood with straight, utilitarian lines, covered in blue and white tweed fabric. The walls

 were of glazed shades of smoke-gray. From the ceiling, as a chandelier, hung a

 modernistic metal sculpture of a Viking ship.

  

 Grand Duke Zander von Wilmenhorst and his daughter, Duchess Helena, were waiting to

 greet the officers. The Grand Duke was wearing a conservatively tailored gray leather

 jumpsuit; his daughter, an attractive young lady in her mid-twenties, had on a pair of

 black velvet lounging trousers and a white silk shirt. "Welcome to my ship, Captain," the

 Grand Duke said. "To what do I owe the honor of this visit?"

  

 Fortier had orders to show proper deference, and he knew enough court etiquette not to

 embarrass the Navy. "I fear, Your Grace, I have the duty to inform you that you must

 consider yourself under arrest."

  

 Duchess Helena exploded out of her chair. "What? That's utterly ridiculous! Do you

 know-?"

  

 The Grand Duke raised a hand and his daughter stopped her harangue abruptly. Von

 Wilmenhorst looked slightly amused. "Indeed? May I ask the charge?"

  

 "The charge, sir, is treason."

  

 "Are you certain your orders are correct, Captain?" There was no longer amusement in

 von Wilmenhorst's tone.

  

 "Yes, sir. They come directly from the Empress herself. You and Her Grace, the

 Duchess Helena, are to be held incommunicado until further notice."

  

 "I see." The Grand Duke took the news philosophically. "Well, I've never known Her

 Majesty to act rashly, so I'll have to assume she has good reason for this, but I'd

 certainly like to know what it is."

  

 "I'm empowered to explain it in detail, Your Grace," Fortier said. "But first I must ask you

 and your daughter to submit to searches to make sure you have no weapons on your

 persons. I've brought some female officers along to ensure your daughter's dignity."

  

 "Very considerate of you, Captain," von Wilmenhorst nodded.

  

 Duchess Helena, though, was not nearly so calm about the situation. "Father, there's got

 to be some mistake.

  

 They can't mean us! We can't just sit here and let them do this. If we could only call her. .

 . ."

  

 "The orders said incommunicado," Fortier repeated firmly.

  

 The Grand Duke turned to face his daughter. "Just six months ago at the coronation, you

 and I knelt before the Empress and pledged her our allegiance and obedience in all

 matters. Despite the charges, I never have and never will violate that pledge. We will

 accede to these orders, Helena, and wait for the Empress' good judgment to assert

 itself. "

  

 He stood up and held his arms out to his sides. "I am ready to be searched, Captain. I

 hope you'll be quick about it; I'm most anxious to hear that explanation you promised."
Chapter 5

 Live Bait

  

 The d'Alemberts and the Bavols spent most of the night after their discussion with the

 Head sitting around the large table in the com room, going over the information they'd

 received about the phony Wombat and Periwinkle. The doubles' method was simple and

 coldly efficient: They would place a call to the local SOTE headquarters, where the use

 of their special codenames would win them instant obedience. They'd arrange for all the

 agents on that world to converge at an out-of-the-way location within a very short period

 of time, so the local commander wouldn't have the chance to check with HQ on Earth.

 Once they had everyone assembled, they massacred the SOTE people without

 mercy-and the last place any Service agent would expect betrayal was from Wombat

 and Periwinkle.

  

 "Maybe we did too good a job," Jules sighed. "We're legends in our own time, and Lady

 A's cashing in on that." "How do I always get mixed up with such mod_ est men?" Yvette

 wondered aloud.

  

 "I was bragging on your behalf, too," Jules said. "But other than our codenames, the

 conspiracy doesn't seem to know any more about us than anyone else does. As far as

 we know, the doubles have never shown themselves; at least they've never left a living

 witness. They may be afraid their descriptions won't jibe. That may work to our

 advantage; if they don't know what we look like, we may be able to fool them somehow."

  

 "Lady A certainly knows what you and I look like," Vonnie pointed out. "She got a good

 enough look at us on Gastonia, and since we're not listed on SOTE's regular roster,

 she's smart enough to figure that at least one of us is a member of the legendary team.

 And didn't Tanya Boros meet Yvette while you were tracking down BanionT,

  

 "I don't think she'd remember much about me," Yvette said. "Jules was the one in the

 spotlight as duClos; I stayed pretty much in the background. Besides, I was heavily

 disguised to look middle-aged and frumpy. No, I'll bet I'm pretty much of an unknown to

 them-and Pias will be totally unknown."

  

 "It looks, then," Jules said, "as though we should break up into our usual pairings. If

 anything requires movement on the outside, Vonnie and I will handle it since we're known

 anyway. You two should work behind the scenes, so we can keep your identities secret

 as long as possible. "

  

 "The question still remains," said Pias, "of what we are going to do to stop the slaughter

 of SOTE agents." "If they keep to their pattern," Yvette said, "we know exactly when and

 where they'll strike. The line of their advance points straight to the planet Floreata, and

 the timetable they've established makes it twenty-three days from now. That gives us

 plenty of time to get there and plan our next move."

  

 "But how accurately can we plan that next move?" Pias wondered. "The impostors pick

 the spot of the ambush, and they only give a few hours' notice. We won't be able to work

 up anything too elaborate until we know the details, and then we might not have enough

 time."

  

 "We also have to find a way of warning the local Service people not to fall into the trap,"

 Vonnie said. Pias shrugged his shoulders. "That, at least, seems simple enough. We go

 in there the day before and tell them what the conspiracy is doing, so they won't go to

 the ambush spot. "

  

 "I don't think that will work, mon cher," Yvette said, shaking her head. "The impostors

 won't show themselves unless the SOTE squad. turns up."

  

 "Or something that looks like the SOTE squad," Jules murmured.

  

 All eyes turned to him, and his sister grinned. "I recognize that expression on your face,

 mon cher frere. There are times I think even Lady A can't match you in sneakiness, and

 this is one of them. Would you care to share that idea with the rest of us?"

  

 "A thought did occur to me," Jules admitted. "On Gastonia, when Lady A wanted to set

 an irresistible trap, she used herself as live bait, knowing we'd never pass up a chance to

 get our hands on her. Now she wants us; this whole scheme has been designed to draw

 us in. We ought to be able to use her own trick on her."

  

 "The difference," Vonnie pointed out, "is that we wanted her alive to question her about

 the conspiracy. They already seem to know a lot about the Service; all she may want of

 us is our heads on a plate."

  

 "I'm not so sure," Jules said. "They know a lot more about us than we know about them,

 that's true. But they don't know everything, or they wouldn't have set up this trap this

 way. I'm willing to bet they don't know anything about the Circus, for instance. Only a few

 people outside the family have ever known about it; there's been nothing in writing,

 nothing entered into the files. The conspiracy must know there's something missing from

 their information; we've spoiled their plans a few too many times for it to be random

 chance. There's something they're not taking into account, and they'll want to know what

 it is.

  

 "Remember when Lady A let us capture her and inject her with what we thought was

 nitrobarb? She was actually criticizing us for not knowing how to operate, and for

 squandering such a potential resource. I think she was showing some of her true

 personality there-and I think if she got her hands on Agents Wombat and Periwinkle she

 wouldn't just kill them outright. She'd want to interrogate them to find out what pieces of

 the SOTE puzzle were missing. She'd be confident she could kill us later, after she found

 out what she needed to know."

  

 "In other words," Vonnie said slowly, "you're proposing that we be the live bait in this

 trap."

  

 Her husband nodded. "We'll have to take the risk. We want to go a step beyond the

 obvious. It's not just enough to capture or kill the impostors; the conspiracy could just

 start playing the game again somewhere else with a new team and we'd end up

 spending all our time tracking down phony Wombats and Periwinkles. We have to get

 behind the game and show them it won't work. They'll abandon a tactic if it proves

 unprofitable-we've seen that. We just have to make this damned unprofitable for them."

  

 "I just hope the cost isn't too high for our side, too," Yvette said-and her sentiment met

 with no opposition from the others.

  

 The planet Floreata was a hot world, orbiting much closer to its central star than Earth

 did to its primary. The polar ice caps in both hemispheres were barely noticeable, and

 disappeared altogether in summer. Much of the water vapor that would have otherwise

 condensed at the poles remained in the atmosphere, with the result that large portions of

 the planet's surface were perpetually overcast. The air was thick and steamy, and mists

 rose constantly from the top of the oceans.

  

 There were no deserts on Floreata. Most of the planet was soggy with swampland, and

 warm rains were a perennial feature everywhere but the extreme northern and southern

 latitudes. The winds usually tended to be mild, so there were no fierce hurricanes or

 monsoons. There were even times when the sun broke through the cloud cover and

 steamed the swamps for a short while before the mists and drizzles claimed them again.

  

 Floreata was not an easy place for humans to dwell, but people are stubborn and, once

 they have set their minds on living in a certain place, they will go to extremes to protect

 their homes. Plants of many sorts grew well in Floreata's moist heat, making the planet a

 rich source of agricultural products. With that as an incentive, people lived there despite

 the oppressive climate.

  

 The major cities tended to be in the higher latitudes, where temperatures were more

 moderate by human standards. The swamps had been cleared away and enormous

 transparent domes had been erected to protect the cities from the worst of the rain.

 Little could be done about the all-pervasive humidity, however. Mildew and rotting were

 constant problems, and special building materials and fabrics were needed to keep

 civilization from falling apart after only a few years.

  

 Despite the problems, more than six hundred million people made Floreata their home.

 They were dedicated and proud of their existence, and few would have moved away

 even if offered an alternative.

  

 The very nature of the planet, though, offered the quartet of SOTE agents special

 difficulties. There were large sections of the planet still uninhabited, much of it in dismal,

 mucky swamps. If the impostors stayed true to form, they could set their ambush in any

 number of distasteful settings. "We have to let them pick the battlefield," Jules admitted

 during the planning sessions, "but we can provide a few surprises of our own."

  

 Twelve hours before the impostors were due to appear, the real Agent Wombat called

 Service headquarters on Floreata and spoke with Colonel Josephine Reede. "We think

 we've located a rebel base on the far side of the fourth planet in this system. The

 nearest naval station of any size is a couple of days away, and by the time they could

 get here our birds may have flown. Can you give us a hand?"

  

 "I'd be honored," the colonel said. "What do you need?"

  

 "I need your entire contingent in space armor, waiting in a ship just above that planet.

 How many people have you got here?"

  

 "Twelve. "

  

 "Good, that should be enough." Jules proceeded to give the colonel instructions. She and

 her people were to rendezvous above the fourth planet in twelve hours, and were to wait

 there until they received further instructions from Wombat. If they received no instructions

 within an additional twelve hours, it was an indication that the rebels had moved and the

 raid would be called off. In that event, Jules said, the SOTE people could return to

 Floreata with both his thanks and his apologies for bringing them on a futile mission.

  

 Colonel Reede and her agents were destined to spend an uncomfortable half a day in

 space armor, keyed up for a battle that would never happen. For months afterward

 some of them would be griping about the experience, never knowing that they'd been

 taken well out of harm's way. Jules had at least made sure they'd still be alive months

 later to do the griping.

  

 With all the agents out on Jules's errand, there were only a couple of civilian clerks left to

 mind the office. Yvette walked in with body padding and heavy makeup as a disguise and

 identified herself as Agent Periwinkle. The clerks, while not trained agents, knew of that

 codename and were dutifully obedient. Yvette explained that she would be coordinating

 activities on the upcoming raid, and all communications were to be channeled through

 her. She brought Pias in and assigned him to handle all incoming calls.

  

 Precisely on schedule, a call came in from "Agent Wombat" demanding to speak to

 Colonel Reede on a matter of high priority. Pias immediately put the call through to

 Yvette, who had commandeered the colonel's office. "This is Colonel Reede," Yvette

 said.

  

 "This is Agent Wombat," came a voice that she knew did not belong to Jules.

  

 "What can I do for you?" she asked, putting the proper amount of reverence in her voice.

  

 The impostor went on to discuss plans for an attack against a criminal hideout every bit

 as phony as the rebel base Jules had invented. The coordinates he gave placed it, as

 they had feared, right in the middle of a large, unpopulated swamp. Yvette agreed to

 rendezvous there with all twelve of her people in two hours. The pseudoWombat rang off

 without even so much as a thank-you.

  

 Well, Yvette thought, Julie has lots of flaws, but at least he's more polite than that.

  

 Within seconds she was in contact with Jules and Vonnie, filling them in on the details of

 the ambush. With that out of the way, Yvette and Pias departed, thanking the clerical

 staff for their help. The SOTE personnel never knew that a tragedy had just been

 averted.

  

 Throughout history, every city in every civilization has had its dropouts, its losers, its

 hopelessly outcast. The cities of Floreata were no exception. Immediately after learning

 the number of agents stationed on this world, Jules and Yvonne d'Alembert had scoured

 the bars and slums looking for people willing to participate in their masquerade. It did not

 take them very long at all. It was amazing how many people were willing to play cops

 and robbers, no questions asked, for a hundred rubles. The agents picked ten of the

 cleanest they could find, who with themselves would round out the dozen.

  

 There was barely time to arrange the transportation and fly all the phony agents to the

 designated spot in time for the rendezvous. Jules and Vonnie had their "team" assemble

 in the swamp just north of a clearing where the pseudo-Wombat had said the enemy was

 located. The only sign of habitation was a small plastifoam but at the southwest corner of

 the clearing-hardly a job that would have required twelve agents in any case, and

 certainly not one that the real Wombat would have needed help on.

  

 The d'Alemberts kept their group together and waited, swatting at the stinging insects

 and battling the heavy swamp stench. The ambushers were not likely to show

 themselves until they knew their instructions had been carried out; they knew the real

 Wombat and Periwinkle had probably been alerted to their tactics by now, and they

 would not want to make any costly mistakes.

  

 They were not kept waiting long. A small copier appeared overhead, and the

 pseudo-Wombat's voice came down to Jules and Vonnie's com unit. "Glad to see you

 followed instructions. I want you to move in and capture the gang hiding out in that hut.

 Stunners only-I want them alive for questioning. My partner and I will stay up here and

 survey the scene, in case any of them break through your lines."

  

 "The hut's probably booby-trapped," Jules said, and Vonnie nodded agreement. Jules

 turned to their ten "confederates. "

  

 "You've served your purpose here," he told the people. "I want you to sneak off now and

 hide yourselves in the swamp. You can go anywhere except into that clearing, and don't

 go anywhere near that hut. There may be some shooting, but it won't be aimed at you.

 As soon as everything's settled, you can reassemble and take the copiers back to the

 city. Thanks for your help."

  

 The people dispersed as they were instructed, and moments later an angry call came

 down from the copier. "What's the matter with you? I told you to send your team into the

 hut, not away from it!'

  

 "I'm operating under a different set of orders," Jules replied calmly.

  

 "You're not Colonel Reede," the voice on the com unit accused.

  

 "And you're not Wombat, either," Jules said. "I am." As he spoke, he took careful aim at

 the copier with his blaster and fired, hoping to knock out its engine. The copier was up at

 the extreme range of his blaster, and the shot-though perfectly centered-did no effective

 damage. The copier's occupants, realizing they were in an all-out war, immediately fired

 back at the two remaining figures on the ground. The craft was more heavily armed than

 the agents, and there was nothing ineffective about the blaster beams that came sizzling

 downward. Jules and Vonnie had to leap for cover into the dense vegetation as the

 deadly rays scorched the damp ground where they'd been standing instants before.

  

 The copier hovered above the scene, just out of handgun range, pouring energy at a

 relentless intensity into the swamp where the agents had disappeared. Jules and Vonnie

 were not given the chance to stand and think of any cogent response to the threat. They

 could only move and react, trusting to their training and quick reflexes to keep them alive.

  

 In drier terrain, the intense heat from the enemy's blasters would undoubtedly have

 started a forest fire, adding to the danger and confusion. The trees here were so damp

 that they were not about to catch fire. They sizzled under the copter's beams, emitting

 the powerful stench of smoldering vegetation as well as clouds of smoke and steam that

 helped conceal the d'Alemberts' escape.

  

 When this initial assault failed to achieve its objective, the killers in the copier decided on

 a new and subtler tactic. Laying down a continuous line of blaster fire, they began moving

 it slowly inward toward the clearing. To the d'Alemberts, the strategy was clear: The

 enemy was sweeping them toward the clearing and the plastifoam hut, where they'd be

 perfect targets. Moving away from the clearing meant running directly into the blaster

 beams. They had no choice but to be pushed the way the enemy wanted them to go.

 Fighting against the vines that clung and tried to hold them back, they were herded closer

 to the clearing.

  

 The agents did have a choice, however, about how fast they moved in that direction. The

 copter's passengers were taking their time about moving their sweep inward, being

 careful not to miss any spot where the fugitives might hide or break out of the pattern.

 Jules realized that if, instead of moving grudgingly toward the clearing, he and Vonnie ran

 through it at full speed, they might break through to the other side before the copier could

 re-aim.

  

 He communicated his idea to his wife in a series of breathy orders as they ran, and she

 gasped her agreement. Running at top DesPlainian speed hampered by the damp

 springy ground and the sticky vines, they raced ahead of the blaster fire, hoping to make

 it through the clearing and into the underbrush beyond, where they could separate and

 make it harder for their foes to maneuver them.

  

 They made it halfway through the clearing before the enemy could react. Jules had to

 admit that the conspiracy had picked top marksmen for this assignment; their reflexes

 were nearly as fast as the d'Alemberts'. Before the real SOTE agents could make it all

 the way across the clearing, they found that the wall of blaster fire had shifted and was

 now in front of them. Only their own lightning reflexes enabled them to stop in time to

 avoid running directly into it. Vonnie nearly fell trying to execute such an abrupt change of

 direction, and Jules reached out to steady her and pull her away.

  

 The curtain of blazing energy curved about them, constricting their movements once

 more. They could not run back into the swamp from which they'd come, nor could they

 move out ahead. Their only option was toward the hut. Now that they were in the open,

 the enemy was able to push them faster, making them move at their most rapid pace.

  

 It was clear that the people in the copier were toying with them; in the open like this, the

 d'Alemberts made easy targets for anyone with the firepower of that craft. The fact that

 they weren't killed outright raised Jules's hopes that his supposition was correct. The

 conspiracy wanted to capture him alive to find out more of what he knew. That would

 make what had to be done here that much easier.

  

 Alive, though, did not necessarily mean unharmed. He and Vonnie still could not be

 positive the enemy wouldn't use their blasters to incapacitate their prey.

  

 The door to the but stood invitingly open. They were being herded rapidly in there, even

 though they knew the building was booby-trapped. Their only hope lay in finding a safe

 way out again before the trap could be sprung.

  

 Again they decided to use their speed as their only weapon in this situation. Outracing

 the wall of blaster fire behind them, they ran through the open door into the darkened

 interior of the hut.

  

 The back wall of the small building was against a patch of trees, and there was a

 window in it. The d'Alemberts didn't need to communicate in order to coordinate their

 movements; there was only one option open to them. In one fluid motion they raced to

 the back of the but and dived through the window back into the cover of the swamp.

  

 Barely a millisecond behind them, the but exploded as the blaster beams from the copter

 touched off a charge of explosives that had been hidden on the roof. The shock waves

 from the blast jarred the agents to their teeth, leaving them slightly stunned. The heat

 from the explosion seared their skin and pieces of debris rained down on them like a fiery

 hailstorm. They lay face down, unable to move from the shock for a few seconds. In

 those few seconds they hoped hard that the enemy did not have infrared detectors. The

 d'Alemberts knew they were covered by enough foliage to be invisible to the naked eye,

 but an infrared system would spot their body heat among the plants. The few seconds it

 took their nervous systems to recover from the blast left them exposed to the deadly

 rays from above.

  

 But no blaster bolts came blazing down, and the SOTE agents were slowly able to pull

 themselves together and take further stock of the situation. Overhead they could hear the

 copter circling the clearing slowly, looking for any sign of human life. Seeing none, the

 craft spiraled warily downward so its occupants could inspect the site for themselves.

  

 The d'Alemberts crouched and, at a whispered signal from Jules, they separated, moving

 to either side of the clearing, ready to attack from different angles as soon as their

 opponents were vulnerable. Their bodies were dripping in sweat after their exertion in the

 hot, damp air, but they ignored that. When d'Alemberts were on the hunt, physical

 discomfort meant little.

  

 The copter touched down gently a few meters from the remnants of the exploded hut. At

 first, nothing happened. Then the door slowly opened and two figures emerged, a man

 and a woman. They were clad in lightweight battle armor-enough to deflect stunner

 beams and ordinary blaster bolts, yet still flexible enough to allow freedom of movement.

 Jules and Vonnie had their heavy-duty blasters with them, having enough power to drill

 right through that armor, if necessary. Each armored figure also carried a blaster. There

 was no polite, gentlemen's agreement, fooling around with stun weapons; these people

 meant business.

  

 The pair from the copter slowly approached the remains of the hut, weapons at the

 ready. Jules waited until they were well away from their vehicle, making retreat impos-

  

 sible, and then yelled at them, "Drop your weapons. I've got a Mark Twenty-Nine Service

 blaster pointed at you, and it'll eat through that armor like paper."

  

 The armored figures did not drop their weapons, nor had Jules expected them to. Even

 as he spoke, he was firing his own blaster. His aim was perfect; the beam struck the

 other man's weapon full on, reducing its components to slag almost instantly. From her

 hiding point across the way, Vonnie made a similar shot to disarm their other opponent.

  

 Weaponless, now, the armored enemies were in a quandary. They could not fire back at

 their opponents, but there was still a slight chance they could make a break back into the

 copter. Jules's second shot discouraged them from considering that notion further as his

 beam dug a small trench between the people and their craft. Realizing they were

 trapped, the two killers stood still and spread their arms in a gesture of surrender.

  

 "Strip off the armor," Jules called next, refusing to budge from his position of safety until

 he was sure the enemy was totally at his disposal. The two figures fol-   I lowed his

 instructions, divesting themselves slowly of the cumbersome armor until they stood

 revealed in the light clothing they'd worn under it.

  

 Jules eyed them critically. They were a tough, hard muscled pair, probably very good in

 a fight-but they were not DesPlainians. He'd never seen either of them before, but then

 he hadn't expected any old friends to show up-the conspiracy seemed to have a limitless

 supply of muscle to back up its plans. On a fishing expedition for Wombat and

 Periwinkle, Lady A would send only her best.

  

 Only after the two traitors had fully removed their armor did the d'Alemberts step out into

 the clearing, guns still trained on their enemies. Stun-guns would have made the capture

 a lot easier, but the agents had been walking into a dangerous encounter and wanted to

 be certain they were armed for the worst.

  

 They were not prepared, however, for what happened next. A loud buzzing sound filled

 the air, emanating from the copter, and stunner beams hit Jules and Vonnie simul-

  

 taneously. There had been at least two more people hidden inside the vehicle, waiting

 just in case the d'Alemberts had survived the explosion.

  

 The SOTE team dropped unconscious to the ground without even having time to

 appreciate the irony of the situation. Within seconds the entire outcome had been turned

 around, and now the d'Alemberts were prisoners of the killers who'd been impersonating

 them.

  

 Chapter 6

 Helena Joins the Circus

  

 Following his orders, Captain Fortier gave the von Wilmenhorsts a thorough briefing of

 his investigation and the conclusions that had been reached. Grand Duke Zander listened

 thoughtfully, occasionally interjecting a question to clarify a point in his mind. Fortier was

 uncomfortable in this role. He did not, of course, know that Zander von Wilmenhorst was

 the Head of SOTE. As far as he was concerned, the Empress had commanded him to

 give this explanation purely as a matter of courtesy to a nobleman of the second-highest

 rank in the Empire. With the evidence as convincing as it was, he also felt he was letting

 a powerful enemy know the details of the case against him, and he did not like that. He

 was duty-bound, though, to carry out the Imperial instructions.

  

 The Grand Duke was silent for several minutes after Fortier finished the briefing. He

 leaned back in his chair and peered intently at a point on the floor several meters away.

 His mind appeared to be on another level of existence altogether, totally separate from

 the material universe. A hush fell over the room; Fortier knew instinctively-as Helena had

 learned from long experience-not to interrupt the Grand Duke when he was in a

 thoughtful reverie.

  

 At last Zander von Wilmenhorst returned to the here-and-now. "Excuse me for being so

 distant, Captain. You've told me a fascinating tale, and the implications are truly

 staggering. I agree that, under the circumstances, Her Majesty had no other choice but

 to put my daughter and me under arrest. There are ramifications to this problem that

 even you don't comprehend yet, and I'm afraid I don't have the authority to enlighten you.

 You've done your job well, and I respect you for that."

  

 Fortier fidgeted. According to everything he knew, the man across the room from him

 was the worst traitor in the Galaxy, and yet this enemy was praising him on his work. It

 was an uncomfortable situation, and he was leery of a trap.

  

 "I know your orders are to hold Helena and me incommunicado," the Grand Duke

 continued. "I presume that means with respect to the rest of the Empire. Is there

 anything in your orders forbidding me from speaking privately with my daughter?"

  

 Fortier reviewed the commands he'd been given, and had to admit there was nothing in

 them to prevent such communication. He'd been specifically told to treat the prisoners

 with the courtesy and consideration due their rank, and it seemed only fair to him that, in

 such time of crisis, father and daughter would want some time by themselves.

  

 "Your privacy will certainly be respected until I have occasion to consider it a threat to

 the Empire," he said. Von Wilmenhorst nodded. "Fair enough, Captain. Could you and

 your people please withdraw and give us a couple of minutes alone? I assure you there's

 only that one door to this room, and there are no communications facilities in here."

  

 Fortier had already scanned the room and knew that to be the truth. With a respectful

 bow, he and his escort left the room and closed the doors behind them as they went.

 Fortier posted guards on either side of the doors, with orders to notify him immediately if

 anything suspicious happened, then went off to report to Luna Base about the success of

 his mission.

  

 Alone for the first time since their arrest, father and daughter exchanged worried

 glances. "It seems we've once again underestimated Lady A," the Head said. "We

 thought she was merely out to discredit our top agents; we didn't even think of our own

 vulnerability. By discrediting us, she brings into question everything SOTE's ever done

 since I've been in charge. Poor Edna won't know which way to turn."

  

 "I don't know how she can believe such a lie," Helena said.

  

 "She can't afford to believe otherwise," her father said quietly. "She's bent over

 backwards to be fair to us; we've gotten more consideration from her than anyone else

 would have a right to expect. She knows in her heart we're innocent, but an Empress

 who rules only by her heart will not be a monarch very long. She'll need hard evidence to

 back up what she knows.

  

 "No, Edna's actions are not what disturb me about this affair. I have faith in her to do the

 right thing. What really bothers me is the fact that I could have had a robot traitor like

 Herman Stanck working as my chief assistant, governing the sector all these years, and

 not even realized it. I'd have sworn he was a good and honest man. It's enough to make

 me doubt my faith in human nature."

  

 "It might explain something, though," Helena mused.

  

 "The conspiracy seems to know almost everything we do, and we've never been able to

 trace the leaks. Maybe Herman. . . .

  

 The Grand Duke shook his head.. "No, I thought of that and discarded it. Herman's entire

 responsibility was to run Sector Four on my behalf. He knew nothing about my

 involvement with the Service--0r, at least, I never told him anything. All he knew was that

 I spent most of my time at the court on Earth. Nothing unusual about that, most of the

 Grand Dukes do. Herman wouldn't have had access to even a small fraction of the

 information the conspiracy knows. We'll have to look elsewhere for those damnable

 leaks."

  

 "And what about the subcom unit built into your security council chamber? I don't ever

 remember that being there. And all those files in your computer. . . ."

  

 "We haven't been back home since just after Edna's coronation," the Head sighed.

 "Herman had free access to that room, and he's had months of uninterrupted time to

 install the subcom. Since he also had access to my computer records, he could just as

 easily have inserted all sorts of false, incriminating documents. There are safeguards to

 prevent any unauthorized information from being deleted, but it's a simple matter to insert

 new data into the files. I just can't get over the fact of it being Herman. I thought I knew

 him so well. . . .

  

 Helena sat up. "Maybe you did. When Fortier checked Herman's records, they showed

 he'd never been sick in all the time he'd been Sector Marshal. But I remember he had a

 lung infection a couple of years ago. I brought him flowers in the hospital. If the

 conspiracy can put phony data into your computer. . . . "

  

 Her father nodded, a gleam in his eyes. "Yes, they can also put phony data into the

 personnel computer. Herman Stanck may indeed have been the trusted friend and advi-

  

 sor I thought he was until very recently, when they replaced him with a robot and

 doctored his records. In a way, I feel greatly relieved; perhaps I'm not such a bad judge

 of character after all. Of course, I feel dreadful about Herman; the conspiracy kills the

 people it replaces, and the only thing he ever did to earn a death sentence was pick the

 wrong man to work for. . . .

  

 The air hung heavy with the silence of regret. After a few moments von Wilmenhorst

 began speaking softly, almost to himself. "Yes, I can see how they managed to do it.

 They needed a brilliant and totally incorruptible man like our Captain Fortier. As with

 Gastonia, they had to make the case hard enough to seem as though it was not being

 handed over, and yet he was guided every step of the way.

  

 "They knew he was watching Guitirrez, so they threw Helmund in his path, knowing he

 would eventually trace her back to Durward. They planted clues there leading him to

 Herman and me. They replaced Herman with a robot and altered his personnel records

 enough to make Fortier suspicious. The robot Herman planted false documentation in my

 computer and installed the new equipment in that room. He led Fortier there, displayed

 the proper information on the screen, and then allowed himself to be conveniently

 destroyed, leaving the blame on me."

  

 The Head smiled. "Subtle and insidious, the signature of our enemy. A brilliant piece of

 work."

  

 "The question is," Helena said impatiently, "what are we going to do now? All of SOTE is

 in jeopardy, and the Service may be the only thing standing between the Empire and its

 destruction. We've got to do something to clear our names!"

  

 Her father spread his hands in a gesture of resignation. "There's little we can do, I'm

 afraid. If we were permitted even one call out, I'd contact Etienne and ask the Circus to

 check out these charges; if ever their credibility is tarnished, we might as well curl up and

 die. But as it is, all we can do is sit and wait and trust in Edna to do the right thing."

  

 Helena was staring at her father. "You intend to just give in to this? Like a lamb being

 meekly led to the slaughter, without a fight?"

  

 "I cannot and will not fight my Empress, nor disobey her orders. If I did, it would only

 substantiate the charges against me. The conspiracy has thought this one out very

 carefully, and we'll have to walk a thin line for the time being."

  

 "We wouldn't be fighting her, we'd be fighting the conspiracy. And we wouldn't be

 disobeying her orders because she never gave us any. She gave Fortier orders to hold

 us prisoner, but she never gave any commands to us. My oath of loyalty to her includes

 seeking out and destroying her enemies. That's what I want to do."

  

 The Head smiled. "That's a pretty flimsy rationalization, my dear. And I don't want you

 running off to do anything on your own, either. You remember what happened on

 Sanctuary, and this time I'm in no position to send someone to rescue you."

  

 Helena blushed at the reference to her one attempt to engage in field work for the

 Service. She thought she'd been infiltrating a criminal organization, while actually she had

 touched on the fringes of Lady A's conspiracy. She'd gotten soon in over her head, and

 her father had had to send the d'Alemberts to get her out. Much was accomplished in the

 process and they learned of Lady A's existence for the first time, but Helena still was not

 proud of her failure on that case. Since then she had stuck dutifully to office work, leaving

 the dangerous field assignments to better qualified agents.

  

 She said nothing further as she got up and walked out of the room. Behind her, Zander

 von Wilmenhorst watched her leave, a thoughtful and unreadable expression etched on

 his _features.

  

 Helena was escorted to her own cabin by a young naval officer assigned to guard her.

 The officer remained stationed outside her door, allowing Helena the privacy and time

 she needed to think. She remained in her cabin for the rest of the day, having her meals

 sent in, while she put her plans in order.

  

 She could understand her father's reluctance to act contrary to the Empress' wishes.

 He'd lived his entire life devoted to the Service code of strict obedience and loyalty to the

 monarch, and had brought her up according to those same principles. The sole difference

 was in interpretation. Her father was a man who believed in patience and gentle,

 constructive actions behind the scenes. Zander von Wilmenhorst was a man who

 preferred to watch events develop, acting only when necessary and trusting to the

 rashness of his opponents to make mistakes.

  

 Helena, on the other hand, was still young enough to feel impatience with time's slow

 progress. She wanted things to happen now, and if they didn't proceed of their own

 accord, she was willing to push them a little.

  

 It was all very well, she reasoned, for her father to sit calmly and hope for the best.

 Helena had grown up with Edna and she, too, trusted the Empress. But it was foolhardy

 to suppose that the conspiracy, having incapacitated the Service and thrown doubt on

 everything it had done, would be content to do nothing else. As Helena saw it, 'each day

 she and her father were out of commission was another day the conspiracy would use to

 build its own power.

  

 She did not argue the matter with her father. She could recognize the finality in his voice,

 and knew that further discussion would be useless. He Would not make a move counter

 to Edna's orders, not even to save his own life. But Helena had to do something. From

 what Fortier had said, there was not a shred of evidence against her; she was only under

 suspicion for being her father's daughter. Perhaps Edna wouldn't think it too base of her

 if she ran away and tried to make some sense of this confusion. If Helena could find the

 truth and prove her father's and her own innocence, Edna would certainly pardon any

 breaches Helena made in strict observance of the Imperial commands.

  

 She spent several hours mulling over her plan, polishing its rough edges as her father had

 taught her, and honing it to perfection. When her idea was well in shape, she lay back on

 her bed and tried to sleep for several hours. Sleep came but fitfully; she was too keyed

 up by the prospects of what she had to do, and true rest was impossible. After a few

 hours she gave up on it entirely. She changed into her favorite brown and peach-colored

 jumpsuit, knowing it would be sturdier for traveling. Then, gathering up her jewelry,

 money, and the few other possessions she thought she'd need, she put her plan into

 action.

  

 Even though there was no true "night" and "day" in space, most private ships operated on

 specific cycles. "Day" was when most of the three hundred people aboard this ship were

 active, and certain functions had to be performed. "Night" was when most of the crew

 were sleeping, and only a few crewmen and women performed maintenance duties. It

 was the middle of the ship's "night" when Helena started out, ensuring the minimal

 opposition. As she stepped from her doorway fully clothed, the guard outside snapped to

 attention, hand resting close to her stun-gun.

  

 Trying to put the guard at ease, Helena told her, "I've been thinking about this accusation

 of treason against my father, and I think I can prove he's innocent. I've got to talk with

 Captain Fortier. Where is he?"

  

 "I believe he's asleep right now," the guard said with some hesitation. "Can it wait until

 morning?"

  

 "I'm afraid not." Helena shook her head. "Each passing second increases the danger to

 the Empire. I can't even trust it over the ship's intercom. I have to speak to him in person.

 "

  

 "I'll have to accompany you," the other woman said. "Of course. Where's he staying?"

  

 "Cabin 36, Deck E."

  

 "Fine. I know a shortcut. It'll save us going down a lot of corridors and waking people

 up."

  

 The guard hesitated. This was not a situation specifically covered in her orders, but it did

 sound important. After a moment's indecision, she nodded and motioned for Helena to

 lead the way. She kept her hand near the butt of her stunner, but did not draw the

 weapon. The prisoner had shown no indication of hostility, and her orders were to show

 courtesy and use minimum force.

  

 Helena started off at a brisk pace, and the guard had to move quickly to keep up with

 her. As Helena had hoped, the corridors were deserted at this time in the ship's cycle.

 Helena led her escort on a fast tour of the emptier parts of the ship, all the while keeping

 up a pleasant, innocuous conversation indicating she was resigned to her captivity. The

 officer was a little out of breath and just enough off guard by the time they reached the

 spot Helena had chosen to make her move.

  

 There was one place where, due to a design problem, the hallway made a slight S-bend.

 As she reached it, Helena turned and abruptly slowed her rapid pace. The officer, who'd

 been walking quickly to keep up, did not slow quite as fast and almost bumped right into

 Helena.

  

 Helena gave a slight laugh and said, "Excuse me," then reached out as though to steady

 the officer.

  

 In a quick gesture, she pushed the other woman hard against the bulkhead and snatched

 at the stun-gun in her holster. The officer, realizing belatedly that she'd been tricked, tried

 to grab Helena by the collar, but the SOTE woman ducked under the outstretched hand

 and pulled the stunner free. Before the guard had a chance to do more than utter a

 startled cry, Helena had shot her with the weapon and the woman sagged to the deck.

  

 Helena checked the setting on the stunner and saw, much to her relief, that it was set on

 three-a half-hour stun. The guard would wake up in a short while greatly embarrassed,

 but otherwise none the worse for her failure. Helena had been worried that the stun-gun

 might be set so high as to cause real damage-but the orders to use minimum force were

 being carried out accurately. Helena did not want to harm anyone on her own side who

 just happened to be in the awkward position between her and her freedom.

  

 She looked around, but there appeared to be no one who'd heard the brief cry; this part

 of the ship should be well deserted at this hour, which was one reason Helena had

 chosen it. Another reason was that it was near the emergency escape boats that were

 her next destination.

  

 As the private space yacht of a Grand Duke, the Anna Libeling would naturally have

 been an impressive craft. But with its owner also being the Head of the Service of the

 Empire, it was equipped very well indeed. Not only could it hold its own in a military

 battle, but its emergency craft had subspace capabilities, a rare commodity. The boats

 were not the fastest in the Empire, perhaps-but with a little luck and a good head start,

 Helena felt sure she could outrace anything Fortier currently had available to

  

 him. By the time he could call up anything faster, she hoped to be off his screens and too

 far gone to catch. She slid like a ghost through the silent halls, stun-gun at the ready,

 alert for the slightest sign of trouble. She encountered no one until just before she

 reached the emergency airlocks, where Fortier had stationed a couple of his men.

 Helena stunned them both before they had a chance to draw their own weapons, then

 moved to the bank of lockers beside the pressure doors. She was never more glad that

 her father had ordered a spacesuit specifically tailored to everyone who normally

 traveled aboard this ship.

  

 " All shuttle craft that went to and from the Anna Libeling docked in a hangar open to the

 vacuum of space. Normally, boarding tubes snaked out to connect up with the airlocks of

 the ships, allowing visitors to come aboard without having to don the cumbersome

 spacesuits. But sending out a boarding tube was a function controlled from the Anna

 Libeling's bridge, and under the circumstances Helena could not afford to be that formal.

  

 Instead, she would have to put on her own spacesuit and go out the airlock, then board

 the emergency craft in a manual mode. Even this was a calculated risk, for the opening

 of the emergency airlock would cause a light to flash on the control board. The

 emergency hatch had a manual operating mode and could not be overridden from the

 bridge, which was a point in her favor; but once she started the process, a clock would

 be ticking for her. Everything then would depend on how quickly the alarm was noticed

 and how decisively her captors acted on it. She was hoping there would at least be a

 few minutes of initial confusion, giving her time to get through the hatch, enter one of the

 lifeboats, and blast out of the Anna Libeling before anyone really knew what was

 happening. She donned the suit carefully, checking all the joints and seals as she'd been

 trained to do. Then, after staring at the doorway for a few nervous seconds and offering

 up a silent prayer, she pressed the emergency exit plate beside the hatch.

  

 The portal slid aside quickly with a clang Helena could hear even through her helmet.

 Stepping inside, she pressed the inner plate to close the hatch again and open the outer

 chamber door. Normally this would have been a slow process, with the outer door not

 opening until all the air had been pumped out of the lock; but the emergency airlock had

 been designed for quick use, and the small amount of air that would be lost to space was

 considered trivial when people needed to get out of the ship in - a hurry.

  

 As the outer door opened, Helena rushed toward the nearest escape boat. She had to

 assume the emergency light had been seen on the bridge the instant she opened the

 hatch, and that steps would be taken instantly to recapture her. She had few seconds to

 spare.

  

 The emergency boats of the Anna Libeling were always kept in prime condition, and the

 one she'd chosen responded instantly to her command. Without even bothering to

 remove her helmet, Helena slipped into the pilot's seat and brought the control console to

 life with a quick flip of the necessary switches. The engines charged up and, with a

 sudden acceleration that shoved her hard against her couch, the boat shot out of its

 berth and into the blackness of space.

  

 The Anna Libeling was surrounded by a swarm of small craft like fireflies. the escort

 Captain Fortier had brought with him to ensure there'd be no trouble. As Helena's craft

 zoomed from the big ship's hangar, her radio crackled to life with a challenge to halt.

 Helena ignored the request, which quickly turned into a cold, hard order. She flew at

 three-quarters speed, hoping the Navy ships would be tricked into thinking that was as

 fast as she could go.

  

 A warning shot blazed across her path, but Helena flew straight on. She made no

 attempt to dodge or weave her way through a field of fire; any motion other than straight

 forward would only slow her down. She had to trust to the accuracy of the naval gunners,

 and to the fact that they'd been ordered to use minimal force to capture and hold her.

 They'd be reluctant to simply blow her out of the sky, and would try to disable her

 instead.

  

 The screens showed that four ships had left their positions around the Anna Libeling and

 had come in pursuit. They were gunboats of the malyenki class-not much firepower, but

 plenty of speed and maneuverability. Helena's boat probably had as much armament as

 they did, but she didn't want a fight.

  

 She'd had perhaps a thirty-second head start, but the gunboats were slowly gaining on

 her. Helena watched them carefully on her screen, judging their distance and speed in

 relation to hers, and suddenly boosted her own vessel to maximum acceleration. On the

 screen, the images of the Navy ships seemed to jump backwards to the limit of detection

 range. At almost the same instant, Helena, hoping to catch her pursuers unaware, had

 her craft make the jump into subspace.

  

 The trick worked to perfection. The gunboats, confident they could outrun the fugitive,

 were unprepared for its sudden burst of acceleration. Their commanders were just

 making the adjustments for the new speed when the vessel disappeared into

 subspace-something ordinary life craft were incapable of. By the time they could adjust

 to this second surprise and switch into subspace themselves, Helena's boat was totally

 off their screens. They split up and fanned out in different directions for a short while,

 hoping to pick up some trace of her, but they were out of luck.

  

 Red-faced, the officers returned to their positions around the Anna Libeling, wondering

 how to explain to Captain Fortier that a small emergency craft had outraced and

 outmaneuvered four Imperial gunboats.

  

 Helena managed to elude capture by staying in subspace for only about ten seconds,

 then dropping into normal space again and killing all acceleration completely. Ten

 seconds in subspace let her travel far enough to be out of range of normal detection

 systems; her boat would appear merely as a floating piece of space rock to any casual

 observer. And by dropping out of subspace before the Navy. vessels could enter it, their

 subspace detectors would not spot her, either.

  

 She spent a tense three hours watching her own screens nervously, in case Fortier

 caught on to her trick. When at last she was convinced she'd gotten away undetected,

 she began cruising-at slow, deliberate speed-back toward the planet Preis. The Navy

 would send out warnings to all planets for a large radius around, but she hoped they

 would be a little less alert within the system she had supposedly escaped from.

  

 Even so, she was careful not to land at a spaceport. She brought her lifeboat down well

 away from any populated centers and spent two days walking back into the nearest

 town. With the money she had at hand, she bought a tube ticket to the capital city of

 Aachen. Two days of walking through semi-wilderness had left her face tanned and

 weatherworn enough to be unrecognizable to the people who normally knew her as the

 heir to this sector. A few subtle makeup tricks she'd learned at the Service Academy

 completed the job.

  

 In Aachen she sold some of the jewelry she'd brought with her. She hated to part with

 some of her favorite pieces, but the situation was desperate. The money she got for the

 jewelry was enough to buy her some more clothes and a spaceliner ticket to the planet

 Evanoe, where the Circus of the Galaxy was currently performing.

  

 The Circus of the Galaxy was one of the prime entertainment events throughout the

 Empire, a show offering more live thrills and excitement than even the wildest sensible

 adventure could match. More than that, though, the Circus was one of the primary

 weapons in SOTE's formidable arsenal because it was the personal business of the

 d'Alembert family. All of its performers, all of its staff-nearly a thousand people-were

 members of that impressive clan from high-gravity DesPlaines. The d'Alemberts were

 noted for both their incredible talents and their fierce dedication to the Imperial Throne.

 Whenever there was a difficult and sensitive task, the Service naturally turned to the

 d'Alemberts to perform it. Now, in her moment of greatest need, Helena also wanted to

 call on the Circus.

  

 The flight from Preis to Evanoe took a full week. Helena fretted the whole time. She

 knew that both the Service and the Navy would be looking for her, and that all sorts of

 things might be happening in the silent, secret war between the Empire and the

 conspiracy. Aboard a liner in subspace she was perfectly safe from outside intrusion, but

 at the same time she was effectively out of touch with any developments that might

 occur. As her father's chief aide, she'd spent the last few years being in constant contact

 with developments all over the Galaxy; now she was suddenly cut off from all news, and

 the silence was deafening.

  

 She wasted no time upon landing, but took a tube train straight to the area where the

 Circus had set up its camp. It was late at night when she arrived, long after the last

 performance of the day. All the customers had gone, the midway was shutting down, the

 normally hectic atmosphere was subdued. The smell of strange animals mingled oddly

 with the odors of foods from a thousand different worlds. Helena slipped quietly onto the

 grounds and, trying not to let anyone see her, made her way to the main office.

  

 Because the Circus was traveling most of the time, its personnel tried to make their

 surroundings as homey as possible. The main office was thickly carpeted in turquoise

 blue and the walls were paneled in richly-grained solentawood. Three sides of the room

 were lined with bookshelves. Antique books were both a hobby and an obsession with

 Duke Etienne, who insisted that bookreels just didn't feel right. Some of the volumes in

 his collection were more than five hundred years old.

  

 Etienne d'Alembert, Duke of DesPlaines and Managing Director of the Circus of the

 Galaxy, was sitting behind his new bronze burlwood desk, and looked up as Helena

 entered. The duke was a short, somewhat portly man of about fifty, his hair graying at

 the temples and thinning in front-but his innocuous appearance disguised a person of

 incredible power and ability. Rumor was that Etienne was the only man who'd ever beat

 Helena's father at chess; he'd been as close to Helena as any uncle, even though they

 seldom actually saw one another.

  

 "The perimeter guards spotted you and let me know you were coming," he said quietly.

 His eyes were filled with sadness as he looked at her now. "I turned off the ultragrav in

 here so you'd be comfortable. I wish I could say this visit was a surprise."

  

 Helena nodded. "They told you, I suppose, that I might try to contact you."

  

 "Yes. I have orders from Edna herself to take you into custody if you showed up here."

  

 Helena's entire body was trembling; she was very close to tears. "Please, Etienne," she

 said, her voice barely more than a whisper. "My father and I need you."

  

 The Duke's left hand clenched, and he stared silently at the woman before him for almost

 a minute before he replied. "You haven't heard, then?"

  

 "Heard what?" Helena could scarcely choke the words out of her mouth, it was so dry

 with horrible premonition. "Oh, my poor girl. Your father was executed two days ago on

 a charge of treason."
Chapter 7

 Revelation

  

 The killers impersonating Agents Wombat and Periwinkle carried the unconscious bodies

 of Jules and Yvonne d'Alembert to their waiting copier, where their confederates helped

 them stow the SOTE agents away in the back cargo section. The DesPlainians had been

 given a number four stun, and would be unconscious for at least two hours, which would

 give the killers plenty of time to take them to more secure quarters.

  

 Several kilometers away, Pias and Yvette were monitoring events as they happened.

 Knowing they'd be walking into a trap and assuming they'd be captured, Jules and

 Vonnie had planted microtransmitters on their clothes and bodies. These devices enabled

 the Bavols to follow the action-at least what could be heard of it from a safe distance,

 and to trail after the killers without coming close enough to be spotted themselves. "We

 want to make sure we get the whole gang at once," Jules had said. "With Vonnie and me

 as bait on the hook, we'll give them a little play on the line before reeling them in.

  

 Yvette was not happy with the thought of standing idly by and listening to her brother and

 sister-in-law be captured by the enemy-but, like her brother, she wanted to grab the

 whole gang in one sweep. If they acted too quickly, some might escape to spread the

 warning further up the network. This move had obviously been planned by someone

 higher up within the conspiracy; a little patience might lead them to big game indeed.

  

 The Bavols listened to the confused mixture of sounds that were the obvious indications

 of a battle in progress. The buzzing sound of stun-guns was ominous, because neither

 Jules nor Yvonne had carried stunners into the battle. The silence that followed made it

 only too clear that the enemy had gained the upper hand. Even though this was part of

 their long-term plan, Yvette's fists were clenched in quiet anger.

  

 As the killers' copier left the clearing, the Bavols' vehicle rose into the air and followed.

 The signals broadcast by the microtransmitters were strong enough for the agents to

 stay far behind their prey, out of both visual and normal detector range. The two copiers

 flew at a steady, casual pace toward the nearest domed city, Constantia.

  

 The enemy copier landed on the rooftop parking lot of an apartment building. The Bavols

 made a note of the site and flew on to a nearby perch. They listened and waited. That

 was the hard part-the waiting.

  

 Within the target building, the enemy agents had rented an entire floor for themselves.

 After searching their captives for weapons-but missing the transmitters, which looked like

 ordinary buttons-they handcuffed the d'Alemberts' hands behind their backs and went

 about their normal business until the two superagents recovered from the stun they'd

 received.

  

 After a while, Jules started coming around. Reality weaved in and out of focus for him

 and his surroundings gradually became more distinct. When he could recall what had

 happened, he looked around him. He was in a bedroom, but his body had been dumped

 on the floor. Vonnie lay on the floor across the room from him, still unconscious;

 stun-guns had slightly differing effects on different people's nervous systems, and Vonnie

 was apparently more susceptible. Jules was not going to worry about her yet.

  

 As Jules looked around further, he could see someone sitting on the bed watching him:

 the woman who'd come out of the copier. She eyed him coolly for a moment, then called

 into the next room, "The man's come to."

  

 A man came into the room--not the one Jules had seen in the clearing. This must have

 been one of the people waiting in the copier to complete the ambush. It scarcely

 mattered; this man looked every bit as competent as the one Jules had seen.

  

 The man knelt beside Jules and checked for any residual traces of shock from the

 stunner. When he was satisfied Jules was all right, he turned to the woman and said,

 "Call the battle station. I think he's ready to talk now."

  

 The woman went into another room and Jules, by straining, could just make out the

 sounds of a subetheric communicator being adjusted. There was a muffled dialog he

 couldn't quite hear, and then the woman returned. "She's ready for him."

  

 The man grabbed Jules roughly by the shirtfront and pulled him to his feet. "In there,

 Wombat," he sneered, giving Jules a hard shove in the general direction of the adjoining

 room. Jules's legs were still a little wobbly from the after-effects of the stun. He

 staggered a bit, provoking laughs from the two killers.

  

 "Some superagent," the woman taunted. "He can't even walk straight."

  

 With monumental effort, Jules fought to recover his balance and walked with dignity

 through the doorway into the next room. His action did not stop the jeering of the traitors,

 but it at least satisfied his own sense of honor. Another woman he hadn't seen was

 standing beside a portable subcom set. In the set's triscreen was the three-dimensional

 image of someone Jules had seen and worked against before: Tanya Boros, erstwhile

 Duchess of Swingleton and daughter of Banian the Bastard.

  

 She obviously recognized him, too, because her eyes narrowed slightly and her face took

 on a colder expression. "Well, well," she said. "Who are you supposed to be this month?

 Shall I call you duClos or Brecht?"

  

 "I think today I'll be Rene Descartes," Jules retorted. His tongue felt thick and heavy as

 an aftereffect of the stun, and it slurred his speech a little more than he'd have liked. He

 hated showing any weakness in front of this proud, beautiful woman.

  

 Boros did not like his impudent answer. Rage flashed momentarily across her face. Her

 temper was always her weak point, Jules knew, but now she was making some effort to

 moderate it. After a brief struggle she returned her expression to one of bland

 superiority. "I think I'll just call you Wombat for now," she said. "From what I've been told

 it's a rather ugly, awkward animal-quite fitting for someone like you."

  

 "Is that why you tried to seduce me several years ago?" Boros refused to be baited. "I

 was bored and looking for new perversions. Believe me, you'll never get an offer that

 generous again in your lifetime. And if you want that lifetime extended to any degree,

 you'll cooperate and answer a few questions."

  

 "I never deal with the hired help."

  

 "Oh, you can ignore those people holding you prisoner. I'll do the interrogation."

  

 "That's just who I meant. You're not important enough for me to deal with. Lady A's

 running this show, so she can question me herself."

  

 Once again he'd touched off a spark of anger in the young woman. "Do you think she has

 time to drop everything for a kulyak like you? I'm in charge of this operation, and you'll do

 what I tell you. I'm going to get information out of you. I can get it painfully or pleasantly,

 the choice is entirely your own."

  

 "How can I respect someone who won't even face me in person?"

  

 "Why should I take the risk? I'm safe in my battle station. You've never told me the truth

 when we've met in person before, so I have nothing to lose by remaining where I am. My

 surrogates there will administer all the persuasion you require; my only regret is that I

 won't be able to do to you myself what needs to be done. They'll call me back when

 you're loosened up a bit." Her image reached out to touch an unseen control, and the

 screen went blank.

  

 Jules had gotten far more information than he'd given in that conversation. He now knew

 the extent of this impersonation scheme: Tanya Boros in charge and these four

 blasterbats carrying out her instructions. A small but efficient operation. Boros herself

 was safely ensconced in something she called a battle station, and was not about to be

 lured out of it. He had accomplished all that could be accomplished from this position. It

 was now time to get himself and Vonnie rescued.

  

 The woman beside the subcom set had a truncheon in her hand and was slapping it

 gently against her other palm. She eyed Jules with a sadistic gleam. "We drew lots to

 see who'd question you first," she said. "I won."

  

 "Surely there must be some alternative," Jules said.

  

 "You could tell me all about yourself. If I believe you, I might go easy."

  

 "Khorosho. I was born in a little log cabin. My parents died when I was three, and I was

 raised in the wild by a pack of wolves. . . ."

  

 Wham! The truncheon hit him in the diaphragm, and Jules doubled over, gasping for

 breath. "One thing you'll find," the woman said, grabbing him by the hair and forcing him

 to look directly into her face, "is that my friends and I have strange senses of humor.

 Instead of laughing when we hear a joke, our reaction is to inflict pain. The funnier the

 joke, the more pain we give."

  

 "Remind me, then, not to tell you the one about the spaceman's daughter and the model

 rocket builder," Jules gasped.

  

 This time the woman used the weapon to jab Jules hard in the kidneys. The DesPlainian

 doubled over in pain, and another sharp blow to his back made him fall to his knees. As

 he regained his breath he tilted his head to look up at the woman standing over him. "I

 guess you must have heard that one before."

  

 There followed a series of blows beyond counting. Jules's body was bloody and battered

 by the time the woman was finished. Blood was dripping from his nose and mouth, and

 he could not have done much talking even if he'd wanted to. The woman realized this,

 too, for she snarled at him as she pushed him back into the bedroom; her fun was over

 for a while. She looked at Vonnie, but the female agent was still unconscious from the

 stun-gun beam, so Jules and his wife were left alone in their little room.

  

 Jules gave some thought to the conditions of his bondage. Though his wrists were

 handcuffed firmly behind him, there was a little bit of play between the two bracelets. His

 second cousin Alphonse, the contortionist, had taught him some of the secrets of that

 trade--enough so that, with some squirming about on the floor, Jules was able to work

 his bound arms down below his buttocks, along his legs, and past his feet. His arms

 were still handcuffed, but now his hands were in front of him, giving him far more

 freedom of movement. His Uncle Marcel, the Circus' magician, could have gotten out of

 the handcuffs altogether-probably by using a picklock hidden somewhere on his body-but

 Jules had never learned that stunt. This amount of freedom would have to do for now.

  

 He was more concerned about Vonnie. His wife was still showing no sign of coming out

 of the stun, and that was a bit alarming. She'd been shot by a different gun than the one

 that had hit him; could it have been adjusted to a different setting, one that had a longer

 or-he hated to consider the possibility-a permanent effect? The killers wouldn't have

 brought her here if she'd been dead, but a setting of eight or nine would have her

 unconscious for days and perhaps leave permanent paralysis when the charge wore off.

 That was too horrifying to even consider, so he turned his thoughts to more immediate

 matters.

  

 Things should be happening very shortly, he knew. He and the Bavols had established

 the word "alternative" as a code phrase indicating they were to come in and rescue the

 captives. He had no doubt that his sister and brother-in-law were monitoring the

 conversations, and they would have set out the instant they heard him say that word to

 the woman questioning him. That had been ten or fifteen minutes ago; they were

 probably scouting this hideout for the best entrance. They'd be here very shortly and,

 despite the pain from his beating, he wanted to be in as good a position as possible to

 help them out.

  

 Jules's assumptions were correct. The moment Yvette and Pias heard him say to his

 interrogator, "Surely there must be some alternative," they went into action. That

  

 signal meant Jules had decided he'd gotten all he could from the situation; now it was up

 to them to disentangle him from it.

  

 According to the directional antenna on their receiver, Jules and Yvonne were being held

 captive on the fourth floor down from the top in the apartment building. It took the Bavols

 just a few minutes to fly their own copter to the landing pad on the roof, after which they

 had to spend some time surveying the situation.

  

 An elevator tube led down from the roof into the building. The door to the tube was

 locked-probably only residents were given keys-but that was no problem to someone

 with Yvette's skills at burglary. She had the door open in under a minute. It was the

 elevator tube itself that offered unexpected difficulties.

  

 "The plates won't even stop on the floor we want unless we've got a special access

 number," she explained to Pias after examining the setup. "And the doors won't open at

 that level without the plate stopping there."

  

 "There must be some other way in, then," her husband said. "We've got enough line with

 us; we could lower ourselves over the roof and swing down into that level through the

 windows."

  

 Yvette shook her head. "We can do it that way if there's no other choice, but I don't want

 to be that blatant. The crashing of glass would alert everyone in the building, and the

 police might get involved. Let's see if we can figure out something else."

  

 After looking down the elevator tube for a little while longer, they came up with a

 workable plan. There was a series of handholds down the sides of the tube, giving ready

 access to maintenance personnel. They climbed down the dusty rungs into the darkness

 of the tube until they reached the doors that opened onto the level where the impostors

 were holding Jules and Yvonne. Now the only problem was to get the doors open.

  

 Whatever method was used, it would have to be quick. The killers knew that no one but

 them should have the access numbers for this level. If anyone else came out of the

 elevator tube, they'd shoot first and ask questions later.

  

 There was a small nodule of electrical connections beside the doorway. Yvette studied

 the configuration for a moment, then reached down to a compartment in her belt and

 took out a wad of explosive. After rubbing it between thumb and forefinger for a moment

 to bring it to body temperature, she stuck it onto the connections and attached a short

 fuse. She and Pias drew their stun-guns and braced themselves as best they could in

 their awkward footholds against the naked wall of the elevator tube.

  

 The fuse sputtered, and there was a small puff as Yvette's charge blew the doors'

 controlling circuits. The doors slid quickly into the wall and the two agents clambered

 awkwardly through the opening. For an instant they were easy targets.

  

 Their attack caught the killers completely off guard. Boros's minions, expecting no

 trouble, did not have their guns at their sides, and were not prepared to fight back

 against the Bavols' furious invading force. The SOTE team need not have worried; with

 their reflexes and weapons already drawn, the battle was over in a matter of seconds.

  

 The sound of action brought Jules stumbling out of the back bedroom just as Pias and

 Yvette were finishing their work. Yvette was horrified to see how badly her brother had

 been beaten, but Jules quickly reassured her. "I'm smooth. Just get these off me." He

 held up his hands to indicate the cuffs that bound his wrists.

  

 They searched through the killers' pockets until they found the key and freed Jules. Then,

 while Pias took care of securing the prisoners before they woke up, Yvette went into the

 back room with Jules to tend to Vonnie.

  

 She was just starting to come around as they entered the room, and Jules was

 immeasurably relieved. He cradled his wife while Yvette unlocked the manacles, and

 Vonnie slowly regained her strength. She could see from the fact that Yvette was also

 there-that the rescue operation had already been accomplished. "Looks like I missed the

 fun," she said weakly. Then, seeing Jules's bloody face, she said, "Are you all right, mon

 cher?"

  

 "Smooth," Jules assured her. "I've had massages rougher than that. I'm more worried

 about you; you took far too long coming out of stun."

  

 "Different people come out at different speeds," Vonnie said.

  

 "But you've been stunned before and it's never taken you this long to come out of it."

  

 Vonnie and Yvette exchanged knowing glances, and Vonnie looked away, embarrassed.

 It was up to Yvette to give the explanation. "She's never been pregnant before, either. "

  

 "Pregnant!" For a moment, Jules felt almost as though he'd been hit by another

 stun-beam. His face broadened in a silly, toothy grin. "How long ... oh, darling! Why didn't

 you tell me before?"

  

 "I just found out the day you and Pias went on that training flight through the asteroids,"

 Vonnie answered sheepishly. "I was going to tell you that night, but then the Head called

 and it didn't seem like the right time."

  

 Jules's face grew serious again as a dark thought crossed his mind. "You should never

 have come on this assignment," he said accusingly. "It's far too dangerous."

  

 "Don't go protectionist on me all of a sudden," Vonnie said. "It was far more dangerous

 on Gastonia or Slag than it is here. You didn't worry about me then. I can still take care

 of myself."

  

 "But it's not just you I'm worried about; there's also the baby to consider. Sure, you can

 still take on an army of blasterbats, but what if an accident happens? You just suffered a

 stun-gun charge. How will that affect the baby? How do we know it won't happen again,

 or worse? We've got to think about the future now and take a few precautions. "

  

 "I can handle myself," Vonnie insisted.

  

 Yevette felt it was time for her to speak up. "Jules is right, Vonnie," she said soothingly.

 "You have as much responsibility towards seeing that there's a new generation of

 d'Alemberts as you do towards solving this particular case. Jules and Pias and I can

 handle this job without you, but you're the only one who can have that baby."

  

 "But I'll feel so useless knowing you're all risking your lives and I'm doing nothing."

  

 "You won't be idle," Jules assured her. "We've got four prisoners. I don't think we should

 turn them over to the police just yet; that would alert the conspiracy that we've captured

 their people and we might lose our connection with Tanya Boros." Jules went on to

 explain to his wife what had happened since their capture, including the fact that his old

 nemesis was in charge of this operation.

  

 "If Boros knows we've captured her mokoes," -he concluded, "she might decide to go

 back to her headquarters. Until we can pry her out of this `battle station' she's got, we

 need someone to keep an eye on the prisoners. It's not an exciting job, but it is

 important."

  

 Yvonne grumbled a bit, but she was practical enough to see the sense in what Jules had

 said. She let her husband help her to her feet and the three SOTS agents went back out

 into the front rooms, where Pias had finished locking up the prisoners in their own

 handcuffs.

  

 The job of interrogating the captives fell to Yvette, since she'd had special training in that

 delicate art. She didn't expect the killers to be very cooperative, but she'd come

 prepared with chemical inducements. Realizing that the prisoners were not of a high

 enough level to resist the questioning, she didn't bother with nitrobarb; detrazine would

 be good enough to extract all the information she needed.

  

 As it turned out, the four killers knew surprisingly little. They were not really members of

 the conspiracy at all, just a team of hired assassins chosen to participate in this particular

 operation. They knew nothing about the conspiracy's organization; their only contact was

 through Tanya Boros, who stayed secluded on her battle station and directed their

 efforts over the subcom. One of the killers did know the battle station's coordinates; it

 was drifting in interstellar space less than a parsec away from Floreata.

  

 Their next move seemed clear. They would have to drop by this battle station and pay a

 visit to Tanya Boros. Perhaps she would be able to lead them higher up the conspiracy's

 ladder, to Lady A and C themselves.
 Chapter 8

Durward Again

  

 Etienne d'Alembert's announcement of her father's execution hit Helena like an avalanche.

 There was suddenly a cold, hollow place in her stomach, and her very being seemed to

 be draining out a hole. Her head was shaking automatically in denial, and her body felt as

 though it were made of wet snow. Her knees began to sink slowly, no longer able to

 support the weight of her body.

  

 Etienne d'Alembert. seeing Helena in shock, rushed from behind his desk to embrace her

 and guide her to an armchair. Helena's body felt clammy to his touch; there was a cold

 sweat breaking out on her forehead. A fit of shivering gripped her, and he held her tightly

 until the seizure subsided. Even so, her teeth were chattering so convulsively she could

 not talk.

  

 Duke Etienne went to his intercom and called to the commissary for a large pot of hot

 chocolate. By the time it arrived, Helena was beginning to look herself again. She

 gratefully accepted the cup of chocolate Etienne poured her.

  

 "I ... I didn't think she'd ... how ... what were the details?" she stammered around sips of

 the drink.

  

 The Duke sighed, sitting on the edge of his desk and watching the young woman's face

 intently. "There weren't many details released to the public at all. The newsreels merely

 said that Grand Duke Zander von Wilmenhorst had been seized and charged with high

 treason. Because the nature of the crime was so sensitive, he was taken back to Earth

 and summarily executed."

  

 "Without even a trial?" Helena asked. "A Grand Duke deserves at least a High Court of

 Justice. Even Banian got one of those."

  

 Etienne shook his head sadly. "The Empress has, of course, the authority to do anything

 she pleases. A High Court of Justice is customary and traditional in such cases, but the

 Empress overruled that tradition. In view of your father's sensitive position, I can hardly

 blame her for wanting to keep everything secret. By the way, nothing whatsoever was

 said in the newsrolls about you; it's as if you didn't exist."

  

 Helena blinked uncomprehendingly. "But what about Sector Four? That should be mine

 now."

  

 "I'm afraid not. Because of the nature of the crime, the Empress took back governance

 of the sector, and is said to be studying who to appoint as the next Grand Duke or

 Duchess. You've been disinherited."

  

 Shock upon shock. Helena had been raised all her life with the certain knowledge that

 one day she would be the ruler of Sector Four, one of the richest women in the Galaxy,

 with power rivaled by few and inferior only to the Empress herself. Suddenly, in one swift

 stroke, all of that was gone. She no longer even had the right to claim her noble title. She

 was just plain Helena von Wilmenhorst, presently unemployed and fleeing from Imperial

 justice.

  

 She sat in silence for a few moments, sipping at her chocolate as the heavy news sank

 in. "I ... I can't believe. . . . "

  

 "I also received a private call from Edna herself," EtienK added when it was clear Helena

 would not finish her sentence. "She .broke the news to me personally, before I could hear

 it from anywhere else. She told me a bit of what had happened-that there was some

 evidence that your father was this notorious C who ran the conspiracy. "

  

 "All fraudulent," Helena said, her voice barely more than a whisper.

  

 "She said she had trouble believing it herself," the Duke continued. "She wanted to keep

 both of you under simple house arrest at first-but when you escaped, she realized that

 couldn't work. She had your father brought back to Earth and executed secretly before

 anything more could happen. She was almost in tears as she told it to me. "

  

 "Bozhe mot," Helena said, her lower lip trembling. "I killed him. He told me it might make

 us look more guilty, but I ignored him. If I hadn't run away. . . ."

  

 That was as far as she could get before her grief and guilt overwhelmed her. Her eyes

 filled with tears; her body convulsed with heavy sobbing. She leaned forward in her chair,

 dropping the cup of chocolate to the carpeted floor, and wrapped her arms tightly around

 her knees. Her head was bowed, and for several minutes the only sounds in the room

 were her small gasping noises and whimpers of utter misery. Etienne watched her

 dry-eyed. He'd done his crying two days ago; he had no tears left now.

  

 When Helena seemed to be coming back under control, he offered her his handkerchief

 to dry her eyes and wipe her running nose. "Edna and I also talked about you," he said

 quietly.

  

 Helena looked up at him, eyes and nose both bright red. "Oh?"

  

 "Yes. I promised her that if you came here, I would take you into my custody, and that

 the Circus would not be used to help you with any private missions to clear your father's

 name."

  

 Helena had thought her heart could sink no lower, but now found there were new depths

 to her despair. The Circus had been her one last hope to find justice, and even that was

 to be denied her. The whole universe was empty, and all about her was darkness. "You

 might as well just shoot me now,",she said mechanically. "I have nothing more to live for."

  

 "Before you submerge yourself completely in self-pity, there are a few things I'd like to

 know," Etienne said in an even tone. "Her Majesty didn't have time to give me a full

 briefing on the case, and I'm still very puzzled. Your father was the dearest friend I had in

 this life, and if he was condemned to death I'd like to know the reason. Do you know

 anything more about the charges?"

  

 Slowly, mechanically, Helena recited the story of Fortier's investigation as the captain

 had told it to her. She knew it by heart, having gone over and over it on the trip from

 Preis hoping to find some flaw in its logic. She spoke in a near-monotone; she was numb,

 and all emotion had fled from her body.

  

 Etienne d'Alembert paced around the room as he listened. His vibrant energy could

 hardly have been less like the studied calmness her father had affected when receiving a

 briefing, but there was an intensity of concentration and thought that recalled her father

 very much. The slight similarity caused a minor ache in Helena's soul, but with so much

 grief already present she scarcely noticed.

  

 When she finished, the Duke was shaking his head vehemently. "That's not enough," he

 muttered. "I wouldn't condemn a flea on evidence like that. Why did she do it? I don't

 understand. Eh bien, she is the Empress. . . ." He fell silent and resumed pacing. Helena

 sat silently, waiting for him because she had nothing else to do.

  

 At last he stopped pacing and looked squarely at Helena. "Khorosho, let's look at

 Fortier's story. It breaks into three parts, on three different planets: Lateesta, Durward,

 and Preis. Everything that happened on Lateesta was perfectly straightforward, and

 everything on Preis was neatly wrapped up when the robot ran into your father's house

 and conveniently opened up his files. But Durward remains unfinished business; Elsa

 Helmund got away, and nobody pursued that connection any further. If there's any weak

 point to the story at all, it's there."

  

 He paused to roll the name around in his mind. "Durward." The very name conjured up

 long and unpleasant memories, dating back to a time even before Etienne had been

 born. Durward had been a source of uneasiness within the Empire for more than sixty

 years, entangling and killing many fine SOTE agents in its web of intrigue.

  

 It began when Emperor Stanley Nine was on the throne. Duke Henry Blount of Durward,

 in an effort to consolidate more power for himself, arranged for a beautiful and

 unprincipled young actress named Aimee Amorat to become the Emperor's mistress.

 Amoral-later to be known as the "Beast of Durward"-had a son by the Emperor, and the

 child was officially acknowledged as heir to the throne. For form's sake, Amorat was

 married to Duke Henry, but her influence over the Emperor continued-until he was

 presented with a legitimate heir by his wife. The older child, Banian the Bastard, was

 now far more than an embarrassment; he was a threat to the orderly Imperial line of

 succession.

  

 Having led an unsuccessful rebellion against her husband Henry, Aimde Amorat took her

 son and vanished just a step ahead of SOTE. For over sixty years SOTE had searched

 in vain for that child and the royal patent he'd been issued; not until just a few years ago,

 when it was almost too late, had Jules and Yvette tracked down Banian and smashed

 the organization he'd built over the years. Even Banian did not know what had become of

 his mother, but it was assumed she was either dead or infirm by now, since she'd be a

 woman in her middle nineties.

  

 In the meantime, the very name Durward raised uncomfortable feelings in any SOTE

 agent. The Banian case was closed, but bad memories lingere3 like the smell of old

 garbage.

  

 Duke Etienne stroked his right hand as he thought, and anyone who knew him well would

 recognize that as an important sign. The Duke's right hand had been severed by a

 blaster bolt during the course of one mission, and was now replaced by a very

 real-looking artificial one. The detachable fingers were tools and implements of various

 sorts; the Duke wore rings on each finger to disguise the seams where the fingers joined

 to the hand.

  

 Duke Etienne looked back at Helena. The young woman was staring emptily into space,

 still in shock from the horrible news she'd received. "Your father was the closest friend I

 had," Etienne told her. "I can't believe he was guilty as charged. Something in Captain

 Fortier's story is itching at the back of my brain, and I won't feel right until I investigate

 the matter personally."

  

 "But you promised Edna you wouldn't," Helena said lifelessly.

  

 Etienne gave her an encouraging smile. "I promised I wouldn't use the Circus to help you.

 But this is something I want to do for myself. Unless I'm given a specific assignment that

 takes priority, I've always been free to follow my own course to help Imperial security.

 Right now, there's nothing more important to me than finding the truth about your father."

  

 He stood up, walked to her side, and lifted her chin so she was looking straight into his

 eyes. "I also promised Edna I would take you into custody, but I never promised to send

 you back for trial. If you'll give me your word you won't try to run away from us, you may

 come along and help. "

  

 "What would be the point of running away?" Helena said dejectedly. "I've got nowhere

 else to go." As the Duke let go of her head, she lowered it again to stare dismally at the

 floor.

  

 Etienne d'Alembert gazed with tenderness and pity upon the young woman seated before

 him. As long as he'd known her she'd always shown excitement in life and a cheerful

 disposition through any adversity. It was heartbreaking to see her as she was now, a

 creature broken in mind and spirit. He made a silent vow that, if it were at all possible, he

 would prove her father's innocence and return to her the lost fortune and dignity that was

 rightfully hers.

  

 Duke Etienne had cultivated, over many long years, the reputation for eccentricity. It was

 a common occurrence for him to alter the Circus' schedule without warning and take it to

 some other world altogether. Money was always refunded to disappointed ticket holders,

 and Etienne always made sure to present them with some token gift to make the

 disappointment more bearable. The Circus of the Galaxy was such a popular attraction

 that it was always welcomed to a new world, whether it had been expected there or not,

 and any bitterness caused by unexpected schedule changes never lasted long.

  

 This eccentricity, of course, made a perfect cover for the Circus' secret activities on

 behalf of SOTE, and now it served a more private purpose. The day after Helena's

 arrival the Circus announced it was ending its run on Evanoe prematurely and altering its

 schedule for a stay on the planet Durward. Both of those worlds were startled, as were

 others that had been tentatively on the schedule, but there was little they could do other

 than accept Duke Etienne's decision. No one wanted to alienate the mercurial circus

 manager, lest he punish them by withholding the Circus from them for longer periods.

  

 The journey from Evanoe to Durward took several days, even at top speed. Helena

 traveled in the Duke's personal ship, and few members of the Circus troupe saw her.

 She mourned continuously, despite the best efforts of Etienne to cheer her up.

  

 The job ahead of them was complicated by the fact that they were not going to Durward

 on official Service business. The Circus' connection with SOTE was so top secret that it

 didn't even have a codename. When it was given an assignment at a particular place, the

 local agents were told they'd be contacted, but identities were never revealed. No one

 had told the local SOTE office on Durward that the Circus people would contact them, so

 Etienne knew he and his people would have to work on their own, without official

 endorsement or assistance. It would be awkward gaining information and acting on it, but

 he'd worked under such handicaps before.

  

 He did have a few personal contacts of his own that he'd developed many years ago.

 He'd been on Durward a couple of times in his official capacity; once, checking some

 fruitless leads to the whereabouts of Banian the Bastard, and a second time tracing an

 unrelated case of a doctor who'd been performing plastic surgery on criminals to alter

 their appearances. That last case had been twenty years ago, and apart from routine

 Circus appearances he'd never worked on Durward again. His contacts could be dead or

 otherwise out of circulation, for all he knew. But he'd have to make the effort.

  

 After landing on Durward. there was nearly a full day wasted while he supervised the

 very necessary tasks of setting up the Circus, arranging for publicity, and the thousands

 of minute details that were part of his job as manager. Even so, his mind was not idle.

 Even after several weeks, the planet was abuzz with speculation on the disappearance

 of the planetary Police Commissioner, Elsa Helmund. Etienne read himself to sleep over

 the news reports that had been published locally, and he insisted that Helena read them,

 too-not only to keep her mind occupied, but to encourage her to start thinking of new

 possibilities. She had, after all, been trained by her father, and Duke Etienne had a high

 opinion of both the teacher and the raw material he'd worked with.

  

 Now that something was actually being done, Helena started coming out of her shell. As

 Etienne had hoped, she was too vibrant a person to remain closed off forever.

  

 After making a few fruitless vidicom calls, he did find one of his old connections, a former

 high police official, now retired. The man was willing to talk about Elsa Helmund, so

 Etienne paid him a visit, bringing Helena along with him.

  

 The informant did not have much more information about Elsa Helmund than could be

 gleaned from the newsrolls, but he did know a little more about the woman's personal

 habits. There were certain clubs and social circles she frequented, certain people she

 regularly associated with. Working on the theory that some of these associates might be

 connected with the conspiracy-or at least might know more about the Police

 Commissioner's current whereabouts-Etienne decided these leads should be tracked

 down.

  

 The job was parceled out among several of his people, including Helena. They did not

 want to scare away any potential leads, so all they did was quietly follow Helmund's

 friends to see where they went and who they contacted. It was boring but tricky detail

 work, and most of it would end up being totally useless-but a good agent knew that

 dedication to the minor tasks often led to data that could crack a case wide open.

  

 Helena had been working for three days following one particular contact when she

 noticed something peculiar: She was being followed herself. At first it was nothing more

 than an uncomfortable feeling; she would look around and everything appeared normal,

 so she tried to dismiss it. But the feeling came more and more frequently-the feeling that

 someone's eyes were focused on her. Helena had been thoroughly trained in the art, not

 only of following someone else, but of what to do when being followed herself. She tried

 several subtle tricks in order to catch the follower in an error while not making it look

 deliberate, so he wouldn't know she was trying to spot him. Whoever was tailing her,

 though, was as adept as she was; she never caught more than a glimpse of him out of

 the comer of her eye, never saw enough to make an identification possible. She made

 sure she lost him, though, before returning to the Circus.

  

 When she told Duke Etienne about the watcher, the circus manager gave a predatory

 smile. "We may be getting close to something," he said. "Somebody obviously spotted

 you. It probably wasn't the person you were watching-I'm sure you're too well trained for

 that but someone else may have noticed you and wanted to find out what you were up

 to. That means they're afraid you might learn something. I think we should find out just

 who has been after you, and maybe bring him in for a little talk."

  

 The next day, Helena went out to tail her quarry as usual, and spent most of the day in

 this trivial occupation.

  

 It was not long before she again felt the presence of her own watcher in the corners, but

 made no attempt to shake him or look around for him. It was not until late in the evening

 that she made her move.

  

 The man she was following walked down the street to the club he generally visited each

 week. Helena suddenly broke away from her pursuit of him and raced down an alley to

 the side. She hoped for one of two things---either that her own follower would be startled

 and break his pattern to chase after her, or else that she'd be able to circle quickly

 around and catch him from another angle, where he'd be more visible.

  

 She ran quickly around the block, panting but excited at the prospect of some action. Her

 shadow was still nowhere in sight as she returned to the street she'd left so abruptly, and

 she was feeling disappointed when she heard the sound of a scuffle in the shadows

 beside one building.

  

 Duke Etienne had not sent her out alone today; instead, she'd been accompanied,

 discreetly, by the Duke's niece, Luise deForrest, one of the Circus' top clowns and a

 superb agent in her own right. Luise had been sent to watch Helena-and, more important,

 to watch for anyone else watching her. Helena's quick break had been designed to lure

 the watcher out of his pattern so that either Luise or Helena could nab him.

  

 From the sound of it as she approached, Helena could tell there was quite a struggle

 going on. Etienne had not wanted to send more than one person to help her; for one

 thing, too many people would make themselves more obvious-and for another, the family

 pride refused to admit it might take more than one d'Alembert to handle so simple a

 situation. Luise, her long black hair tied back in a neat braid to be out of her way, was

 locked in hand-to-hand combat with a man who seemed to be almost her match. Helena

 pulled out the ministunner Duke Etienne had given her, but although she was a crack

 shot, the two bodies were so fiercely interlocked it would have been difficult to hit her

 target. Instead, she launched into the fight herself, and with her help Luise was able to

 get a firm grip on their antagonist. The female clown swung her opponent hard against

 the wall, knocking the breath from his body. The man slumped to the ground,

 momentarily incapaciated, and Luise moved in for the knockout blow.

  

 The man's body was sprawled in a patch of light that filtered in from the street, and for

 the first time Helena got a clear look at his face. "No, stop!" she cried to Luise. With

 great difficulty, the Circus performer held up on the blow she'd been about to deliver.

  

 "What's the matter?" Luise asked.

  

 "I know that man," Helena replied. "That's Captain Fortier. He's on our side-sort of."
Chapter 9

 Battle station G-6

  

 The d'Alemberts and the Bavols were not precisely sure what one of the conspiracy's

 "battlestations" might be, but the title did not sound promising. It conjured up images of

 heavy fortifications and impressive firepower. More than merely a battleship, it would not

 be designed to outrun or contact the enemy. Instead, it sounded like a defensive position

 where the conspiracy was prepared to dig in and fight back against almost anything the

 Empire chose to throw against it.

  

 "We could call in the Navy and batter it into submission. . . ." Jules began hesitantly.

  

 "But you don't like to be that heavy-handed," Yvette finished the sentence for him.

  

 Jules grinned sheepishly. "Well, there is something to be said for subtlety."

  

 "There's only one person in the Galaxy less subtle than you, mon eher frere, and that's

 my own dear husband. Nevertheless, you're right. If we call in an entire fleet to take care

 of one station, we'll put the station out of commission and learn nothing further.

 Sometimes a can opener is better than a sledgehammer."

  

 "Then, too," Yvonne pointed out, "we know the conspiracy is able to monitor our internal

 affairs somehow. If we put in a call for help, they might get wind of it and run away

 before we can catch them. Right now the only people we can trust are ourselves. I think

 we ought to wrap this up ourselves, and use the Navy only as a backup if something

 goes wrong."

  

 They spent the rest of the day thrashing out the details of a plan. They could not be too

 specific because they didn't know precisely what sort of threat they'd be facing; a lot of it

 would have to be invented as they went along.

  

 For that reason, it was decided that Jules and Yvette would make the actual assault on

 the battle station. They were the most experienced of the group, having worked together

 for many years both as agents in the field and as acrobats in the Circus. They knew

 every move and reflex the other had. And truth to tell, as much as they loved their

 respective spouses, they were glad to have a chance to work with each other again.

  

 As agreed, Vonnie would stay behind and guard their prisoners. She didn't like receiving

 what she regarded as preferential treatment because of her condition, but even she had

 to admit her job would be vital. Not only did she have to keep their captives

 incommunicado long enough for the others to do their jobs, but there had to be someone

 left behind to notify the Navy if their plan failed. It was decided she would give the others

 two days; if she hadn't heard from them by the end of that time, she would call in

 reinforcements.

  

 That left Pias in need of something to do. He agreed to pilot the ship towards the battle

 station. This would not be as simple as task as it sounded, because he was almost

 certain to come under fire the moment he approached the object. His newly-acquired

 skills as a pilot would be put to the most severe test as he tried to accomplish his goals

 while dodging enemy blaster beams at the same time. It was a necessary task, but not

 one he was looking forward to.

  

 The three SOTE agents were in full space battle armor as their ship dropped out of

 subspace near the coordinates of the battle station. The armor was uncomfortable, but

 the alternatives to wearing it were even more so. If their vessel were destroyed, the

 armor gave them a chance to survive and carry on their mission.

  

 They made sure to materialize well out of weapons range, so they could have a look at

 the enemy before moving in. At this distance, several hundred kilometers away, there

 were few details visible even through a powerful scope. The station was a large black

 ball of metal several hundred meters in diameter. Its surface bristled with projections that

 threatened anyone approaching its sights. It was difficult to tell, but it seemed to have its

 own engines mounted on the rear, making it somewhat mobile although the agents

 doubted it was capable of any great speed.

  

 "Can't tell much about it from here," Jules said regretfully. "We'll have to move in closer

 to see anything specific. "

  

 "If we get much closer you'll have to look pretty fast," Pias said, "because I'll be busy

 dodging blaster beams." "There's no other way, I'm afraid," Yvette said. "We'll have to

 get close to it sometime, and the sooner the better; Boros can see us on her screens

 right now just as clearly as we can see her. The less time we give her to prepare for our

 arrival, the more chance we'll have to succeed."

  

 With no further prompting, Pias began the ship on its course toward the unknown

 opponent. He started moving slowly, building up speed at a gradual pace until he was

 zipping along a confusing path at cruising rate. This ship was not La Comete Cuivre, the

 fast little craft that belonged exclusively to Jules and Yvette; because the four agents had

 needed more than a two-seater to get from DesPlaines to Floreata, they'd taken Le

 Lapin from the d'Alembert hangar. Nevertheless, it handled with superb precision,

 obeying Pias's split second commands.

  

 The battle station grew larger in the scope, but it remained ominously silent. It issued no

 radio or subcom challenge, made no attempt to communicate with the tinier vessel. The

 blaster turrets swivelled to cover the ship as it moved, but there was no other indication

 of life within the somber fortress.

  

 Except for the projecting turrets, the outer hull of the battle station appeared completely

 smooth. There were no docking facilities, no viewpoints, nothing but barren metal. Jules,

 who had his eye on the scope, mentioned this to his companions and added, "it looks like

 they're not eager for visitors. I'm not sure there's any way to get inside. . . . Wait, there's

 a small ship docked there. It fits in so snugly it looks like part of the hull. It can't be more

 than a one- or two-seater. Unless it's used as a ferry, there can't be much of a crew

 inside. That's a break for us. And there, on that side-it looks like a small maintenance

 hatch. Again, not very big, but. . . . "

  

 At that point he was jolted away from his calm reflections. The battle station, deciding

 this intruding vessel had come close enough, began firing its lesser guns, and Pias

 needed all the speed of his high-grav reflexes to maneuver Le Lapin out of the line of

 fire. From this point on, they would be caught in a deadly dance; one slight miscalculation

 and the ship would be gutted by the burning beam of the battle station's blasters.

  

 It was Pias's show for the moment; Jules and Yvette could only hang on tightly to their

 seats as their comrade guided the ship through the treacherous combat zone. "Better

 think of something fast," Pias said without taking his eyes off his screens for a second.

 "The longer I stick around here, the more chance I have of dodging too slowly one time,

 and that's all it takes."

  

 "We have to get in there," Jules said. "If there is only a small crew, we stand a good

 chance of being able to take them ourselves."

  

 "That maintenance hatch you mentioned sounds like the best bet," Yvette added. "if we

 can get to it."

  

 "There are no docking facilities, and the station wouldn't give us time to dock even if

 there were," Jules said. "We'll have to be dropped off in passing. Do you think you can

 make a close swing to let us off?"

  

 Pias gave him a tight grin.. "I'll peel the paint off that station's hull. Just give me a couple

 of minutes to maneuver into the right position."

  

 Jules and Yvette took that as their cue to leave the control room. It was difficult to move

 through a ship undergoing a constant series of abrupt accelerations; they had to take one

 cautious step at a time, keeping a firm grip on the walls, acceleration couches, and

 anything else in reach. Adding to the dilemma was the awkwardness of their heavy battle

 armor; even though they'd trained in its use for years until wearing it was a second

 nature, it made each movement a special challenge.

  

 Slowly, the two DesPlainians traveled through the central axis of the ship to the airlock.

 Once inside and with the inner hatch closed behind them, they opened the outer hatch

 and faced the inky blackness of interstellar space. "What you'll have to do," Jules

 explained over his radio link to Pias, "is shoot us out of here like a rock from a sling. Let

 us know when you're making the closest approach and then pull up; we'll push ourselves

 out, and the forward momentum we get from the ship should hurl us right into the hull of

 the station."

  

 "Khorosho," Pias answered cheerily. "Did you learn this from one of your relatives who's

 a human cannonball?" "We don't have any acts like that in the Circus," Yvette said. "We'll

 just have to improvise this one as we go along."

  

 It took some time before Pias, dodging maniacally through the increasingly deadly field of

 blaster beams, could maneuver Le Lapin into the proper position to make the needed

 charge at the station. Finally the moment came when he was prepared to make the

 move. "Get ready," he told the others. Aiming the nose of his ship directly at the

 maintenance hatch, he raced toward the station's surface at top speed.

  

 Blaster bolts streaked harmlessly through empty space around him as he held to a tight

 collision course. Some of the beams missed the surface of Le Lapin by a matter of

 meters, but Pias gritted his teeth and did not flinch. The range between his vessel and

 the station diminished at an ever increasing rate. His eyes were watching four gauges at

 once, and his hands remained rock steady on the controls. If he moved too soon, Jules

 and Yvette would be shot off into empty space instead of onto the skin of the battle

 station; if he moved too late, he wouldn't be able to pull out and would crash into the side

 of the metal planetoid.

  

 As the numbers on his readout screen dovetailed into the course he had mentally

 calculated, his hands moved quickly over the controls. "Now!" he shouted over the radio,

 simultaneously activating the auxiliary jets for a quick sidewards motion.

  

 Just as he'd promised, he came close to scraping the paint from the battle station's hull.

 If the station had been a smooth ball, his maneuver would have been precision perfect

 and he'd have veered off into space again with only the slightest of space between the

 enemy fortress and his own craft.

  

 Unfortunately, the battle station was not a perfectly smooth ball. The constantly rotating

 blaster turrets were an uncalculable factor in the topography of the surface. Just as the

 ship veered off, one of the nearby turrets swung directly into its path. The tip of the

 barrel just grazed the ship, but at the high speed Pias was traveling, that was a disaster.

 The vessel shook with a major jolt that nearly knocked Pias from his acceleration couch,

 and it began tumbling uncontrollably on its course outward from the battle station. Pias

 grabbed at the controls and frantically tried to stabilize the craft once more, but that took

 his attention away from the very necessary task of dodging the blaster beams.

  

 One of those blasters finally caught up with him. Because of the ship's wild spinning, the

 beam did not catch it dead center, but sliced through a portion of the tail. As the

 high-energy ray hit the motor and drive components already overcharged themselves

 through their rigorous action-the back end of the craft exploded, leaving Le Lapin a dead

 lump of twisted metal careening madly in an eccentric orbit around the battle station that

 had destroyed it.

  

 Jules and Yvette did not see the fate of their ship, so busy were they with their own

 assault. At Pias's command, they leaped out of the hatch, pushing off just as Le Lapin

 veered away from its headlong flight into the side of the station. They were now being

 flung at high speed directly at the wall. The spacing of this stunt was critical.

  

 As it was, Pias had undershot the distance just a bit. The instant they left the ship's hatch

 they began firing their airjets to decelerate, and still the station was coming up at them

 much too fast. They had to wait until the last possible second to get the most advantage

 out of their jets; then, in one fluid motion, they twisted their bodies around so that their

 legs were under them, ready to absorb the impact like coiled springs.

  

 As superbly trained acrobats from a high-gravity world, they were used to hard impacts,

 and the collision with the hull of the battle station seemed little worse than the leap to the

 ground that had been the climax of their trapeze act. Tucking their heads down as well as

 they could in the cumbersome armor, they rolled their bodies forward in somersaults

 upon landing to absorb the rest of their forward momentum. Their move was almost too

 good, bouncing them off into space again, but a small correctional blast from their jets

 brought them back to their desired location. They'd ended up on the battle station's hull

 less than fifty meters from the maintenance hatch they'd been aiming for.

  

 Using their jets once more, they skimmed quickly over the smooth surface, safely within

 the minimum range of the station's big guns, to the hatchway. The hatch itself was closed

 and locked, but Jules's high-powered blaster cut a way through the locking mechanism in

 under a minute. He and Yvette forced open the doorway, knowing there was a chance

 they might unseal the entire ship if the inner hatch was open. At this point, they didn't

 really care. They had plenty of air inside their armor, and they knew Tanya Boros would

 make sure she was safe no matter what. Everything else was irrelevant.

  

 The inner airlock door was sealed as well, however, so the ship's interior remained

 intact. They resealed the outer hatch and equalized the air pressure within the airlock and

 the rest of the station. As the green light came on, indicating the airlock procedure was

 complete, the two agents stood back from the doorway, expecting trouble.

  

 And trouble came in abundance. As one of the few points of entry into the battle station,

 that doorway had automatic defenses trained on it. The instant the airlock pressure was

 equalized, the hatch door sprang open and a series of blaster beams sprayed the airlock

 from the corridor outside. The total energy pouring into that tiny chamber lit it like a

 minature sun.

  

 If they hadn't been in the heaviest possible battle armor, Jules and Yvette would have

 been instantly fried. As it was, the high intensity of the blaster beams nearly blinded

 them, and would have cut through their armor in half a minute. The agents did not give it

 a chance.

  

 Yvette was in the best position to act. Quickly picking a grenade from the side of her

 armor, she lobbed it forward through the open hatch. The explosion rocked the walls,

 and the influx of deadly beams ceased immediately. The DesPlainians peered out of the

 hatchway at a twisted pile of rubble that had been a stack of high-powered blasters

 aimed into the airlock doorway.

  

 The interior of the battle station was an enormous latticework, like a building still under

 construction. Beams and girders crisscrossed everywhere, bracing the interior walls in

 every direction against possible shocks from outside bombardment. In the center of the

 sphere, the metal beams clustered more tightly together, forming a fortress within a

 fortress. The central sphere was obviously where the living quarters and control areas of

 this battle station were located, and it was there the two SOTS agents would have to

 make their way.

  

 There was no gravity within the station; everything was left in the eerie freefall of space.

 Jules and Yvette did not simply push off and go flying inward towards the center,

 however; if an ultragrav system were turned on while they were floating in midair, they

 would suddenly go crashing in whatever direction was "down."

  

 Instead, they activated the electromagnetic soles of their armored boots and provided

 their own clinging force. The magnetic attraction to the bulkhead was enough to keep

 them from drifting aimlessly, but not too much to rivet them to the spot. Cautiously,

 holding on carefully to the girders, they began climbing their way through the tangled web

 of steel beams and cables toward the heart of the battle station.

  

 The air suddenly erupted with sizzling heat as more blasters, mounted in hidden locations

 all around them, began firing. The DesPlainians fired back quickly. Their armor gave them

 some protection; they could afford to take their time to locate the source of the different

 beams and put each one out of commission. But even their plating was being severely

 tested by the repeated high-energy barrages.

  

 The interior defense of this battle station seemed no less thorough than the exterior. It

 had been designed to withstand assaults, and Jules and Yvette were still fighting an uphill

 struggle. Only their DesPlainian strength and reflexes, which enabled them to move

 faster in space armor than ordinary people, had kept them from tragedy, and it was by

 no means certain that this state of affairs could continue.

  

 As yet they had not seen another living creature within this station. All its mechanisms, all

 its defenses, were operating automatically with the speed of a computer. The computer

 could not be frightened, could not panic, could not overreact or make a tactical blunder

 that wasn't programmed into it. The battle station was a masterpiece of engineering, and

 the SOTS team was beginning to realize they might have underestimated it. They would

 have preferred to fight an army of living opponents rather than the cold, mechanical

 precision of this automated destructive device.

  

 Just as Yvette blasted back at the final attacking beam, a new threat appeared. From an

 unseen launcher on the far side of the battle station, a small but deadly heat grenade

 came lofting through the air toward their position. Jules's sharp eyes spotted the

 projectile coming, and he shouted an immediate warning cry of "Rube!" to his sister.

  

 To someone trained in the Circus as they both were, that traditional warning of

 danger-shortened over the centuries from "Hey, Rube!"-brought an instantaneous re-

  

 sponse. Yvette looked around immediately and spotted the projectile. If the two of them

 waited here, the concussion from the grenade's explosion would at least knock them

 unconscious if the blast didn't kill them outright. And they would not be able to run fast

 enough along the girders in their magnetic boots to escape the effects of the grenade.

  

 There was only one alternative. Jules and Yvette leaped off the support of the steel

 beams into the freefall of midair, hoping to propel themselves far enough away from the

 target area before the grenade could go off.

  

 While they were in midair, disaster struck. Their fear that ultragrav would be used as a

 weapon against them proved justified. If the battle station had been defended by a live

 army, the tactic could not have been used because it would have incapaciated the

 defenders as well as the attackers. But the machinery aboard the station didn't much

 care whether there was a gravity field or not.

  

 The instant the SOTE agents were unsupported in midair, the ultragrav snapped on.

 Instantly there was a "down" direction, and their free-floating bodies began hurtling to-

  

 ward the "floor" fifteen meters below them. The field strength was five gees, more even

 than they were comfortably used to, and the armor made them that much more

 awkward. Jules and Yvette grabbed frantically for handholds on the girders as they went

 plummeting down, but they could get no grip. The pull of the ultragrav was too strong,

 and even DesPlainians had limits on the speeds with which they could react.

  

 The two bodies crashed heavily against the down side of the station's outer wall.

 Although the padding within their armor absorbed much of the blow, the shock was still

 too great for their systems to handle easily. The agents were knocked unconscious and

 lay pinioned under the crushing weight of their own bodies and armor.

  

 Safe and snug in the center of her mechanical spiderweb, Tanya Boros grinned. Although

 the last report she'd gotten had said that Agents Wombat and Periwinkle had been

 captured, she had little doubt that this assault on her station had been made by them.

 Even though the attack had been totally unexpected, the battle station had reacted as it

 had been designed to react. Lady A would be pleased that this latest addition to her

 arsenal functioned perfectly.

  

 And in the meantime, Tanya Boros would have the excitement of conducting an

 interrogation personally. She had a lot of scores to settle with Agent Wombat.
 Chapter 10

New Ally, Old Adversary

  

 Helena and her comrade from the Circus, Luise deForrest, faced a dilemma: What

 should they do with the captured Captain Fortier? They couldn't let him go, but at the

 same time they didn't want to breach the Circus' cover by bringing him back there. Even

 though Fortier's loyalty to the Empire was unquestioned, it was bad policy to let too

 many people know of the Circus' connection with SOTE.

  

 Helena thought of a compromise. She checked into a small hotel and Luise brought

 Fortier up to the room via the back entrance. From there they placed a call to Duke

 Etienne explaining the situation, and he agreed to come at once to find out more details.

  

 While waiting for the Duke to arrive, Helena had more chance to converse with the

 prisoner. She wanted very much to hate him because of what had happened to her

 father, but found she could not. For one thing, she knew the captain was honest,

 intelligent, and doing his duty to the Empire as he understood it. Helena had to admit that

 if she'd been the one to discover the evidence against her father, she might very well

 have turned him in herself. More important, Helena thought Paul Fortier a very attractive

 man. He was short and muscular, with a handsome face, dark hair, brown eyes, and a

 pencil-thin mustache. She remembered reading his personnel dossier after the

 Coronation Day Incursion; while his family was of DesPlainian origin, the last few

 generations had lived on one-gee worlds and so did not have quite the strength or

 reflexes of the true DesPlainians. She also remembered he was single-a fact she'd noted

 at the time, and which now popped into her memory with disturbing ease. Watching him

 lying on the bed across the room from her, she suddenly found herself thinking very

 unprofessional thoughts.

  

 Angry with herself, she pushed those thoughts from her mind to concentrate on the

 business at hand. "Why did you come here, Captain?" she asked in as neutral a tone as

 she could muster.

  

 "I should think that would be obvious," he replied just as coolly. "I wanted to take you

 back."

  

 "But you've been following me for two days. Why didn't you just grab me and pull me in?"

  

 "I wanted to see if you'd lead me to anyone else." Helena stood up and wandered around

 the room, deliberately turning her back on him. Luise was keeping watch to make sure he

 made no sudden moves, but she stayed discreetly out of the conversation.

  

 "Despite what you think," Helena said after a moment, "I'm not a traitor. The only reason

 I escaped was to find some friends and clear my father's name. I know he was innocent.

 "

  

 "If he was, no one is sorrier about his death than I am," Fortier said quietly.

  

 "You're just saying that because I have you here at gunpoint. "

  

 "It's the truth. You and your friend could have killed me there on the street when you had

 the chance, but you didn't; I have to think that speaks of good intentions. You could have

 killed several of my officers while you were escaping from the Anna Libeling, but you

 didn't do that either. Your behavior isn't what I'd expect from a deadly enemy of the

 Empire."

  

 Helena's fists were tightly clenched. "Nevertheless, my father is dead."

  

 Fortier paused and took a deep breath. "That's not my doing. After you escaped, I

 reported back to Luna Base and was told to bring your father to Earth for interrogation. I

 handed him over and that's the last I saw of him. I was ordered to try to track you down,

 so I came here. It occurred to me you might want to check out my story for yourself, and

 this was the natural place to do it. I heard about your father's execution in the newsrolls,

 the same as everyone else. It was the Empress who decided he should die; you'll have

 to blame her for that."

  

 It didn't soothe Helena to realize that Fortier was absolutely right. Edna Stanley held the

 ultimate authority in that matter, and the execution could not have taken place without her

 express consent. Sometime in the future, if-no, when-her innocence was re-established,

 Helena knew she'd have to confront her lifelong friend about the horrible murder of a

 good and loyal man. The prospect did not appeal to her.

  

 The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Duke Etienne. The Circus' manager

 had come disguised so Fortier couldn't recognize him; since Luise never made public

 appearances without heavy clown makeup, Fortier couldn't associate her face with the

 Circus either. The Circus' cover remained unbroken.

  

 "Well, young man," Etienne said to the prisoner, "you've made quite a name for yourself.

 I'm sorry we had to meet under such tragic circumstances."

  

 "I didn't realize I was that famous," Fortier said. "Your. recent exploits have been justly

 renowned in certain official circles," the Duke told him, putting just enough emphasis in his

 voice to make his meaning unmistakable. "I even have a very personal reason to be im-

  

 mensely grateful to you-a reason which, for security's sake, I can't explain right now."

  

 Indeed he did. Not only had Captain Fortier saved the Empire at the time of the

 Coronation Day incursion, he had also saved the life of the Duke's daughter Yvette.

 "Please accept my assurance," Etienne continued, "that you are among friends here."

  

 "I'd find it easier to believe that if that lady didn't have her stunner pointed at me all the

 time," Fortier said dryly. The Duke nodded at Luise. "Put the gun away," he said. "We

 don't need it anymore. Captain Fortier will remain with us of his own accord. I even

 suspect, when I tell him my little story, he'll volunteer to help us."

  

 Fortier leaned forward on the bed. "You intrigue me, Gospodin. Please continue."

  

 Etienne d'Alembert sat across from the naval officer, watching his face intently. "When

 Helena came to me for help, she told me your story of the investigation leading to her

 father's arrest. I have, in my time, performed services for the Empire along those same

 lines, and I respect your efforts. Nonetheless, something in what you'd said raised my

 suspicions-something you knew nothing about since it was well before your time. It was

 that something which brought me here to Durward. "

  

 "The unfinished business with Elsa Helmund?" Fortier ventured.

  

 "Only peripherally. I suspect Elsa Helmund is an unimportant piece of the entire picture,

 merely a device to lure you from Lateesta to Preis. Something you reported about her,

 though, interested me greatly. You said you first became suspicious when you saw the

 necklace she was wearing: an integrated circuit chip on a golden chain."

  

 "Yes," Fortier said. "I'd been told that some members of a certain conspiracy wore such

 things as identification symbols.

  

 "That was my information, too," Etienne agreed. "Have you heard of Duke Fyodor Paskoi

 of the planet Kolokov?" Fortier searched his memory. "I think . . . A couple of years ago,

 wasn't it? Something about treason. The planet reverted to the throne and a new Duke

 was appointed. I'm afraid I don't remember any of the details; I wasn't involved with it in

 any way."

  

 "No reason why you should remember. I, however, was involved with it in a large way, as

 was the young lady who'd just been pointing her stunner at you. When I first met Duke

 Fyodor, he was wearing an identical chain around his own neck."

  

 "I guess that stands to reason."

  

 "Much more to the point," the Duke went on, "I thought at the time that I'd seen such a

 necklace before, but I couldn't remember where or when. The memory did not come to

 me instantly and I quickly became embroiled with other matters, so I didn't worry about it

 again until the story of Elsa Helmund made me think of it. In the past few days I have

 thought about it quite a lot, and I've finally recaptured the elusive memory. I'd like to

 share it with you.

  

 "Nearly twenty years ago I was performing some . . . shall we say investigative services

 for the good of the Empire. Certain traitors and other high-level criminals were being

 given new identities so they could escape detection. Along with forged identities, they

 were receiving plastic surgery to alter their appearance. I set out to discover who was

 doing these things.

  

 "The trail led me to a surgeon named William Loxner, who had a practice right here on

 Durward. My investigation uncovered enough evidence to have him convicted for his

 crimes. I believe the sentence he received was ten years in prison. I don't know what's

 happened to him since then, although I intend to find out.

  

 "I was telling you, though, about the memory of the necklaces. While gathering evidence,

 I visited Loxner as a prospective patient. My first sight of him was when he came out of

 his office, saying goodbye to an elderly woman and setting up another appointment for

 her. Loxner was in his sixties and the woman looked even older, easily in her seventies. I

 never saw her again; she apparently had no connection to the case I was working on.

  

 "But I remember most clearly the fact that both Loxner and the old woman were wearing

 identical necklacesintegrated circuit chips on golden chains. Loxner was fingering his

 necklace nervously; in retrospect, I'm guessing that the woman may have been a

 superior in the organization. At the time, of course, the necklaces meant nothing to me,

 but I recall thinking how odd it was that two people would be wearing the same

 distinctive article of jewelry. Today I find it more than odd, I find it downright suspicious

 that such a coincidence should happen on Durward-a planet with such a scandalous past

 and now with a question mark for a present. Do you agree, Captain?"

  

 Fortier's eyes were alight with the challenge of this puzzle; he was clearly as hooked on

 the mystery as the rest of them. "I'm not sure this business with the necklaces has

 anything to do with the case against Gospozha von Wilmenhorst's father," he said slowly.

 "But you're right, it's too coincidental to be ignored. Something more is happening here

 on Durward, and I'd like to know what it is as much as you would. Tracking down people

 after twenty years can be difficult. . . ."

  

 "This is where I'm sure you'll be most helpful, Captain," the Duke smiled slyly. "You

 currently have the full cooperation of the police and other agencies, while I'm acting

 unofficially. You were very adept at tracking down tiny clues on the trail to Helena's

 father; I'm sure you'll prove no less skilled on this case."

  

 Fortier's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "There's just one thing. Putting the gun away

 was a nice show of trust, but it was still meaningless since you outnumber me three to

 one. You've still offered me no credentials to prove I should cooperate with you, merely

 old tales and innuendos. I do want to investigate this Dr. Loxner, but how do I know it's

 for the best to share my data with you?"

  

 "You couldn't stop me from doing my own investigation. I might still hold you here against

 your will, though I promised I wouldn't and I won't. My investigation will go more smoothly

 with your help, but it will get done one way or another. It seems more efficient for both of

 us to work together.

  

 Fortier still looked doubtful. He had no firm proof that the other three still weren't

 members of the conspiracy trying to trick him into doing some work for them. The doubts

 and suspicions could have been argued for hours, so Helena took matters into her own

 hands.

  

 "Trust must always be mutual, Captain," she said to Fortier. "Perhaps if we give you an

 indication of our trust in you, you'll give more to us in return. You came here to recapture

 me. I am willing, here and now, to surrender myself into your custody if you will help with

 this case. I'd like to work at your side, if I may; I'm not inexperienced at piecing puzzles

 like this together. But if you want you may put me under guard, handcuff me, do anything

 that will assure you I mean what I say. Does that add up to the right hour on your

 timepiece?"

  

 Fortier stared deeply into Helena's face. He recognized the sacrifice she was prepared

 to make on behalf of this case. After all, her father had just been executed for treason

 and she could conceivably share that fate. She was literally putting her life in his hands.

  

 But more than that, her final words sent a chill down his back. "Timepiece" was his

 undercover codename. For her to know it at all meant she must have some high connec-

  

 tions in intelligence circles, with access to his dossier. His entire perception of her shifted

 immediately. Who was she, to be given such knowledge? It occurred to him for the first

 time that she might know far more about him than he knew about her.

  

 "Khorosho," he said slowly, nodding, "If you can trust me that much, I think I can risk

 trusting you. You have yourselves a deal, tovarishchi."

  

 The next morning Helena returned with Fortier to police headquarters. The Naval officer

 made no mention of her, no report to his superiors, nor did he insist on restricting her

 motions in any way. He did ask, when they were alone, how she knew his codename and

 she admitted she'd been given legal access to his files at one time. She would say

 nothing beyond that, however, and Fortier had to content himself with that tantalyzing

 piece of information. Helena found, though, that he was watching her more critically out

 of the corners of his eyes when he thought she wouldn't notice. His opinion of her was

 undergoing a thorough re-evaluation, and she didn't mind that a bit.

  

 The first item they checked was the police file on Dr. Loxner. The surgeon had served

 seven years of his sentence in prison, where he'd been such a model prisoner he was

 released on parole. He adhered strictly to the conditions of the parole and, at the end of

 his appointed time, was freed from constraints. There was no record, at least on

 Durward, of his ever being in trouble with the law again.

  

 They next checked with the Durward Medical Association and the Durward Board of

 Surgery. Dr. Loxner had kept up his membership in both organizations even while in

 prison, and had never been uncertified. Upon his release on parole, he was permitted to

 open a new practice in tandem with another doctor, and that practice had continued for

 another six years, until Dr. Loxner retired.

  

 Helena stared at the file and went suddenly pale. Sensing her reaction, Fortier asked, "Is

 there something significant about that?"

  

 The young woman pointed at the name of Loxner's partner. "Dr. Immanuel Rustin was

 personal physician to Duke Fyodor Paskoi of Kolokov. He specialized in prosthetic

 devices. He also worked as a member of the conspiracy, building robots. He built the

 robot that took your place a few months ago."

  

 Fortier looked at her, his mouth slightly agape. "You know about that, too?"

  

 "I know about a lot of things."

  

 Fortier looked at her, not even bothering to disguise the admiration in his voice. "When I

 first met you, I naturally assumed you were the spoiled daughter of a Grand Duke. Since

 then you've been a constant source of astonishment. I keep wondering how much more

 I'll find out when I get to know you better."

  

 Helena looked quickly away. She could not help noticing his use of the word "when"

 rather than "if." Her pulse was beating out a strange rhythm, and she felt safer changing

 the subject altogether. "I particularly know about those robots; they've caused a great

 deal of damage. This is a fascinating connection, because it ties Loxner in once more

 with the conspiracy, and with the robots. If he and Rustin worked on the robots together,

 he might have had some role in creating the robot of Herman Stanck."

  

 She suddenly grew very quiet, and Fortier wondered what she was thinking. She did not

 share her thoughts with him, but instead pressed the investigation even harder.

  

 By the end of the day they had learned a few interesting facts. Dr. Loxner was

 reasonably well off, and had been able to retire to a private asteroid in the Durward

 system several years ago. There was no death certificate, so there was a good

 possibility he was still around-and still linked to the conspiracy. An attempt to locate his

 patient files, though, proved futile; the records had apparently been destroyed. A further

 check on Dr. Immanuel Rustin showed that the man had lived on Durward and had been

 a close colleague of Dr. Loxner for nearly thirty years, though they'd only officially been

 partners for the last six years of Loxner's practice. After Loxner retired, Rustin emigrated

 to Kolokov, where he took the job as permanent physician to Duke Fyodor. Helena had

 some idea of what he'd done from then until his death, when the Circus had investigated

 the Duke's activities.

  

 The hotel room Helena had rented on the spur of the moment had been turned into the

 central rendezvous point so Fortier wouldn't learn about the Circus. Helena called the

 room and spoke with Luise, acting as liaison. They set up another meeting with Duke

 Etienne for later that evening.

  

 Etienne and Luise were both fascinated to hear about Loxner's connection with Immanuel

 Rustin. It was Luise who had interrogated Rustin under nitrobarb and learned about the

 robots in the fast place. She admitted to feeling a terrible sense of deja vu, as though the

 universe were closing itself together in a tight knot.

  

 The Duke, too, could feel events rushing toward some conclusion. "I think," he said, "we

 ought to pay a visit to Dr. Loxner on his private asteroid. There are a few questions I'd

 like to ask him, and the answers might become very interesting indeed.''

  

 Chapter 11

 Turnabout

  

 Despite the fact that it kept her perfectly safe, Tanya Boros was not happy aboard

 Battle station G-6. She was a person who needed human contact about her, particularly

 masculine contact. By the very nature of this station, she was completely alone. No ship

 other than the one built to dock with it was allowed to approach unchallenged and de-

  

 spite the station's thoroughly planned defenses, she was unsure how well it could protect

 her in an emergency. To be on the safe side, she'd hidden a blaster of her own just

 inside the airlock of the mated ship. That personal touch made her feel much better.

  

 Her only contacts with people -were over the subcom: most often with the killers hired to

 lure Wombat and Periwinkle out into the open, occasionally with headquarters for her

 daily reports. Other than that she had nothing to do, and the boredom was driving her

 crazy.

  

 She'd been excited to hear of Wombat's capture, and had actually enjoyed her short talk

 with him. Her great regret was that she'd be stuck in this damned station and never have.

 the chance to repay him personally for having interfered in her affairs. By rights, she

 should be Empress now; her father was the oldest recognized child of Stanley Nine, and

 had been given a Patent of Royalty. Banian should have succeeded to the Imperial

 Throne when Stanley Nine was killed in a spaceship mishap.

  

 Instead, her father had been forced to hide in shame and plot to recover what was

 rightfully his. Lady A had filled Boros in on exactly how large a role Agents Wombat and

 Periwinkle had played in the capture and execution of Banian, and in Boros's own exile to

 Gastonia. Tanya Boros was in a mood for revenge.

  

 She'd been frightened by the unexpected assault, but the battle station had worked

 precisely as it had been intended to. Now, to her great delight, she had Wombat, and an

 unknown woman who might well be Periwinkle, at her complete disposal.

  

 The two SOTS agents were still alive and basically unharmed after their crashing fall.

 The machines had helped Boros peel them out of their battle armor down to the light

 jumpsuits they wore under it. They were now bound securely against the wall in the small

 chamber just across from the control room in the central core of the battle station. Boros

 knew she should report instantly to headquarters to let Lady A know of the capture, but

 she postponed the call for a short while. Lady A would get them soon enough and could

 interrogate them to her heart's content. Boros intended to leave them alive, although

 they'd probably wish they were dead by the time she'd finished.

  

 Boros watched her captives intently over the next several hours. Their short, muscular

 bodies showed they were from some high-grav planet, probably DesPlaines. The woman

 was not as strikingly beautiful as Boros herself, but still very attractive; it was the man,

 though, to whom she paid the most attention. She had an inordinate fondness for

 masculine anatomy, and he was a prime example. She noticed some recent bruises,

 possibly gotten from her own assassins. She made a mental note to discover what had

 happened to them, although they must have been eliminated in some way. In the

 meantime, Wombat and his superb masculinity were entirely at her mercy.

  

 As the agents began to regain consciousness, Boros left them alone and turned, instead,

 to watching them on the internal monitors. There was always the chance they'd talk to

 one another when they thought they were alone and reveal something important.

  

 Jules and Yvette came to and realized their predicament. They looked around, saw one

 another, and smiled wanly. They each asked how the other was feeling; aside from

 headaches, sore muscles, and major bruises they seemed in pretty fair shape. There

 didn't appear to be any breaks or sprains. Once the details of their health were

 established, though, they weren't interested in doing any more talking. After half an hour

 of silence, Boros turned off the monitors in disgust and went to see her captives

 personally.

  

 "How good of you to drop by," she smiled sweetly at Jules, undoing the seam halfway

 down the front of his jumpsuit and baring his muscular chest. "I was beginning to think I

 wouldn't have the pleasure of your company this time around. And you must be

 Periwinkle," she added, turning to Yvette.

  

 "What's a periwinkle'?" Yvette asked innocently. Boros shrugged. "Just a minor

 annoyance that will soon be eliminated. Nothing to worry about much longer." The room

 lapsed into silence for a moment. Boros took the opportunity to run a finger down the

 front of Jules's chest. "I've dreamed of you, you know."

  

 "Really? I'm flattered."

  

 "Oh yes, Gospodin Wombat. You're naked in an arena, surrounded by swifters and

 braknels and panna-cats. They're all very hungry and trained to leap at your particular

 scent. I play the scene in slow motion so I can watch every delicious moment. The claws

 rake their way down your body like so."

  

 Boros demonstrated with her own fingernails, digging them -into Jules's flesh and ripping

 gashes so deep they drew blood. Jules made no sound; he merely watched Boros

 coolly, trying to size up what she would and would not do. "You won't get any information

 by torturing us, I guarantee you," he said calmly.

  

 Boros looked him straight in the eye and merely smiled. "I don't want information," she

 said, chuckling deep in her throat. "There are other people more skilled than I am who'll

 get that from you. As long as I leave you alive and able to talk, they'll be satisfied. I have

 my own interests in this matter."

  

 Yvette tried to divert the woman's attention away from her brother. "That's fine with us,"

 she said. "The longer you delay, the more time you'll give our friends to return with

 reinforcements."

  

 "The ship that brought you here was blown apart right after dropping you off," Boros

 informed them. "I don't think you should count on any help from them."

  

 Jules looked quickly over to his sister. Yvette's face was stiff with shock at the news of

 her husband's death. It was always possible, of course, that Boros was lying to see their

 reaction, but the calmness of the woman's tone made that seem unlikely. They still had

 Vonnie as the card up their sleeve, but that hardly comforted them in view of the fact that

 Pias was dead.

  

 Boros could tell her little bombshell had had its desired effect on her captives. Her smile

 broadened. "Oh good, I was wondering whether I'd ever be able to hurt you. This is

 going to be more fun than I expected."

  

 Pias found it hard to tell precisely when consciousness returned to him, surrounded as he

 was by the blackness of interstellar space. When his ship had blown apart, the explosion

 had knocked him unconscious and thrown him into the vacuum. Had he been clad in an

 ordinary spacesuit, it would have been ripped to shreds and he'd have been asphyxiated;

 but the battle armor he'd worn held up to the shock. It contained its own oxygen supply

 good for many hours of breathing. Pias survived.

  

 It took him several minutes to remember where he was and to realize the extent of his

 predicament. He was stranded in deep space with several hours of air and no

 transportation. Vonnie had been told to wait two days before sending in the Navy; even if

 they spotted a tiny armored figure the instant they arrived, he would have been long

 dead. No, he could not afford to wait for others to help him. He recalled the old proverb

 of his native Newforest, that a single deed was worth more than a thousand promises.

 He would have to act to save himself.

  

 There was nothing immediately around him; the explosion had scattered debris all over.

 The only thing that could possibly help him was the battle station, still floating leisurely in

 space fifty kilometers away. He wondered how successful Jules and Yvette had been in

 their assault. For all he knew, they might have taken over and were now in charge of the

 entire structure. But he couldn't afford to risk that assumption.

  

 He didn't know how sensitive the detectors were aboard the station, so he had to

 proceed cautiously. If the screens could see him at all, he would register as just another

 piece of debris from the exploded ship-but if he started accelerating too quickly, he

 would look decidedly suspicious. Slowly, then, he gave short bursts on the correctional

 jets built into his armor, pushing himself into an orbit that would slowly bring him near the

 battle station.

  

 After nearly three hours of drifting, he approached within easy range of the station. He

 could see the maintenance hatch where Jules and Yvette had forced their way in, so he

 knew they'd at least gotten that far. But there had to be another way in as well. having

 been invaded from that direction once, the battle station's defenses would be looking for

 another assault there. Pias always preferred to do the unexpected.

  

 His mind had not been idle while his body drifted, and he'd thought of another possible

 entryway. Floating around to the aft portion of the station, he came to the giant engines

 that propelled it through space. If Boros decided to move the station during the next half

 hour, Pias would be killed instantly-but if not, he should be able to worm his way through

 the exhaust tubes and past the nuclear propellants, into the body of the station itself.

 There was a chance of radiation poisoning from the ship's drive, but his armor should

 protect him from most of it-and the possibility of overexposure was a better risk than the

 certainty of asphyxiation if he did nothing.

  

 The exhaust nozzle curved around him like an enormous metal bowl, blocking out the

 stars. He used the light on his helmet to scan the walls around him for the vents he knew

 must be there. At last he spotted them directly ahead. A vessel this size required a lot of

 reaction mass to start it moving, and the vents, while tiny in comparison to the size of the

 nozzle itself, were large enough to accommodate a man in space battle armor.

  

 Pias wriggled his way into the vent and climbed slowly forward down the dark, narrow

 tube, lit only by his helmet lamp. He felt like a worm inching his way into the Galaxy's

 largest apple. He continued along until he came abruptly to the end of the line, the sealed

 entrance to the fuel storage tank.

  

 He had his blaster with him but didn't want to use it; not knowing the nature of the fuel

 used aboard the station, he didn't want to set off the tank and suddenly be blown to

 pieces. Instead he studied the nature of the closed seal and decided to try brute force

 against it. The seal was designed to prevent the contents inside the tank from leaking out

 into the ducts; it had not been constructed to resist pressure coming from the other

 direction.

  

 Bracing himself as best he could against the slippery inner surface of the exhaust tube,

 Pias pushed with all his strength against the flap. He could feel it starting to give, so he

 redoubled his efforts and was rewarded with a crack of an opening. He stuck his arm

 inside to wedge it open, just as a rush of fluid came escaping from the tank.

  

 If the drive had been activated, pumps within the fuel tank would have sent the liquid out

 under tremendous pressure and Pias would have been knocked back out through the

 nozzle. As it was, the leak was a gentle stream in freefall, barely noticeable except that it

 covered his armor in a gooey mess and partially obscured his faceplate, making vision

 difficult.

  

 With great difficulty he pulled himself through the small opening and into the tank. He was

 now completely surrounded by the liquid fuel and vision was impossible. Feeling his way

 slowly and carefully around the walls, he came to an external hatch. From what he'd

 recently learned about spaceships and how they worked, he knew a large vessel like this

 often had an engineer's entrance into the fuel tanks, to enable someone to check for

 leaks and malfunctions in the fuel pumps. He opened the hatch manually and slithered

 into a small airlock. When he closed the hatch behind him and activated the pump, the

 liquid fuel that had escaped into the lock with him was pumped back into the tank. In just

 a few minutes he stood in his armor, dripping wet but otherwise ready to enter the battle

 station itself.

  

 Pias pulled his heavy-duty blaster from the side compartment of his armor and held it at

 the ready. The inner door of the airlock slid open and he emerged into the body of the

 battle station. Everything about him was quiet and still. He hoped his entrance had been

 undetected, but he could count on nothing. He'd spent several years traveling through the

 Galaxy as a gambler before he'd met the d'Alemberts, and he knew he was now playing

 one of the largest gambles of his life. Every defense of this station was geared to ward

 off violent attacks; he was betting it had little or no defense against a quiet infiltration like

 his. As long as he kept things peaceful, he would probably be safe. If fighting started, all

 bets were off.

  

 As he left the engineering section, he found himself in a large, spherical cavern with

 crisscrossing girders. In the center of the spherical area was another sphere. If there

 were any people in the station at all, that's where they'd have to be.

  

 Moving slowly and quietly, Pias made his way along the steel beams toward the central

 sphere. His head was constantly turning as he looked for any possible threats through his

 badly smudged faceplate. By moving his head slowly back and forth, he hoped his

 peripheral vision might spot any hostile motion that escaped his direct notice.

  

 The stillness was ominous. He could never have guessed, just from his surroundings, that

 he was in the midst of a mighty engine of destruction. Nothing stirred, nothing moved but

 him. He could almost convince himself the station was deserted.

  

 He reached the central sphere and found all the doors locked tightly and, as part of the

 defensive nature of this station, there were no exterior palm plates to open the doors.

 Judging from how quiet things were, Pias didn't think the doors had been deliberately

 closed to exclude him; nevertheless, he now faced a decision. He could either wait here

 an indeterminate length of time until one of the sphere's occupants opened the doors in

 the normal course of events, or he could force the issue and blast his way in, upsetting

 the peace he'd striven for all this time.

  

 Pias checked the tiny gauge in his helmet indicating how much good air he had left in his

 armor. The gauge read right on the empty line, meaning he had perhaps half an hour to

 breathe. So much for waiting.

  

 The door appeared to be a thick sheet of magnisteel. His blaster could burn through it

 given a couple of minutes but the instant his beam touched the metal of the door the

 alarm would be sounded, and he doubted he'd have any uninterrupted minutes after that.

 This would have to be a quick and dirty job.

  

 Backing off a respectful distance, he braced himself against one of the naked girders and

 threw a contact grenade at the door. He waited until just before the grenade reached its

 target and launched himself after it, blaster drawn and ready.

  

 The explosion rocked the battle station with a shattering roar, blowing a hole in the door

 big enough for Pias to sail through easily, riding the concussion wave along the air

 currents. The automated defenses clicked on instantly at the explosion, but even the

 computer-guided weaponry had trouble at first deciding where to shoot. The blasters first

 trained on the doorway, sending their energy beams to a spot Pias had already passed

 beyond.

  

 By the time the computer had adjusted its thinking to the situation, Pias was well into

 action. He threw a second grenade down the hallway ahead of him; the throwing motion

 slowed his forward progress and started him spinning, so he had to reach up against a

 nearby wall to steady himself. The grenade caused another teeth-jarring explosion and

 knocked out some of the automated blasters mounted on the walls-the blasters that

 were the battle station's last line of defense against invasion.

  

 More blasters fired at him from behind, but Pias's armor gave him time enough to turn

 and calmly shoot back at the offending weapons, knocking them out of commission

 before they could do sufficient damage to him.

  

 Silence descended on the station once more-not the silence of peace, this time, but the

 heavy silence of an enemy contemplating its next move. Pias was sure he'd taken care of

 most of the blasters around him; the only other weapons he feared were bombs or

 grenades, and the enemy was not about to set such things off near its central command

 post. There would be too much destroyed in the process, and the station would be

 irreparably damaged while being "saved."

  

 Pias had not thought about the use of ultragrav as a weapon, and the sudden

 gravitational field hit him hard. The five-gee force caught him unaware, but fortunately he

 didn't have far to fall to the "floor" of the corridor. The space armor absorbed a lot of the

 shock, and while Pias had the air knocked out of him, he was not unconscious.

  

 His native world of Newforest had a .gravitational field of two and half Earth gravities,

 and he'd been spending a lot of time lately on DesPlaines with its three-gee field. The

 space armor was exceedingly heavy, nearly doubling his normal body weight. He felt he

 was carrying a load four times his accustomed self-a burden that would stagger anyone.

  

 Slowly, very slowly, Pias brought up first one leg, then the other, until he was in a

 hands-and-knees position. That's as far as I'm going to make it, he thought. He gritted

 his teeth against the pain and crawled down the corridor. The lights suddenly went out,

 but he turned on his helmet lamp and continued the painful crawl.

  

 There were a couple of doorways further down the hallway, both sealed closed. Pias

 took his last grenade and pushed it along the floor ahead of him. The grenade just

 reached the doorways as it exploded, shattering the metal doors inward. Pias then

 continued his crawl until he reached the doorways.

  

 One of the rooms looked to be the control center of the station, but there was no one in

 it. In the other room, however, he struck paydirt. Jules and Yvette were bound and

 stretched up against the wall, sagging under the increased gravitational field. Tanya

 Boros was lying on the ground, barely conscious. She was not wearing heavy armor--but

 then, she was not used to five gees, either. By turning on the ultragrav within the central

 sphere, the battle station's computer had immobilized her as well.

  

 Boros looked at the hole in the door and the blaster in Pias's hand. She may have been a

 silly and vindictive woman, but she was enough of a realist to want to stay alive. "I

 surrender," she gasped feebly.

  

 "Good," Pias said in a voice only barely stronger. His voice was carried to her by the

 armor's exterior speakers. "Now how do you turn this damned thing off?"

  

 Boros gathered her strength together and said, "Peace mode" as loudly as she could.

 The computer, attuned to her voice, obeyed the command. The ultragrav shut off as

 quickly as it had come on, and the station reverted to freefall.

  

 After pausing for a moment to gather his own strength, Pias pushed himself off the floor

 and floated over to Yvette. He untied her and gave her the gun to hold on Boros while he

 quickly undid the helmet of his armor. The oxygen gauge read below empty.

  

 "What took you so long?" his wife asked him lightly, though her concern was evident in

 her eyes.

  

 Pias shrugged. "Oh, I just decided to take the scenic route. "

  

 Chapter 12

 The Talking Asteroid

  

 The ship that approached Dr. Loxner's private asteroid was smaller than Captain Fortier

 would have liked. Knowing that Loxner was deeper into the conspiracy than had

 previously been suspected, he'd wanted to invade the hideaway with a full contingent of

 Imperial Marines. Fortier knew how well fortified a rock in space could be.

  

 Duke Etienne talked him out of it. "We want information, not a war," he pointed out. "The

 Navy could pound that rock to pieces, but we won't learn anything more from that. If we

 go as unofficial individuals, Loxner will feel less threatened and we may get more out of

 him."

  

 "But we'll be at his mercy," Fortier protested.

  

 "You needn't worry about that," Etienne assured him. "I've got a few handy tricks of my

 own."

  

 Etienne, Helena, and Fortier were the only people in the spaceship's cabin as it neared

 Loxner's private asteroid. As they came within fifty kilometers their radio crackled to life.

 "The asteroid you are approaching is private property.

  

 Please change course to avoid trespassing, in accordance with Imperial Statue

 6817.52."

  

 Etienne was prepared for that, and broadcast back, "This is a former patient of Dr.

 Loxner's, Gregori Ivanov. I must speak with Dr. Loxner about some surgery he

 performed on me twenty years ago."

  

 There was a long silence at the other end before a response came back. "There is no

 record of any patient by that name."

  

 "I, uh, didn't have this name when Dr. Loxner worked on me. It's been changed several

 times since then. It's inadvisable to broadcast my former name over an unsecured radio

 channel.

  

 Another long pause. Then: "You are given permission to land. Please follow the beacon

 to the landing site." Etienne acknowledged the command and did as requested, landing

 his ship in the small crater whose floor had been cleared for visitors to the asteroid.

 There was no other ship in sight, not even one for Dr. Loxner's own use. The trio

 wondered whether Loxner ever left his asteroid, or whether he simply had supplies

 brought in to him at intervals.

  

 A long, thick metal tube snaked out of the crater wall and fastened itself to the small

 ship's airlock so the visitors could walk through the passenger tube into the heart of the

 asteroid without having to don their spacesuits. The far end of the tube led through a

 door to a small anteroom with plain walls and no furnishings. A camera mounted in an

 upper corner monitored the proceedings. The artificial gravity within the asteroid was set

 at a standard one gee.

  

 "Permission was given only for Gregori Ivanov," a voice said through a speaker in front of

 them. "Who are the other two people'?"

  

 "This is my son Pavel and my daughter-in-law Lianna.

  

 They go everywhere with me these days. I have no secrets from them. They are no

 security risks."

  

 "You are carrying stun-pistols. They must be checked at the door. No weapons are

 allowed within the asteroid." An empty drawer extended itself from the wall on their left.

  

 "Of course," Etienne said, quickly removing his gun from its holster. Fortier and Helena

 exchanged worried glances, but reluctantly followed the Duke's lead.

  

 When they had put their guns in the proffered drawer, which then withdrew back into the

 wall, the voice spoke to them again. "Now that we are no longer broadcasting on an

 unsecured channel, you must state your previous name and the nature of your business."

  

 "I'm sorry," Etienne said firmly. "I can only divulge that information to Dr. Loxner face to

 face."

  

 "The doctor sees no one these days."

  

 "He will see me," Etienne insisted. "I'm not here to seek a favor this time, but to return

 one. I have information vital to his continued safety. Certain security organizations know

 about his current activities. If he doesn't see me, I won't answer for the consequences."

  

 Another pause from the voice, the longest yet. Finally, in measured tones, it said, "You

 may enter."

  

 A door opened to their right and they found themselves walking down a long corridor

 carved from the naked asteroidal rock. The air was breathable but oddly stale, as though

 it had been sealed in a crypt away from any life. Their footsteps made dead echoes

 against the sterile walls. The silence here went beyond that of a tranquil retreat; it had a

 leaden, oppressive quality that bespoke moldering corpses. The overall feeling was not

 of someone's vacation home, but of a long unused mausoleum.

  

 There were cameras all along the way to monitor their progress, and closed doors at

 intervals shutting them out of rooms that looked interesting. The dim lighting came from

 fluorescent panels on the ceiling. The light panels, the doors, and the cameras were the

 only indications of humanity in the lifeless hallway.

  

 Etienne tried opening one of the doors along the way, but it was locked against his

 efforts. "Don't try to go where you're not invited," the voice warned them sternly. "You'll

 be told which rooms you may enter."

  

 "Sorry," the Duke said. "I was just looking for the lavatory. "

  

 "Third door on the left," the voice said coldly. "From now on please make your wishes

 clear. You may not survive a second impropriety."

  

 "Thank you." Etienne went to the indicated door and used the facilities provided because

 he didn't want to appear a liar. Not yet.

  

 After the short interruption, he and his companions continued down the dead corridor until

 a door on their right slid open and they were instructed to enter the room beyond. They

 found themselves in a chamber, somewhat larger than the anteroom, with several badly

 upholstered armchairs scattered about the slate floor. The walls were a sterile white,

 bare of decoration. Little compromise had been made to human comforts; the room was

 hardly more hospitable than the anteroom they'd come through. It reminded Etienne of

 nothing so much as a poorly furnished doctor's waiting room.

  

 "Please be seated," the voice said. The trio sat and waited.

  

 A large triscreen lowered itself from one corner and lit up to present the

 three-dimensional image of Dr. Loxner. He was somewhat older than Etienne

 remembered him, a touch more gray in the beard and hair, a few more lines on the thin,

 wrinkled face, but it was definitely the same person. He still wore that identifying

 necklace about his neck.

  

 "What is the important news you have for me?" he asked, looking at Etienne.

  

 "I must see you in person."

  

 The image smiled. "That's impossible." "I only deal with men, not their images."

  

 "In this case, tovarishch, I'm afraid you'll have to. My image is all that exists of me

 anymore. The corporeal form you knew as my body has long since rotted away. Only my

 mind survives."

  

 Etienne d'Alembert wrinkled his brow. "I'm afraid I don't understand."

  

 "Of course you don't. Few people ever would. A brilliant colleague, the late Dr. Immanuel

 Rustin, and I developed the procedures for scanning a brain and recreating its memory

 patterns in electronic form. The patterns of memories and synaptical connections is what

 makes up a person's mind. The memory pattern-the mind-can then be transferred and

 imposed on any other synaptical device, like a computer."

  

 Etienne's eyes widened as the importance of what the doctor had said became clear to

 him. "You're talking about a form of immortality," he said in hushed tones.

  

 "Thank you," the image said, smiling. "I always thought of it in those terms. It's nice to

 have it recognized by others. "

  

 "But this could be the biggest development since the discovery of subspace," Helena

 interrupted. "Why are you hiding it?"

  

 "I published a few tentative reports discussing general principles. They were greeted with

 raging apathy. Not even vehement denials, mind you; I would have welcomed that. A

 good, hot controversy always sparks the greatest advances in medicine. But my

 colleagues weren't even that interested. I decided not to bother with them any further. I

 had what I needed; let them flounder about on their own."

  

 "You mean you've got the secret people have been seeking since the days of cavemen,

 and you've only applied it to yourself?" Fortier asked unbelievingly.

  

 "Oh, there was one other about twenty years ago. She appreciated what I could do. She

 had me build her an entire new body, physically perfect, superhumanly strong, and her

 mind was transferred into that. But she was a very special case indeed, a unique

 individual."

  

 "Where's the body you created for yourself?" Etienne asked. "Why can't I meet that?"

  

 "Oh, you do think small, don't you?" the image of Dr. Loxner laughed. "Why should I

 confine my mind to a single, limited body when I can expand it to suit my whim? My

 friend thought the same way you do. I tried to tell her a computer would give her greater

 scope, but she said she already had a computer and she wanted a body for maneu-

  

 verability. Personally, I think it was simple vanity, but who am I to judge her?"

  

 "Who was this woman?" Helena asked.

  

 Dr. Loxner ignored her question. "Instead of building myself a humanoid body, I built

 myself an entire world. My mind rests in a computer that runs everything around you. In a

 very real sense, I am this asteroid. I control the power, the lights, all the functions you've

 witnessed. So you see, you are talking to me face to face. I am everywhere you look.

 You are within me. I am all around you, holding you, controlling your environment. You

 can't escape me."

  

 The image chuckled playfully. "Why else do you think I allowed you entrance so easily?

 Do you think I was really fooled by your excuses and lies? Do you think I wasn't told that

 people were asking questions about me back on Durward? Do you think I don't recognize

 Helena von Wilmenhorst? Because I'm not distracted by the needs of a physical body I

 have more time to consider the facts, not less. Because my mental patterns are part of a

 computer network, I think faster, not slower. I am immortal, I can't die. I don't fear puny

 creatures like you."

  

 "I see," said Duke Etienne calmly, rubbing his right thumb. "Then perhaps you won't mind

 if we take the information you've given us and return to Durward."

  

 "I said I didn't fear you, rovarishch. I never said I was stupid. No, the three of you will

 never return to repeat what I've told you today. I control all access here, and I refuse to

 let you leave."

  

 To emphasize the point, the door to this waiting room slammed shut with a loud bang.

 Etienne refused to be upset. He didn't have to try the door to know it would be locked. "I

 see, doctor. Do you intend to keep us prisoners here in this single room?"

  

 "It might be interesting to watch you starve to death. I do have faster means at my

 disposal, however, if that proves too slow."

  

 It was Duke Etienne's turn to smile. "I'm afraid you're a little too late for that, doctor. You

 see, you're not the only one among us who's a mixture of man and machine."

  

 "What do you mean?" For the first time, there was an expression of doubt on the image's

 face.

  

 In answer, the Duke held up his right hand. "I lost my real hand in an altercation some

 years ago, and I replaced it with a better one. You know about prosthetics; I'm sure you

 can appreciate the workmanship that went into this. The thumb is a radio transmitter. Our

 entire conversation has been beamed back to my ship. The three of us didn't come

 alone; I had some friends hiding in the hold. I've just sent the signal to come in, so they

 should be joining us shortly. "

  

 Dr. Loxner's image froze momentarily. From his sensors scattered about the asteroid, he

 learned quickly that Duke Etienne was telling the truth. Out of the ship's tiny hold

 swarmed a small army of Circus people led by Rick d'Alembert, the leader of the

 wrestlers, and Luise deForrest. They had been cramped in their narrow confines for sev-

  

 eral hours, and were eager for action. All were clad in heavy body armor; all were ready

 to face any menace the asteroid could offer. They did not come down the passenger

 tube from the ship, fearing it might be booby-trapped. Instead, they came out the

 emergency hatch and used power tools to work their way to the asteroid's interior,

 through auxiliary entrances used by the workmen who originally hollowed out the space

 rock.

  

 "You'll pay for this," the image said coldly, and disappeared from the triscreen.

  

 Fortier's sensitive nostrils caught the faint wisp of an unpleasantly sharp odor. "Hold your

 breath!" he yelled as warning, and pulled out his tunic to hold over his face as further

 protection against the poisonous gas seeping into the room.

  

 Etienne d'Alembert turned and pointed his right forefinger at the locked door. From the

 fingertip came a beam of blaster fire, searing in its intensity. It burned through the locking

 mechanism of the door in a matter of seconds, and the trio lost no time escaping to the

 bare rock hallway beyond.

  

 But there seemed to be no safety here, either. A full-fledged storm was raging through

 the corridor, a high piercing whistle accompanied by buffeting winds that blew them

 around. "What's happening?" Helena yelled, trying to make herself heard over the sound

 of the winds.

  

 The Duke raced back toward the anteroom, and the others followed quickly. His voice

 sounded very far away as he said, "Loxner's letting all the air out of here. We have to get

 back to the ship before we die."

  

 They raced to the anteroom at the end of the corridor, only to find the outside door

 sealed shut. The air was getting very thin now, and each breath was a fresh stab in the

 chest. There was never quite enough air to suck in, and it all wanted to go out much too

 fast.

  

 "Stand back," the Duke said. "I'm going to blow that door-and if Loxner disconnected the

 passenger tube, there'll be vacuum beyond it. We can survive in vacuum for a very brief

 period of time. The airlock of our ship is perhaps a dozen meters away, and there's

 almost no gravity outside on the surface. As soon as you're out there, make a jump for

 the airlock. Bon chance!"

  

 The Duke pushed them back a short distance from the doorway, unscrewed the middle

 finger of his right hand, and hurled it with all his strength at the sealed door. The hatch

 blew open with a shattering explosion, shaking the ground beneath them and filling the

 ever-thinning air with a thick cloud of dust and debris.

  

 The trio in the hallway did not hesitate. The escaping air pulled the dust out into space,

 and they ran after it into the crater that served as the asteroid's landing field. The artifi-

  

 cial gravity ended as they passed the threshold; in desperation they leaped toward the

 open airlock of their ship.

  

 Etienne d'Alembert had said they could survive in vacuum, but he hadn't said that it would

 be pleasant. Almost immediately there was a pounding in Helena's ears and her eyes felt

 as though they were going to bulge beyond their sockets. Her upper lip felt wet and

 sticky as blood began to drip from her nose and bubble as it hit the vacuum. There was a

 shock of cold on her skin as her sweat evaporated into space.

  

 As she sailed toward the ship she could tell she'd miscalculated her leap. She would hit

 the hull just below the bottom of the airlock and probably bounce back down to the

 ground. She tried to readjust her course, but there was nothing to push against; all she

 did was exert herself and use up more of her lungs' precious oxygen supply.

  

 She cushioned her impact against the ship with her forearms and tried to grab the

 smooth surface so she wouldn't simply bounce directly back into space; that would mean

 death within a few minutes. She managed to let the hull absorb most of her momentum,

 but could not gain a complete grip. She slid slowly down the side of the ship toward the

 crater's floor.

  

 She landed with a bump and tried hard to scramble to her feet. It was difficult to see

 now; everything seemed filtered through a red haze that she realized was blood, which

 had now begun bubbling through her tear ducts as well. Her eyeballs felt unbearably dry,

 and she kept blinking to moisten them; the liquid evaporated the instant she opened her

 eyelids again.

  

 Her chest was burning with intense pain. She'd been unable to get a deep breath before

 running out into the vacuum, and of course there was nothing here to breathe. What air

 she'd had in her lungs was rapidly turning to carbon dioxide, but she knew if she exhaled

 it there'd be nothing else to take in again.

  

 Her strength failed her and she fell to the ground again. Reality was becoming a painful

 red haze, cold outside and burning inside at one and the same time. She lay miserable on

 the rough ground, waiting for death to claim her and frustrated at the way her life was

 ending.

  

 Then she felt a pair of strong hands grasping her under her arms and lifting her up.

 Through weakly fluttering eyelids she could make out the form of Captain Fortier, looking

 at least as horrible as she felt. Blood was bubbling out of his eyes, ears, nose, and

 mouth, and he, too, was blinking rapidly to keep his eyeballs moist. After lifting her

 upright, he gathered his strength and pushed her upward toward the airlock hatch once

 more. Helena floated up with agonizing slowness, her lungs threatening to burst with pain

 at any second.

  

 As she reached the airlock level, Etienne d'Alembert reached out and grabbed her,

 pulling her into the chamber and holding her tight to preserve her body warmth. A

 moment later they were joined by Captain Fortier, who palmed the closing switch the

 instant he was past the threshold.

  

 The outer hatch slid quickly shut and air began to pump rapidly into the crowded chamber

 with the most wonderful hissing sound Helena had ever heard in her life. She let out the

 very painful breath she'd been holding, gasping and gulping at the still-thin air in a

 desperate attempt to recharge her body after its horrible ordeal. Her companions were

 reacting the same way, and for a while the only activity in the crowded airlock was

 shivering and gasping for breath.

  

 Helena's spasms of shivering brought her body floating into contact with Fortier, and the

 two young people clung to one another. As the shock of their exposure began to subside,

 they became more aware of their sensations, but they did not stop holding each other.

 They looked deeply into each other's blood-smeared faces, reading the other's soul and

 matching it to their own. Suddenly, realizing how ludicrous they looked, Helena began

 laughing. Fortier looked startled for a moment, then was caught up by the sound's

 infectiousness. Soon both young people were hugging each other tightly and overcome

 by a bout of hysterical laughter.

  

 Etienne d'Alembert witnessed this bizarre behavior with an experienced eye. A wise,

 kindly smile warmed his face, but he made no comment. None was really needed.

  

 A couple of hours later, when they were thoroughly recovered and cleaned up from their

 ordeal, the trio donned spacesuits and returned to the asteroid. The battle, if such it

 could be called, had long since been over. This asteroid had not been built for all-out

 defense, and the onslaught of armored d'Alemberts had quite overwhelmed it. The only

 injury on the invading side was when one of the wrestlers accidentally tripped over a

 piece of debris and knocked into another armored figure, breaking the second man's

 arm. Beyond that, the armor protected the d'Alembert forces from anything Loxner could

 throw at them.

  

 Loxner himself had not fared so well. As the attackers breached one line of defense after

 another and approached the central computer where his mentality was stored, the

 former surgeon became desperate. He could not die in the conventional sense, but he

 had a great fear of being captured and interrogated by SOTE experts. As the armored

 invaders broke into the room, Dr. Loxner activated a special program, erasing all

 memory from his computer. A moment later, there was no trace of the man who claimed

 to have cheated death.

  

 Although all official records vanished with the mind of Dr. Loxner, there was some

 physical evidence left behind. Several of the rooms within the asteriod turned out to be

 laboratories and workrooms where the doctor could continue manufacturing robots. His

 computer mind manipulated remote sensors, working with more precision than a human

 being ever could.

  

 The main assembly room showed signs of recent activity. There were many pictures of

 Elsa Helmund and Herman Stanck in various poses. Some of the pictures were taken at

 recent events. These were clearly the images Loxner had used to construct duplicates of

 the late Police Commissioner and Sector Marshal. Fortier was particularly excited at this

 discovery.

  

 "Some of the evidence I discovered in your father's computer," he told Helena when they

 returned to their ship, "indicated that he and Stanck had been working in the conspiracy

 for many years, so Stanck should have been a robot all that time. The evidence here is

 that both the Stanck and Helmund robots were built within the last few months. As far as

 I'm concerned, that's enough to throw the previous data into doubt. I don't know why, but

 it looks now as though someone went to great lengths to plant evidence framing your

 father."

  

 "But it's all too late," Helena said weakly, shaking her head sadly from side to side.

  

 "I never meant him any harm. I was just doing my job, trying to defend the Empire."

 Fortier held Helena's shoulders tightly and looked directly into her eyes. "Please," he

 whispered. "It's very important to me that you believe that.

  

 "I ... I do." Helena's voice was barely audible. She lowered her head and buried her face

 against his chest. "It's just so unfair, so ... so. . . ."

  

 Then the sobbing became uncontrollable, and Captain Paul Fortier stood holding and

 comforting her for the next hour and beyond.
 Chapter 13

Escape Ship

  

 Tanya Boros was left weak and depressed by the sudden turnabout in her condition. It

 seemed that one moment she'd been in total command of the situation and the next she

 was a prisoner of the despised SOTE agents. Her soul was numb from the chill.

  

 On top of that, she knew she was doomed. She'd been captured before as part of her

 father's treasonous plot and, because she'd played only a minor role in it, had merely

 been exiled to Gastonia. Her involvement this time was far more severe, and she faced

 only one possible sentence: death. Even if the Empress was uncharacteristically dis-

  

 posed to be merciful, the Service of the Empire would not forget Boros's role in the death

 of so many agents. Barring a major miracle, Boros knew her life was over.

  

 She sat limply in a chair in the control room as the three agents crowded around her to

 begin their interrogation. "If you cooperate," Periwinkle told her, "we're prepared to be

 kinder to you than you would have been to us.

  

 "What's the point?" Boros muttered. "I'm dead anyway. Why should I help you?"

  

 "You may not have a choice," Periwinkle replied. "We could always use nitrobarb to drag

 the information out of you."

  

 "If I don't have a choice, what does it matter? Go ahead, use the nitrobarb."

  

 The SOTE agents looked at one another. They really wanted to avoid that if at all

 possible. If Boros died as a result of the drug, they'd only have the one session of

 questioning her. She knew enough about the conspiracy to be worth more alive than

 dead.

  

 "What if we promised you'll be allowed to live in exchange for the information you've

 got?" Pias asked. Boros gave a bitter laugh. "You're just field agents. You can't promise

 anything of the sort."

  

 Jules leaned over and held her head so she looked straight into his eyes. "We can

 promise you a lot of pain and certain death if you don't cooperate. We may be able to

 save you if you do. Which is your choice: pain and death, or a chance at life'?"

  

 Boros took a deep breath and let it out slowly._ "It doesn't matter how much clemency

 I'd get. You have no idea how thoroughly we infiltrate the Empire. As soon as it's known I

 talked, I'm as good as dead. They'd kill me as an example to others. No matter how

 much protection you gave me, they'd find some way to get to me."

  

 "We wouldn't be so helpless if you gave us facts to work with," Yvette pointed out. " A

 few names, some places, and we're in business. You saw how thoroughly we crushed

 your father's organization once we had several leads to work with. If you give us

 something definite, we can root them out before they get to you."

  

 Boros closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair to think. She rubbed at her temples

 with both hands, trying to clear her thoughts. "Oh hell, what's the use of anything?" she

 sighed. "What'd she ever do for me, anyway, but stick me out on this godforsaken battle

 station with only robots for company?"

  

 "She?" Yvette said gently. "You mean Lady AT' "Who else? She runs the whole damn

 show." "What about C? Where does he fit in?"

  

 Boros laughed. "There is no C. She did that just to confuse you. She told me she runs the

 whole thing herself, and just made it look like there was someone else to complicate

 things." .

  

 The SOTE agents glanced quickly at each other. If that were true, it would be a major

 revelation. "Who is Lady AT' Yvette continued.

  

 "I don't know," Boros said with a shake of her head. "She doesn't take people into her

 confidence."

  

 "What are her plans?" Yvette persisted.

  

 "I don't know those either in any detail. She said she was waging a war on SOTE to get

 rid of the peskier elements. This operation was part of that, but I failed her.

  

 Boros began to sniffle. "She said she was going to restore the proper order of things,

 that I was going to have a position worthy of my heritage. And then she sent me here, of

 all places. At least there were other people on Gastonia!"

  

 Before Yvette could ask another question the subcom receiver came to life. A life-sized

 three-dimensional image of Lady A's head and shoulders appeared in the triscreen.

 "Time for your daily report, my d. . . . Oh, I see you have company."

  

 Pias and Yvette backed quickly out of camera range, hoping their adversary wouldn't get

 a good look at their faces. She'd already seen Jules's face at very close quarters, so he

 was left to deal with her. "Good day, my lady," he said casually. "I trust you're not too

 happy to see me here."

  

 "I am neither happy nor sad," Lady A replied calmly. "I am, however, disappointed. I

 expected better things of you, Tanya."

  

 "She also told us there was no C," Jules said, just to see how the woman would react.

  

 Lady A did not disappoint him. Her eyes lit up and she glared at Boros. "For that, you will

 die!" Then her face softened again. "Of course, you're all going to die. Each of the

 battlestations has a self-destruct device which can be activated from headquarters. It'll

 just be a few minutes while the commands are relayed. For your failure, Tanya, you must

 do the honorable thing and be destroyed with your station." The triscreen faded to gray

 as Lady A abruptly ended her transmission.

  

 Boros sat in a stupor while the SOTE team was thinking furiously. "That small ferry ship

 nestled in the hull," Jules said, grabbing Boros by the shoulders. "How do we get to it?"

  

 "It's only a one-seater," the woman said despondently. "We'll be extra friendly," Jules

 said, "Quick, we haven't much time.

  

 The thought of that little ship reminded Boros she'd stashed a blaster there in case of

 emergency. If she could get to it, she might still have a chance to save herself.

  

 Jumping up quickly from her chair, she bounded out to the central hollow area which was

 in freefall and launched herself toward the spacecraft dock. The trio from SOTS followed

 quickly after her, not wanting to be left behind.

  

 Boros reached the hatch first. Pulling herself inside, she made a quick grab for the

 blaster hidden near the doorway, pulled it out, and whipped it around to aim at her three

 pursuers. She fired quickly but her shot went wild, sizzling the empty air.

  

 The SOTE agents instinctively grabbed at the girders for cover, and that diversion gave

 Boros just the time she needed. Closing the hatch door behind her, she went to the little

 ship's control room to escape from the battle station.

  

 Jules pounded a girder with frustration. "Damn! There's no other transportation away

 from here. Even if we got into spacesuits and left the station, we couldn't get far enough

 in just a few minutes to escape the flying debris. And if we did escape it, we wouldn't

 have enough air to last until Vonnie sends the Navy out here."

  

 "Back to the bridge, then," Yvette said. "Maybe we can find the bomb and dismantle it.

 One of us should call Vonnie, too, before we explode, to tell her what we learned. "

  

 They returned quickly to the central control room, even as the battle station shook with

 the departure of Boros's ferry. On a large screen they could watch the little craft's

 progress as it pulled away from the battle station and began its flight for freedom.

  

 They could not waste time just watching that, though. By unspoken agreement, it was

 Jules who went to the subcom set to place the final call to his wife. Yvette and Pias

 began frantically dismantling the control panels, looking for anything that might be

 interpreted as a bomb, even though they knew it was a hopeless cause.

  

 A sudden flare on the exterior screen caught the corner of Pias's eye. He glanced up,

 froze for an instant, and stopped his frantic searching. "Look," he said quietly to his

 companions.

  

 Where the little ferry ship had been was now just a bright light and an expanding cloud of

 gas and debris. The three agents stared at the screen uncomprehendingly for a moment,

 until understanding suddenly dawned in Jules's eyes. "The bomb was in the ship," he said

 in hushed tones. "Lady A knew how good we are at surviving, so she put the bomb in the

 one possible escape vehicle and chased us into it. She ordered Boros to stay here,

 where she'd be safe, thinking we'd try to save our own lives."

  

 "It very nearly worked," Pias said nervously. "Why didn't Boros go along with it?"

  

 "She probably didn't know about the plan," Yvette said. "She told us Lady A never

 revealed anything she didn't have to know. Lady A was probably afraid we might torture

 Boros and get the information out of her if she knew, so she didn't tell her."

  

 Jules nodded. "She was hoping Boros would blindly obey her order to stay and die on

 the battle station-or perhaps she thought we'd selfishly leave Boros back here to die

 while we escaped ourselves. She didn't count on Boros taking independent action."

  

 They watched the screen silently for a few more seconds until the cloud of wreckage had

 dissipated enough to vanish against the background of space. Then, more relaxed, Jules

 finished placing the subcom call to Vonnie, asking that she send a ship out to pick them

 up.

  

 Chapter 14

 Conversation with a Ghost

  

 Etienne d'Alembert returned to Earth with Helena and Captain Fortier. While the captain

 traveled on to Luna Base to make his personal report to Naval Intelligence, Helena

 requested and was granted a personal audience with Empress Stanley Eleven. She

 admitted being very nervous at the prospect of facing Edna under these circumstances,

 so Duke Etienne agreed to serve as her escort.

  

 The meeting took place in the same private conference chamber at the Moscow Imperial

 Palace where Duke Mosi Burr'uk had informed the Empress of the evidence against

 Zander von Wilmenhorst. Helena sat nervously, fixing her hair, checking her makeup,

 making sure her clothes were straight-and at the same time wondering what she could

 possibly say to the woman who'd had her father executed.

  

 Edna Stanley entered the room without ceremony and sat down at the head of the large

 oval table facing her two visitors. A long, awkward pause followed. Both women were

 about the same age, and had been raised together almost as sisters. Now the actions

 and suspicions of the past few weeks had turned them into strangers.

  

 Not knowing what to say immediately to Helena, Edna turned to Duke Etienne. "I

 suppose I should have you reprimanded for failing to turn Helena in when she first came

 to you." Her slight smile and warm tone of voice took the sting out of her words.

  

 "I obeyed Your Majesty precisely," Etienne replied good-naturedly. "I took her

 immediately into my custody and I refused to take orders from her to go on a mission to

 clear her father's name. There were, however, no orders to return her to Earth

 immediately, and I have a standing assignment to investigate anything I view as

 suspicious. I merely used my instincts and discretion, as a good agent should.

  

 "I hope I can always trust to your instincts and discretion," Edna nodded. That done, she

 turned to the heavy task of facing Helena. "I suppose you feel I owe you an apology for

 everything that's happened."

  

 "The Empress need apologize for nothing," Helena said by rote, dry tears burning the

 corners of her eyes. "I just wish you'd had a little more faith in us."

  

 "When you're personally responsible for hundreds of planets and trillions of lives, faith

 becomes a very expensive commodity," Edna sighed. "I had no choice but to do

 everything exactly as I did it.

  

 "You could have called us, talked to us, let us explain," Helena said bitterly, looking away

 from her ruler's face. "You could have granted us that courtesy, at least."

  

 "After your escape, I took a tremendous risk," Edna said slowly. "I had your father

 brought back to Earth and I had a private conversation with him. It was he who told me

 what I had to do."

  

 Helena caught her breath, then let it out slowly. "Yes, that sounds like him. He would

 recommend his own execution if he thought it was the only way to restore your faith in

 the Service as a whole. He was completely dedicated to you-and you had to kill him to

 find that out!" She could restrain herself no further, and burst into tears right in front of

 the Empress of the Empire of Earth.

  

 Edna rose and walked slowly around the table to her friend's side. She placed her hands

 gently on Helena's shoulders and hugged her friend to her. "Helena, dear, I'm sorry I

 forced you to undergo this torment. Knowing what this would do to you tore my heart in

 two. I know there's not a single thing I can do to make up for the pain, the sorrow, the

 agony I've caused you-but I hope I can at least do something that allows you to forgive

 me. Look."

  

 Helena lifted her head and gazed in the direction Edna indicated. Standing in the doorway

 was Zander von Wilmenhorst, smiling-the warm, knowing expression Helena had always

 loved.

  

 The shock of seeing her father again was almost greater than the shock of learning he

 was dead. Helena sat stupefied for a moment, then sprang to her feet as though

 propelled by a rocket. She raced to her father and threw her arms around his tall body.

 She wept once more, but this time the tears were of pure joy.

  

 Von Wilmenhorst held his daughter lovingly, stroking her hair and allowing the emotional

 release to flow out of her system. When her body was no longer racked with sobbing, he

 pulled away slightly and gazed into her eyes. "Well, how do I look? Not bad for an old

 ghost, eh?"

  

 From across the room, Etienne d'Alembert was flashing a smile that could have lit up a

 city. "You're the most welcome specter I've ever seen, mon amt."

  

 "Oh, Father," Helena gasped between her tears. "I thought I'd never see you again."

  

 The Head sighed and nodded. "I know, that was the most regrettable part of this

 charade. That's why I sent you off to the Circus when-I realized what I might need to do.

 '

  

 "Sent me?" Helena pulled back, startled. "You did no such thing. You didn't want me to

 go anywhere." "Saying 'no' is still the best way to manipulate children." Von Wilmenhorst

 smiled kindly. "And I made sure to mention the Circus prominently so they'd be in the

 front of your mind. I knew Etienne would take good care of you."

  

 But what was the point of all this?" Helena asked. "Why couldn't you have told us about

 it?"

  

 Von Wilmenhorst cleared his throat. "It became clear to me as I listened to Fortier's

 story that the conspiracy had embarked on a massive and subtle campaign to destroy

 the Service's effectiveness, first with the attempt to lure Jules and Yvette into the open,

 then with the attack on my credibility. I received confirmation of this yesterday, by the

 way, when Jules and Yvette called in their report. The conspiracy had indeed declared

 war on SOTE according to Tanya Boros, now deceased. They also reported that, again

 according to Boros, there is no person named C, that the entire conspiracy is

 masterminded by our Lady A. I'm not sure whether to believe that or not; I'll tuck the

 datum away for further speculation.

  

 "At any rate, I knew something had to be done to counter their attack. We'd already sent

 the d'Alembert Bavol teams against the doubles, but we had to clear my name quickly or

 the entire Service would be suspect.

  

 "I suggested to Edna that she announce I'd been executed for treason because I wanted

 to throw the conspiracy off balance. That would have been the one thing they wanted

 most, although they probably weren't expecting it. By giving them their fondest wish, I

 was hoping to draw them out and make them do something foolish to tip their hand. But it

 had to be done in absolute secrecy; I couldn't even let you two know the truth."

  

 "Why not?" Helena said. "You can certainly trust Etienne, and you'd have spared me a lot

 of grief."

  

 "But that, unfortunately, was part of the plan," Edna spoke from her end of the table.

 "You see, although I did have faith in you, I still didn't have proof. I had to see how you'd

 react. If you really were part of the conspiracy, knowing of your father's death would

 have spurred you to retaliate because you'd think the game was up. Instead, you kept

 working to clear him and passed the test with flying colors."

  

 "Unfortunately, you were the only one to take the bait," the Head smiled ruefully. "Even

 after hearing I was dead, the conspiracy made no further threatening moves. That

 disappointed me in one respect, because I hoped they'd over commit themselves in

 some way; but in another respect it's a hopeful sign. It shows they're afraid of acting too

 quickly on something that hasn't been a hundred percent confirmed. We must have hurt

 them more severely than we thought on Coronation Day, and they're being very

 conservative about what they do. For this reason, I don't intend to keep up the pretense

 of being dead any longer. We've already proved we won't be fooled by their discrediting

 tactics, and it would be too difficult to maintain the facade of my death, especially with as

 sophisticated a network as they have."

  

 He escorted his daughter to a chair and sat down beside her, facing Etienne and Edna.

 "Well, that's my story. I understand you've had a few adventures of your own."

  

 Etienne and Helena between them filled him in on their own findings. Grand Duke Zander

 went pale as he heard of his daughter's harrowing escape from the asteroid, but that

 expression was replaced by a cold smile as they told him what they'd learned from Dr.

 Loxner. "At last we're beginning to make some progress," he said.

  

 "What do you mean?" Edna asked him.

  

 "Twenty years ago, Etienne saw Dr. Loxner on Durward in company with an old woman

 who was wearing one of those identifying medallions around her neck. He says Loxner

 seemed afraid of her, as though she were a superior. Later, Dr. Loxner said he

 performed his mind transferral process on one other person, a woman, placing her mind

 within a perfect robot body. I don't think I need dwell too much on who that robot might

 have become." "Lady A!" Edna exclaimed.

  

 Duke Etienne took up the thread from there. "We have no direct proof, but I think we can

 make an educated guess about the woman's identity: Aimee Amorat, the Beast of

 Durward. "

  

 The two women were silent for a moment, allowing the thought to percolate in their

 minds. "Of course," Helena said slowly. "We never even thought of her before in

 connection with Lady A. We knew she'd have to be somewhere in her nineties by now if

 she was still alive, while Lady A looked to be a woman in her prime. But if her mind was

 transferred into a robot body, she could be any age at all."

  

 "She was probably the old woman you saw twenty years ago," Edna said to Etienne.

 "She'd have been in her seventies then, probably desperate knowing she might die soon,

 ready to try anything to preserve her life."

  

 "Loxner said she was vain," the Duke agreed. "That fits with everything we know about

 the Beast."

  

 "Vain, cold, cunning, devious, utterly treacherous," the Head said. "We've managed, at

 last, to pin a name on our adversary, but I'm still not sure I'm happy about it. She's a

 woman whose beauty and intelligence snared an Emperor and beguiled an entire court.

 When that fell apart, she fled and managed to hide from the most thorough manhunt

 SOTE ever staged. She stayed hidden for over seventy years, and nearly managed to

 see her son installed on the throne. She's a skilled actress, and her ambition knows no

 bounds. She's one of the most formidable enemies we could face."

  

 "It just occurred to me," Helena said. "On Gastonia, when she allowed Jules and Yvonne

 to inject her with nitrobarb, it might have been the real stuff. She'd have no reason to be

 afraid of it; it'll have no effect on her. Stunners will have no effect on her. In fact, there's

 damned little of anything she'd be afraid of except a bomb or a blaster. "

  

 "This would also explain the preferential treatment she gave Tanya Boros-her

 granddaughter. And it makes what finally happened all the more ironic." He explained to

 Helena and Etienne the circumstances of Boros's death in the booby-trapped escape

 ship.

  

 "Now that we know who we're dealing with," von Wilmenhorst continued, "we can finally

 start making some plans of our own. The Service has a long background file on Aim6e

 Amorat; while it's considerably out of date, it may give us a few things to work on. We

 can at least draw up a preliminary psychological profile to understand our enemy a little

 better." He lapsed into thought as he considered all the actions that needed to be taken.

  

 "What intrigues me," Etienne said, "is Loxner's mind transferral process. He developed a

 form of immortality, and now it's gone with him."

  

 "Not necessarily," Edna replied. "That's one of the nice things about science-if a process

 is important enough it can always be recreated. I can authorize some Imperial research

 grants and steer cyberneticists toward those published papers Loxner mentioned. If

 there's anything there at all, the technique will be rediscovered."

  

 She paused to consider some of the implications. "if this works, it will revolutionize the

 entire Galaxy." Etienne d'Alembert, meanwhile, cleared his throat and went to sit beside

 the Head. He whispered in von Wilmenhorst's ear for several minutes, and the Grand

 Duke's face broke into a wide grin. He looked back at his daughter. "Duke Etienne tells

 me you've developed an attachment for our Captain Fortier," he said.

  

 Helena blushed hotly. "Well, he saved my life," she admitted.

  

 The Head's smile broadened. "Such bravery shouldn't go unrewarded," he said. "I've

 been trying to develop closer ties with Naval Intelligence for several months. It occurs to

 me that what we need is a senior officer from each branch to act as official liaison with

 the other. Would you mind the additional workload if you and Captain Fortier were

 assigned to coordinate our mutual activities?"

  

 Helena's squeal of joy indicated she would not mind that in the least.