PLANET OF TREACHERY

 

Volume seven of The classic Family d'Alembert series

 

By E.E. 'Doc' Smith

With Stephen Goldin

 

 

Chapter 1

Encounters on a Pirate World

 

As the man left the camouflaged doorway of the elevator tube from the pirate base and

headed out into the jungle, he got the distinct impression he was being watched. The

prickling of the small hairs on the back of his neck, the suspicious absence of movement,

the too-quiet stillness all around him-all these were danger signals to his wary mind. He'd

gone through too many perilous situations before, had put his life on the line too many

times, to ignore his instinctive feeling that something was not quite as it should be.

 

He stood stock still for a moment in a seemingly casual pose-but his hand was no more

than a few centimeters from the hilt of the stun-gun tucked into his belt. Turning his head

slowly he surveyed the landscape before him, alert for a myriad of possible dangers.

 

The pirate base was organized along very utilitarian lines. All the important

areas-headquarters and strategy, supply depots, communications, living quarters for the

chief pirate officials-were buried below more than a hundred meters of solid rock, secure

from all but the heaviest weapons the Empire could throw at them. Closer to the surface

were the barracks for the "enlisted men," the pirate hordes, representing nearly a

thousand worlds. At this base alone there were more than twenty-two thousand people,

men and women-alumni from the toughest planetary and Imperial prisons, graduates all

from the school of survival-at-any-cost. Ringing the base in a series of underground silos

were the ships the pirates used for their expeditions-more than five hundred of various

sizes, ranging from small, swift scouts to large cruisers brimming over with destructive

capacity.

 

No expense had been spared to set up the base-and this was only one of several that

this particular pirate knew about. He also knew that the business of looting spaceships

was nowhere near lucrative enough to support an operation of this scope and magnitude.

This all had to be a part of something bigger and more diabolical-but despite his best

efforts he'd been unable so far to pierce that mystery.

 

As he stood now on the surface and looked around, there was little indication of human

activity on this planet. The elevator tube from which he'd emerged was disguised to look

like a wide tree set at the edge of a clearing. Around it were many other real trees-tall,

with dark brown trunks and broad, serrated leaves of a strange color closer to blue than

green. Strung through the tops of the trees were the red slither vines that all the pirates

learned to avoid within a short while of coming to this world; the vines exuded a strong

serum that could even soak through clothing, and left a person's skin red and burning for

a week or better. Local bird life was abundant, flying between the trees in their brilliant

plumage and raising their voices in raucous cries. Insects and small animals added their

own buzzes, clicks and whistles to the jungle cacophony, all contributing to a picture of

serene normality within this untamed environment.

 

Nothing moved that could not be expected to; there were no sounds that had not been

there on a dozen previous occasions. There was nothing that could be a cause for alarm

or suspicion. But nevertheless, something felt wrong.

 

The man stood staring into the jungle for more than a minute before finally moving on. He

was a firm believer in the power of protective paranoia; just because he couldn't see

something didn't mean it wasn't there. He had been living with the constant threat of

discovery and death for two years now, and his intuition had been honed to a fine edge.

He moved slowly, checking each step and looking constantly around, his ears alert for

any slight sounds that might tip him off. His hand did not stray from his side where the

stunner rested easily on his hip. The feeling of being watched increased as he walked.

There were eyes out there studying his every movement, of that fact he grew more and

more certain. But for what purpose? So far, the unseen observer had made no

threatening moves-but the very fact that he was in hiding meant that his intentions would

not stand up to open examination. That was not good.

 

As the pirate walked, his suspicions grew. The whole purpose of his coming up here had

seemed funny from the start. "Check out the power feed at generating station number

four," his boss had told him. "It's acting up at odd moments, almost as if someone was

playing with it."

 

The request had seemed strange at the time. "I don't know much about the generators,"

he'd answered. "Wouldn't it be better to send someone from the work crews?"

 

"I think it may be one of them doing it," the boss had responded. Then, leaning forward,

he added quietly, "We may have an infiltrator on the base, someone trying to sabotage

our work. I trust you; I'd prefer that you have a look and let me know what you find out.

Go the topside route so no one sees you."

 

There'd been no way to argue with that and so, reluctantly, he'd taken the assignment. It

made sense in a way, though he had to smile despite himself at the irony of the situation.

But now, as he walked carefully through the jungle toward the generating station, the

conversation took on a much more sinister aspect. What if the boss suspected him of

being the infiltrator? What if he had been sent up here to be executed as a traitor to the

organization? Alone and isolated up here, he made a perfect target. Could this be a

setup?

 

But what would be the point of that? If they suspected him of betraying them they could

just as easily have killed him down in the base, without bothering to go through with this

ambush. The boss held life and death over his subordinates and had killed people in the

past for less serious offenses. Why the charade this time?

 

None of it made much sense, and the man could not arrive at any answers. All he had

was the unshakeable conviction that he was indeed being followed and watched.

 

On impulse. he stopped dead. As his ears strained to pick up some indication of his

follower, a chill went up his spine.

 

There it was, at the very limits of his hearing: the faint swish of another body moving

through the jungle in time to his own rhythm, coming to a stop just a second too late to

avoid detection. It was impossible to tell in which direction the sound had been; it was

gone again almost the same instant he heard it. But he had heard it, there was no doubt

at all in his mind now.

 

That question, at least, was settled-but it brought a new one to mind: What to do now?

Should he try to go back to the elevator tube, back down to the base and the safety of

his fellow pirates? If his fears about his boss were correct, though, he would only be

running straight into the arms of the enemy. Should he continue on his intended path to

generating station four and hope to find some sanctuary there? But the unseen watcher

had been waiting for him to come up; perhaps there was a trap waiting there ahead of

him, with the watcher following to make sure he didn't deviate.

 

The options forward and back seemed pretty dismal, and simply standing where he was

left him too exposed. The only recourse was to break from the path completely, head off

sideways in an unexpected direction and hope to catch his follower by surprise.

 

Being right-handed, his first impulse was to break to the right. Instead, to avoid

predictability, he ran to the left at about a seventy-degree angle to his original path. He

made no attempt to maintain an unsuspecting air; stopping in the middle of his journey

would have already alerted his enemy of his suspicions. Instead, he threw caution to the

winds and ran through the jungle, pushing aside the brush that whipped at his face and

ripped at his clothes.

 

The noise that he made as he crashed through the forest was loud in his own ears, as

were his deep gasps for breath; nevertheless, the sounds behind him were unmistakable

now-the sounds of someone, or some group of people, running after him before he could

escape completely.

 

The barrel of his stun-gun beat against the man's leg with every stride he took, but he did

not dare slow down yet to unholster it, he had a momentary advantage of speed and sur-

 

prise, and he wanted to keep it. For all he knew, there could be five people behind him,

all armed with blasters. He had to find himself a secure position before trying to pick off

his pursuers.

 

Farther off to his left he heard the sound of rushing water, and a plan began to form in

his mind. A small river ran nearby, cascading over a cliff and down to this level in a

beautiful waterfall. The man recalled an outcropping of rock over which the water

tumbled; he could hide in the grotto behind the waterfall and pick off his pursuer as he

approached. While far from perfect, the plan offered more hope than merely running

blindly through the jungle-and any hope was something to grasp at.

 

He altered course slightly, and soon he could see the cliffs rising into view over the

treetops. With an extra burst of speed he dashed out across the small clearing between

the trees and the cliffs, knowing full well he was dreadfully exposed for several seconds.

He could feel the spray from the cascading water hit his face with sudden coolness-and

then abruptly he was behind it, running around the side of the falls and into the small

grotto in back.

 

He finally stopped, bending over and gasping desperately for breath. There was a stitch

in his left side that felt like a knife stabbing through his ribs; he made an effort to will the

muscles there to relax, and after a few moments the pain eased enough to let him move

around some more. He drew his stunner from his belt and settled into a defensive

posture, awaiting further developments.

 

In the next few quiet seconds he willed his mind back to the clear coldness it would need

for the fight to follow. Actually, he was rather satisfied with the position in which he found

himself; it was far more favorable than anything he might have dared hope for. The

waterfall in front of him would at least partially obscure him from the view of any

pursuers, while giving him a clear shot at anyone coming into the clearing. Even if his

enemy stayed in the shelter of the trees at the edge of the jungle, he would be at the

extreme limits of blaster range. The cliff behind him was solid; as a veteran of many

fights, he knew well the advantage of a firm wall at his back. He crouched in the

semi-darkness of his hollow, getting progressively damper, and waited.

 

The stillness descended once more on the scene. Whoever was following him must have

realized the situation and halted just out of sight, still within the jungle, waiting at the edge

of the clearing for him to make his move. The game of patience began again.

 

This was eerie, the man thought. He knew someone was after him, but he had not had a

single glimpse of his pursuer. It was a silent and deadly game of hide-and-seek-without

rules and without free bases.

 

Tiring at last of the silent battle of wills, the pirate called out, "I know you're there. Why

don't you show yourself? Or don't you have the guts for a showdown?"

 

A moment went by while the other considered his words. Then a voice came out of the

jungle-a voice that sounded vaguely familiar, yet the pirate couldn't quite place it. "An

interesting choice of words," the unseen watcher said. "In a way, you're right. By your

definition, I don't have the guts. But I think it's time for a showdown, after alI." And with

that, he stepped forward.

 

Behind the waterfall, the pirate's jaw dropped. The man coming toward him was a

duplicate of himself, complete in every detail. The walk, the clothing, the

mannerisms-everything was identical to himself. He now knew why the voice sounded

familiar-it was his own voice, one he certainly had not expected to hear from someone

else.

 

At first he was too amazed to do anything but stare at the figure approaching him.

Belatedly he realized that the other him was armed with a blaster, and was walking

within easy range. Whatever the purpose of this apparition, it could mean him no good at

all; he mustn't let it get closer. "That's far enough," he said, taking careful aim with his

stunner.

 

The other man kept coming forward. There was a smile on his face.

 

Perspiration was beading on the pirate's forehead. He pulled the trigger of his stun-gun

and heard the satisfying hum of its paralyzing beam.

 

The other man's smile broadened. He kept on walking. The pirate knew he could not

have missed; he was too good a shot. Perhaps the setting had been faulty. He checked

his weapon quickly and saw that it had been set on four. His lookalike should have

collapsed on the ground and been unconscious for two hours at that setting; instead, he

was still walking relentlessly toward the waterfall.

 

There was little time left for playing games; the pirate could not spend the effort

wondering what had gone wrong. He set the dial of his stunner all the way up to

ten-instantly lethal and fired again.

 

And again, nothing happened.

 

The double advanced to within fifteen meters of the waterfall and stopped there. He

seemed strangely reluctant to come much closer, but he had little need to; his weapon

would be quite effective within that range.

 

The blaster spoke in a deceptively quiet hum, but there was nothing deceptive about the

charge of dazzling energy that streaked from the barrel. There was a whiff of ozone

where the beam passed through air, and when it hit the waterfall it caused a cloud of

scalding steam to boil upward. Some, but not all, of the beam's energy was dissipated in

the water; the rest passed through and struck the pirate along the right side of the torso.

The man fell to the ground and lay still.

 

The double watched the body lying motionless on the ground behind the waterfall for a

few moments, then fired his blaster again. This time he directed its beam upward, at the

projecting lip of the overhang down which the water cascaded. He kept the beam at a

steady level until the rock, unable to withstand the continual energy bombardment, began

to crumble away. A minor rockslide ensued, burying the original pirate beneath a pile of

rubble. The body was totally hidden from view.

 

Observing his handiwork and deeming it good, the double silently tucked the blaster into

its holster, turned, and walked confidently back to the pirate base.

 

"On the whole," Lady A said to her admiral, "you've done a most creditable job."

 

Admiral Shen Tzu smiled and touched the fingertips of both hands together in front of him

to form an arch over his chest. "You'll pardon me I'm sure, milady, if I choose not to fully

savor that remark. I've learned that compliments beginning with `on the whole' usually

have a substantial `but' attached."

 

The two conspirators were alone in Admiral Shen's office, buried deep within the complex

of the pirate base, seated opposite one another across the admiral's desk. Even a

casual observer could have told that the two people were neither friends nor equals.

Lady A had neither, nor did she wish any.

 

Lady A was not a large woman, of only medium height and build, but she nonetheless

dominated any group she was in. She had a classically beautiful body behind which lay a

soul of ice. She projected an air of calculated superiority, and coldly cultivated the

impression that she was distinct from those who worked for her. She was dressed

meticulously in a black cat suit with a tight-fitting hood and boots, and a tool belt around

her waist. Tucked into the belt was a coiled whip, and none of her subordinates could be

quite sure whether it was intended to be functional or merely ornamental.

 

As she looked across the desktop at her underling, she reviewed his qualifications in her

mind as though he were merely another entry in a computer file. She was constantly

revising and updating her opinions of her subordinates; she refused to tolerate

inefficiency, and the moment anyone ceased to do his job the way she wanted it done,

she got rid of him and found someone else who could.

 

Admiral Shen, though, was still high on her list of favored employees. He was a big,

beefy man with multiple chins and a large belly. He had a long thin mustache that

drooped well down past his chins, and braided forelocks on either side of his face. His

hands were fat, his fingers like sausages, and he had a deep, booming laugh. He

laughed often, this big man, but Lady A did not hold that against him. She judged a man

by his performance, not his outward characteristics; she had read Shen's soul, and found

him more than satisfactory.

 

One of Shen's weaknesses was a love of affectation. He was currently playing the role

of a Mongol warlord, dressed in a long black coat trimmed with sable over baggy black

velvet pants whose cuffs were tucked into embroidered red leather boots. He had a

pointed leather cap, trimmed with white fur, on his head, and a scimitar-whose handle

was really a disguised blaster-at his belt. An enormous gold medallion covered most of

his chest like a shield.

 

The decor of his office matched his presumed persona. The walls and ceiling were

draped with a red brocade fabric to resemble a Mongol tent. His desk was carved ebony

with brass fittings. Oriental rugs covered the floor, and a profusion of silk pillows was

scattered about the room. Shen and Lady A were seated on two of the office's

camel-saddle chairs, which were more striking than comfortable.

 

Shen's extravagances might become tedious once Lady A's regime was firmly

established over the Empire-but until then, his military expertise made him indispensable

to her cause.

 

Perhaps Shen realized that as well. He was more flippant with her than she usually

allowed subordinates to become. She decided to let his remark remain at face value. Let

him have his little jests for now, she thought.

 

"The `but' in this case is tolerable-so long as you learn your lesson from it and see that

the mistake isn't repeated. One of your ships, the Lucinda. was captured last week when

it tried an abortive raid on a Navy decoy ship."

 

Shen shrugged his massive shoulders. "We're in a war. We have to expect casualties

from time to time. A ship or two is hardly a catastrophe-unlike what happened to Ling."

Shen shivered slightly. "That could have really been fatal if you'd actually implemented

Operation Annihilate. We'd have been counting on those ships, and we'd have been

slaughtered."

 

The incident to which he alluded had occurred several months earlier. Operation

Annihilate had been ready to go into action, awaiting only the word from Lady A-or the

mysterious C-to unleash it. The conspiracy's forces had gathered in the depths of

interstellar space, waiting at several strategic points to descend upon Earth and capture

the heart of the Empire in one bold stroke. The cue was to be the assassination of

Emperor Stanley Ten and Crown Princess Edna during the Princess's wedding at

Bloodstar Hall. With the two best claimants to the Throne dead, the Imperial Navy would

be demoralized-and the subsequent bickering over succession would have allowed a

strong outside force-namely the ships of the conspiracy to sweep in and assume

command.

 

That, at least, had been the theory. In actuality, the assassinations that were to have

triggered the plan never came about, thanks to the superhuman efforts of some agents

of the Service of the Empire. Their last-second interference saved the Emperor's and

Princess's lives, causing Lady A to postpone Operation Annihilate.

 

But, at that same time, her conspiracy suffered another blow when the Imperial Navy

raided one of the pirates' space bases run by Captain Ling, destroying or capturing all

the ships waiting there to take part in the attack. Even Lady A, who claimed to know so

much of the government's inner workings, had been surprised by the raid, leaving her to

wonder whether her own organization's security had been breached; but when more time

passed and none of the other bases were hit, she and C came to the conclusion that this

one raid had been a fluke. Either the Imperial Navy or the Service of the Empire must

have learned of the base through outside sources and acted against it on an impromptu

basis. C had said he'd be checking out the details further. But for now, Ling was dead

and any mistakes he'd made to reveal his location to the Empire had died with him.

 

Lady A was never one to dwell on past failures, except to make them object lessons for

the future. "The loss of the Lucinda doesn't trouble me greatly," she said. "As you

yourself pointed out, a few losses are inevitable. But aboard the Lucinda, the Navy found

the body of Karla Jost-a woman who was exiled to Gastonia twelve years ago and who,

as far as the Empire's official files went, was still there. Up until that time, the

enforcement arms of the Empire had not suspected our Gastonian operations; now they

do. Karla Jost was supposed to remain here with you. What was she doing on the

Lucinda?"

 

If the implied charges of malfeasance bothered Shen, he did not let his feelings show.

"She was going to be one of my wing commanders," he explained coolly. "Yet she hadn't

been aboard a ship, except to come here from Gastonia, in a dozen years. I don't know

about you, milady, but I don't want to put someone in a position of command until they've

proven they can handle it. Jost was on a shakedown cruise, to regain her space legs and

get the feel of command. It was only bad luck that her ship was the one the Navy

snatched."

 

"Bad luck is the excuse of incompetent planners."

 

Shen smiled disarmingly. Not even Lady A could force him to lose his composure. "Quite

so, but we've all had our share of it, eh? What about your government contacts? Couldn't

they have hushed the matter before it reached SOTE's ears?"

 

Lady A frowned. "Unfortunately, by the time it came through official channels there was

little we could do. There is a point of no return, after which an attempted coverup only

makes matters worse rather than better. Covering up would have meant too many

corpses, too many transferred personnel, too many falsified records-and if anyone had

caught wind of that, they might realize how well organized our forces are. We decided it

best to leave SOTE with the impression we're more fallible, to lull them into a false sense

of security. In fact, we're working on a plan to turn the error to our advantage."

 

She stopped abruptly. "But that's not your concern. Whether we can profit by our

mistake is immaterial; the fact remains that the mistake should never have been made in

the first place." She did not have to say more. Her words implied strongly enough that

Shen was to avoid such occurrences in the future. If he was not smart enough to read

the implication, she would soon have a new admiral.

 

"I agree," Shen said amiably. "But here we run into a problem of morale. That first false

alarm dashed everyone's hopes; sitting here on a jungle world, parsecs away from

civilization, with nothing to do all day but polish the ships' noses is having a bad

psychological effect on my people. We can't make the mistake of giving them too much

time to think; who knows what dangers that might lead to? I must give them something to

do. I'd rather send them out on their occasional piratical jaunts and risk losing a ship

every so often than have them sit around and grumble and grow discontented. That's no

way to win a war, milady."

 

Lady A nodded slowly. However insubordinate Shen might be, he knew his job. "I am not

asking you to abandon your raids; you're your own master there. But I do ask that you

pick your targets more carefully. And for your sake-for all our sakes-don't use so many

ex-criminals. If they're caught, they can give away the scope of our endeavor."

 

Shen smiled. "You need both cons and piracy to make a conspiracy."

 

There was a pause of two full beats before Lady A said, "I will not dignify that with a

response."

 

"I didn't think you would. Would you care for an inspection tour instead?" - Lady A

agreed, and followed her admiral around the base, giving it a thorough examination.

Shen's comment about bad luck happening to all of them had hit her harder than she

would ever have admitted. Although the Service of the Empire had stumbled across the

conspiracy very late in the game-too late, she was sure, to stop it effectively-they had

scored a few lucky successes lately against her... too many. They had not yet even

scratched the frost on the tip of the iceberg, but they were becoming annoying. The

Service and its agents were like an insect bite, an itch she couldn't scratch-hardly fatal,

but they did distract her and take some of her concentration away from more important

matters.

 

She dismissed the thought from her mind. Plans were afoot to deal with SOTE, to use

the very cleverness of its own agents against itself. All would be taken care of in good

time, and Operation Annihilate would soon be in action once more. She did not bother

telling Shen any of this, however; it was never a good policy to let an inferior know any

more than he needed to operate efficiently.

 

Chapter 2

Luna Base

 

Luna Base was the central command headquarters of the Imperial Navy. At the very

formation of the Empire of Earth, the decision had been made that the control center of

the Empire's armed forces should be located far from any inhabited regions; that way, in

case of attack, the populace around the base could not be held hostage for the base

itself. The population of Earth at that time had been close to four and a half billion, and

there simply were no suitable land areas left that were far enough from inhabited

regions. Locating the base underwater would have posed additional complications-chiefly

in terms of communications and readiness of ships for instant takeoff-and so that

possibility was discarded as well. Since Earth was to be the seat of imperial government,

military headquarters had to be nearby-leaving as the only two alternatives either the

moon or a station in free space.

 

Each alternative had both its champions and its detractors. The lunar enthusiasts argued

that a space station would be far too exposed to enemy attack; on the moon, they could

be firmly entrenched and unassailable. The lunar soil, too, would provide the necessary

materials for building both the base and the fleet; any orbiting station would have to

import its materials from the moon anyway.

 

The proponents of an orbital headquarters countered with arguments about how much

added mobility a space station would give the fleet. They spoke of more efficient

communications between Earth and an orbiting station than between Earth and a lunar

base. Their most telling point was that battleships built at an orbital base could be much

larger than those built on the moon, because they need not be designed to cope with

gravitational conditions. Ships based on the moon would have to take off and land

against a gravity of approximately one-sixth gee; if they were made too large, they'd be

unwieldy. Ships constructed in space, with no need to land on the surface of a planet,

faced no such restrictions.

 

The debate between the two factions raged for more than three years. The argument

grew so heated that even now, centuries after the original squabble, there were families

who still did not speak to one another because their ancestors had been on opposite

sides of the dispute. Finally, in July of 2228, Emperor Stanley One settled the matter by

taking the best of both proposals. The strategical headquarters and command center

would be on the moon, buried deep below the surface and impregnable to all but the

most concentrated thermonuclear attack. The orbiting station would be constructed for

the superdreadnaught class of spaceship, anything too large to land on the moon itself;

there would be comparatively few of those, but they would be the elite of the fleet.

 

Over the centuries, the balance swung slowly in favor of Luna Base. ORB, as the space

station came to be known, was used today primarily as a shipyard and drydock,

secondarily as a center for research and testing of space weapons and armor. Most

other naval command functions were absorbed by the ever-growing lunar facility.

 

Luna Base was a huge, sprawling complex, far outstripping its modest beginnings. There

were seldom less than five hundred ships sitting on its landing field at any given time,

ranging in size from scouts to cruisers. It was located in the Mare Moscoviense on the

lunar far side, with the body of the moon itself shielding the base's delicate

communications net from the harsh volume of Earth's own radio broadcast signals.

Enormous receivers, some kilometers across, listened to the universe, keeping track of

all interstellar traffic, military and civilian, throughout the Empire. This deluge of incoming

information was interpreted by the Navy's own computer system and eventually stored in

the Empire's Primary Computer Complex.

 

Luna Base served other functions as well. The Naval Training Academy was located

there, off to one side of the Mare. The Imperial Marines' special low-grav training center

was off in a small crater just to the west of the base. There, too, were housed the

thousands of personnel permanently billeted at the base, plus the hundreds more who

were there awaiting reassignment to new ships.

 

Despite the best of intentions, human population had built up around the base anyway. It

was inevitable; a project this big, employing this many people, needed administrators to

keep it running and services to fulfill its needs. All told, nearly a hundred thousand people

could be found at Luna Base at any given instant.

 

At this particular moment, four very special people were wandering down the labyrinthine

corridors of Level 147. They were dressed in the bright orange coveralls of maintenance

crew, but the security strips across the front of their chests gave them instant access to

most rooms within the complex. The corridors were swarming with people, as they

always were at this level, but no one paid particular attention to the four short, solidly,

built figures.

 

The four had planned it that way, and had worn orange uniforms specifically so they

wouldn't be noticed. They made their livings by remaining anonymous, it could be tragic if

their faces were widely known.

 

They talked among themselves at a normal conversational level; amid the din of the

random conversations around them, they stood little chance of being overheard.

 

"I think we're lost," said one of the women to the man walking beside her. "Are you sure

you got the instructions right'?"

 

"Absolutely, and we've followed them to the letter," replied the man, who was her

husband. "We left elevator tube number four at Level 147, kept the red wall on our right

and followed the blue line on the floor. The room has got to be around here somewhere."

The man made a motion to touch the brim of his hat, and then realized he wasn't wearing

it at the moment.

 

"Well, something isn't right," his wife said. "We're looking for Meeting Room 147-16, and

the room numbers are going down, not up. There's number ten, and beyond it is nine. We

must be going in the wrong direction. I think we should stop someone and ask."

 

"Some superagents we'd be then," laughed the second man from behind them. "This was

supposed to be a secret meeting, remember?"

 

"Well, it won't be any kind of a meeting if we don't get there," said the fourth member of

the group, another woman. "If we don't do something soon, we'll only end up more lost

than we are."

 

"Don't worry," the first man said lightly. "I've been dropping breadcrumbs behind us. If the

birds don't eat them-ah, there it is, on the other side! Meeting Room 147-16. Once again

I've delivered you to the promised land."

 

"I think that stint as a preacher addled his brains," his wife confided to the other two.

"Now he thinks he's Moses."

 

The group cut across the busy traffic moving steadily past them and made it to the other

side of the corridor, where the sign on the door indicated that was the room they were

seeking. The first man reached for the button that would admit them, then hesitated. "Are

you sure he wants to see Vonnie and me, too?" he asked. "We've never met him and. . ."

 

"He asked for you both specifically. You're not exactly what anyone would call a security

risk."

 

Shrugging his shoulders, the first man pressed the button and the door to Meeting Room

147-16 slid silently open in front of them. Together, the four orange-clad figures entered

the chamber.

 

It was hard for them to see anything at first. The room itself was dimly lit except for the

far wall, which appeared to be a picture window overlooking the sunlit surface of Mare

Moscoviense. The view was actually a triscreen projection; six hundred meters below the

lunar surface, all they could have seen through a real window would be solid rock. The

window effect did, however, help prevent claustrophobia in people who had to work

constantly underground.

 

As their eyes became accustomed to the lighting, they could make out more details of

the room. A dim blue light radiated down from the ceiling tiles; the three walls other than

the one with the "window" contained computer projection screens; any information stored

in the Navy's computers could be instantly called up and displayed on those screens-or, if

it was preferred, conferees within the room could sketch their own illustrations via

computer controls. In the center of the room was an enormous table, around which were

clustered more than a score of chairs. The top surface was again an enormous, com-

 

puter projection screen, on which could be simulated entire space battles and war

games.

 

Aside from themselves, the only other person in the room was a man standing at the far

end of the long table. He wore a conservative gray jumpsuit, which normally would have

allowed him to blend nicely into any crowd; here at Luna Base, however, where uniforms

were the rule, the man stood out as quite an exception. He was close to fifty and totally

bald-but even in the semi-darkness of this room, the fire of intelligence could be seen

burning brightly behind his eyes.

 

This man was Zander von Wilmenhorst, and he was one of perhaps half a dozen people

whose slightest actions could alter the destiny of the Empire of Earth. He was most

widely known as the Grand Duke of Sector Four, that ten-degree sliver of an imaginary

sphere surrounding Earth and extending toward infinity. Von Wilmenhorst was the

hereditary ruler of all worlds lying within the boundaries of his sector, subject only to the

Emperor himself-and since his sector was one of the most thoroughly explored and

populated, he held a considerable amount of influence in galactic affairs.

 

But there were thirty-five other grand dukes, all his equal in rank; what set him

particularly apart from the rest was the fact that he was also the Head of the Service of

the Empire, that vast Imperial intelligence network that kept the Empire free of corruption

and discontent. Being the supreme leader of SOTS-though that fact was known to a

comparative handful, and most of those within the organization itself-was his primary

responsibility; it made him a key advisor to the Emperor on matters of policy and internal

security.

 

The Service of the Empire was not a spying agency, though many of its agents did work

under cover; nor was it a police agency, though the targets of its attention were usually

lawbreakers. The purpose of SOTE was, quite simply, to assure the safety of the

Empire against all threats. It was loyal exclusively to whoever occupied the Throne, and

did its utmost to ensure the stability of that person's reign. The Service was charged with

the task of weeding out treason wherever it might occur and whatever the cost. The

agents of SOTE were the most able, most conscientious people in the Galaxy, and their

record of success spoke for itself.

 

Von Wilmenhorst, in turn, eyed the four people who had entered the room. Of all the

loyal, talented people at his disposal, these four were his top choices. Together, they

made two of the best undercover teams he'd ever seen; time and again they produced

results that took his breath away.

 

The way they had multiplied was most gratifying indeed. He had started out with two: the

brother-sister team of Jules and Yvette d'Alembert, circus performers from the

high-gravity world of DesPlaines. In addition to bodies in prime physical condition, they

also possessed minds that could act with lightning speed. They'd been his top agents.

Jules d'Alembert was the only person currently alive who'd made a perfect score on the

thousand-point test of ability given to all Service personnel; Yvette was barely a point

behind at 999. Together they had helped smash a ring of traitors that had been building

for sixty years, and had gone on to crack numerous other difficult cases as well.

 

Only a few months ago both had gotten married-Jules to his childhood sweetheart

Yvonne Roumenier, and Yvette to a young nobleman, Pias Bavol, from the high-gravity

Gypsy planet of Newforest. Both Pias and Vonnie were now in the Service as well,

working with their spouses. Instead of one super team, the Head now had two-a

double-barreled threat against the enemies of the Empire.

 

"Come in, please," the Head said. "You're right on time. I trust the directions I gave you

were adequate."

 

Pias Bavol was a bit shy at meeting the Head for the first time-but as always, he covered

his shyness with a lighthearted exterior. "The directions were perfect, sir. Despite the

doubts of unnamed others who thought we were lost, I guided us safely here."

 

The Head laughed. "I know the feeling well. I got lost myself on my first few visits. Luna

Base grew in a very irregular manner, and nothing is ever quite where you'd expect it to

be. Sorry to have you meet me here rather than in Headquarters on Earth, but I've been

involved for the past few weeks in security briefings with the Navy brass, and I couldn't

get away." He looked pointedly at Jules and Yvette. "Aren't you two going to introduce

me to your spouses?"

 

Brother and sister blushed. They had both conferred with the Head on so many

occasions that it was difficult to remember that Vonnie and Pias had never met him. It

was Yvette who finally took the initiative. "Vonnie d'Alembert, Pias Bavol, this is our boss,

Grand Duke Zander von Wilmenhorst."

 

The two introductees were suitably impressed, but the Head put them quickly at ease.

"Yvonne, I'd like to say that you're more beautiful and charming than Jules described, but

I'm afraid that would be impossible; you'll have to settle for as beautiful and charming.

And as for you, Pias," the Head went on, turning to Yvette's husband and looking him

straight in the eyes, "I could never adequately thank you for helping save my daughter's

life on Sanctuary."

 

Pias shrugged. "It was something I just sort of fell into," he explained with

uncharacteristic modesty.

 

"And lucky for all of us that you did," the Head added. "Amen," Yvette smiled at her

husband.

 

The Head waved an arm at the chairs around the central table. "Please be seated and

make yourselves comfortable. If you'd like some refreshment, you'll find that each place

at the table has its own order box. Just punch in your request and it will arrive in a few

seconds, compliments of the Imperial Navy."

 

Jules and Yvette were mad for orange juice, and each ordered a large glass. Yvonne

preferred hot tea and a small buttered roll. Pias ordered a glass of acolya, a wine

peculiar to his own homeworld of Newforest-and was pleasantly surprised to find that the

Navy kept it in stock. Their orders arrived up a small tube within the table in less than a

minute-a tribute to the Navy's efficiency.

 

When everyone was comfortably settled, the Head grew more serious. "As I'm sure you

assumed, I didn't ask you here merely for a pleasant afternoon's conversation. There's

work to do."

 

"Isn't there always?" Jules said.

 

The Head merely nodded and continued his explanation. "As Pias and Yvette found out at

the time of Princess Edna's wedding, there seems to be a link between the conspiracy

masterminded by C and Lady A, and at least some of the space piracy that is plaguing

the Empire. We took care of Captain Ling and his crew, but we discovered that they

were building a navy of their own. It wasn't until just a couple of months ago that I

learned the Navy had been conducting its own investigation for almost three years and

had not thought to tell us about it." Von Wilmenhorst shook his head. "Sometimes I think

we may be our own worst enemies, with interservice rivalries and the lack of

communication between branches of government. If they'd bothered to let us know. . ."

 

He paused and placed his hands face down on the tabletop. "Well, that's a problem for

me, not for you. What matters now is that we've opened the channels of communication

between us again and some surprising developments are coming out. The most

important of them-and the reason for my calling you in-is a person named Karla Jost."

 

He punched a couple of buttons on his console and a face appeared on the screen in the

center of the table. It was a middle-aged woman with mouse-brown hair, a

two-centimeter long scar over her left eyebrow and a square, firmly set jaw. There was

a steely look about her eyes that marked her unquestionably as a dangerous woman. "I'd

hate to meet her in a dark alley," Vonnie commented.

 

"You won't have to-she's dead," the Head told them. "But the puzzle she represents is far

more of a threat than she ever was."

 

The Head leaned back in his chair once more and began a recitation of facts. "Karla Jost

was in and out of trouble ever since she was a teenager. She had a prison record that

read like a short novel. About fourteen years ago she threw in her lot with a pirate gang,

and rapidly rose to a position of leadership within it. It was her gang that made the

famous raid on Taratuil-do you remember anything about that?"

 

The four agents had to search their memories for a moment. Thirteen years ago, the

planet Taratuil was at the outermost limits of the Empire. It was a newly settled world,

with a population of only about five thousand people. Seeing it as a weak target, a pirate

gang swooped down on it and; with their superior arms, forced the locals to submit to

their rule. The Navy, when it learned what had happened, moved into actionbut with the

pirates holding the citizens hostage, the government had to move carefully. Finally, after

almost a month, a combined action by the Navy, SOTE and the Imperial Marines freed

the planet and captured the pirate gang.

 

When he saw that his agents recalled the, incident, the Head continued on. "The top two

leaders of that gang were executed after a brief trial, as were eleven of the gang

members who were convicted of committing atrocities. The remainder of the

pirates-Karla Jost included-were exiled to Gastonia for life. The matter should have

ended there-but it didn't.

 

"Just a few days ago, the Navy put out a decoy ship to trap a pirate group it had been

chasing for some time. The pirates took the bait and, after quite a fight, the Navy

captured the outlaw ship. More than half the pirates were killed in the battle-and when

the Navy went about the routine task of identifying the bodies, they found that one of the

women was Karla Jost.

 

"Quite naturally, they contacted us to tell us that they'd found an escapee, and that we

no longer had to worry about her. The problem was that we hadn't been worried about

her, all our records indicated that Karla Jost had never left Gastonia."

 

The implication was not lost on any of the agents, but it was left to Vonnie to voice the

obvious. "Then someone spirited Jost off the planet without our knowledge, and she

ended up with the pirates."

 

As the Head nodded, Yvette continued her sister-in-law's line of reasoning. "And where

there's one escapee, there might be more. I presume you suspect an organized attempt

to get the better talent off Gastonia and into a treasonous conspiracy."

 

"It sounds like a plan I've heard somewhere before," Jules drawled with no little irony.

 

Indeed it was. Lady A's conspiracy had already attempted a similar maneuver, hiding

some of the Galaxy's most notorious criminals on a world called Sanctuary. Jules and

Yvette had broken up that plot-and, in the process, they learned of Lady A's existence

for the first time. It was also on Sanctuary that they. met and teamed up with Pias, who

had gone there on a private mission of revenge against one of the criminal refugees.

 

The Head nodded soberly. "It has Lady A's touch, no doubt about it. And as you can well

imagine, we're a lot more concerned with these possible escapees than we were about

ordinary criminals. Each of the exiles on Gastonia was sent there for one specific crime:

treason. We have a planet populated by traitors, every one of whom has some reason

for hating the Empire-and many of whom, like Karla Jost, are dangerous people. If Lady

A and her cohorts are looking for help, they couldn't go to a better spot.

 

"As soon as I discovered that, I sent for you. While you were on your way here, I

developed a preliminary theory. We already know from the raid on Ling's base that the

conspiracy was amassing ships. We can tell from what little wreckage remains of the

munitions plant Jules and Vonnie destroyed on Slag that the conspiracy was

manufacturing weapons at an enormous rate. If what we fear about Gastonia is true, we

now know where the conspiracy is getting some of its manpower."

 

The Head sat up straight in his chair and ran a hand lightly over his smooth-shaven scalp.

"The thing that concerns me the most is that it's all starting to come together. Ships,

weapons, manpower-and in the background, a pair of strategists who seem to know

every move we make, while we know next to nothing about them. It's going to be soon, I

can feel it coming. And in just four months. . ."

 

He didn't have to complete the thought; each of his agents knew exactly what he meant.

In four months, Emperor Stanley Ten would reach his seventieth birthday-and he had

already announced his intention of abdicating at that time in favor of his daughter. Crown

Princess Edna would then assume the title Empress Stanley Eleven, becoming the

supreme ruler of the Empire of Earth and its trillions of inhabitants. Edna Stanley was a

powerful and resourceful woman, a fitting offspring of her noble lineage; but she was only

in her mid-twenties, and lacked the depth of experience she might need to cope with a

crisis of this magnitude. That, apparently, was what the conspirators were counting on,

too.

 

With his point made silently, the Head shifted topics slightly. "We can't afford to sit

around and wait for developments. Jules and Yvonne, I want you to go to Gastonia and

find out what's going wrong. If anything's amiss there it's a particular embarrassment to

us; the Service is supposed to be responsible for the disposition of traitors. If there are

any of our people involved in this conspiracy, I want them weeded out."

 

"No more than we do," Jules said. His jaw was clenched tight; loyalty to the Empire and

to the Service was virtually an inborn trait of the d'Alembert family. The thought of anyone

betraying the organization to which he was so devoted was most repulsive to him, and

the Head almost pitied any turncoats that Jules encountered. Almost.

 

"What about us?" Yvette asked.

 

The Head turned his attention to the Bavol couple. "Yes, you two have a little different

assignment. Originally I'd thought to let you work with Jules and Yvonne, so that the case

might be cracked twice as fast. But something else came up that might put your talents

to better use elsewhere. Some of our people down in Computer Analysis, after

performing their arcane rituals with their machines, came to the conclusion that a joint

operation between SOTE and the Navy to wipe out the pirates might be a good idea.

Piracy has usually been the Navy's territory, and I know that Naval Intelligence has an

ongoing undercover operation; but now that the lint: has been found between the pirates

and this conspiracy, we do have a vested interest in this aspect of the operation. I

proposed a mission to Captain Nacorn of NI, and he's pledged his department's

cooperation. Since the two of you helped us crack Ling's outfit-however accidental it

was-you're the Service's top experts on pirate catching. How do you feel about the

idea?"

 

"We go where the work is," Yvette said pragmatically. "If the pirates are part of Lady A's

plans, it's our job to smash them."

 

"Good"' the Head exclaimed, a dash of gusto in his voice. "I knew you'd feel that way.

This will give us a two-pronged attack on the problem. Jules and Yvonne will work from

the Gastonia end, sealing off that escape route, while Pias and Yvette will go to work on

the pirates. As always, you'll have carte blanche; when agents produce results as

spectacularly as you do, it would be presumptuous-not to mention foolish of me to tell

them how to do their jobs."

 

He took a couple of book reels from his jacket pocket and handed one to each of the

teams. "Here is the background information you'll each need, as well as my number here

at the base should you need to reach me with any questions. I'll trust you to do your

usual superb jobs-within, I hope, four months."

 

He did not have to emphasize the date. The four agents had already dealt with Lady A,

and knew how serious a threat she could pose to a newly crowned empress. They could

also sense the process quickening, the pace of the conspiracy accelerating as time went

on. It was a feeling they did not like-and it promised to get worse before it got better.

 

Chapter 3

The Road to Gastonia

 

Had Jules and Vonnie been less dedicated agents, it would have been a simple matter to

have themselves exiled to Gastonia. The Service's Documentation Department would

have been happy to build for them a record of treasonous activities as long as they

wished. The record would then be fed into the Empire's computer banks, along with the

trial judgment that these two traitors be exiled to Gastonia. Jules and Vonnie would be

imprisoned and, within a week, they would be on their way to the prison world. It would

be an easy, fast and convenient way to reach their destination.

 

Jules had, in fact, used that procedure before on the planet Chandakha when he wanted

to be put in prison to check out the procedures of a criminal mob that was murdering

thousands of people every year. But in that case he had been dealing with a small, local

organization with no way of tapping into SOTE's tiles to see how valid the fraudulent

records were. Lady A's conspiracy was far bigger, spanning perhaps the entire Galaxy,

and was much more organized than the Chandakha gang could have dreamed of

becoming.

 

There was little doubt that C and Lady A had some informational sources from within the

highest levels of SOTE. They knew who the Head was and they were intimately

acquainted with the Service's innermost workings. The Head had been trying to trace

down the leaks within the Service for the past several months, without any success; but

in the meantime, Jules and Vonnie could not completely trust their safety to their own

side.

 

On their last assignment, they had asked SOTE to provide them with some false

documentation to fool members of this conspiracy. They had thought it might take a

week or two for the conspirators to check out the sources and discover they were faked;

instead, it took only a day-and that slip nearly cost the d'Alemberts their lives. They

would not underestimate the opposition again; they'd find a method of getting to Gastonia

on their own, without the aid of SOTE.

 

There was only one way of being sent to Gastonia: commit treason and be sentenced for

it.

 

The situation was a little more complex than that, of course. The very worst traitors were

executed rather than sent into exile. That was the fate that awaited C and Lady A when

they were finally brought to justice. It was only the lesser traitors who were spared

execution and banished to the harsh world of Gastonia.

 

The practice of exiling people to Gastonia rather than killing every convicted traitor began

under the short, unhappy reign of Empress Stanley five, more commonly known as "Mad

Stephanie." Whether she was any madder than some of the other Stanley rulers is a

matter of some dispute; her nickname derived from her fanatical knack for smelling

treason on every breeze and spotting traitors in every crowd. This obsession did have a

basis in fact; when she was thirty-six her younger brother Edmund made a power play

for the Throne, killing her father (then-Emperor Stanley Four) and very nearly killing her.

Only the supreme loyalty of the Navy-primarily in the person of Fleet Admiral

Simms-prevented the revolt's success. After several weeks of turmoil, the rebels

admitted defeat, and Stephanie ascended to the Throne with a vengeance.

 

Prince Edmund and Grand Duke Gaspard of Sector Nineteen, the principal architects of

the revolution, were publicly tortured and executed. Seven hundred and twenty-eight

naval officers were court-martialed and shot. Stephanie combed the entire peerage; any

noble who could not prove a record of unimpeachable loyalty was apt to find himself

facing charges - of treason-and, since Stephanie's will was the ultimate law, a trial was

but an automatic prelude to death.

 

When, after a year, Stephanie showed no signs of abating her purges, all the

Empire-including her closest advisors began to worry. At the rate she was going, there

would soon be none of the nobility left-and she was already beginning to accuse the

more influential commoners as well. To prevent a further bloodbath, the Imperial advisors

finally convinced their empress to banish the lesser offenders to the newly discovered

planet of Gastonia at the outermost limits of Sector Twenty. The death penalty, while still

the official punishment for treason, became reserved only for those who opposed their

sovereign on a grand scale. In Stephanie's eyes, there were still plenty of those to go

around-but thousands of people escaped execution and were "merely" banished for life.

 

As Stephanie's tyrannies grew more obsessive, the plots to depose her became very

real indeed. The Service of the Empire, founded by Stephanie's grandmother Empress

Stanley Three, had its work cut out for it, becoming little more than a terrorist police

squad. Even SOTE could not keep the lid on all the revolutions, however, and

Stephanie-along with most of her family-was finally assassinated in 2.299, six long years

after the start of her bloody reign. Only her youngest son Edward survived, and became

Emperor Stanley Six. To his credit, he pardoned most of the prisoners who had been

unjustly exiled to Gastonia-but he kept the possibility of banishment open for future

cases, and so it had remained down to the present day.

 

Jules and Yvonne thus found themselves having to tread a fine line. They had to commit

treason; ordinary criminals were dealt with on a local level, and usually assigned to

planetary prisons. The treason they committed had to be serious enough to rank them

above the level of the common crook-but not so serious that they would die for it.

 

After a couple of long brainstorming sessions between them, the d'Alemberts decided

that they stood the best chance of being noticed on one of the younger pioneer worlds.

They took the names of Ernst and Florence Brecht. ostensibly raised in a backwoods

community on the very crowded planet Promontory. This identity was carefully selected;

since Promontory was so crowded, and since its backwoods area was so primitive, a

great many people existed without adequate documentation.

 

The fact that the Brechts had no birth certificates, no marriage license-indeed, no

records of any sort-would not be considered unusual.

 

Also, because of its overcrowded condition, Promontory was a focal point of the

Empire's emigration drive. Whenever there were new planets opened, the: Empire

subsidized migration from the crowded worlds to the newer ones. The population of the

Empire kept moving and spreading; theoretically, there was no end in sight.

 

Thus it was that, one afternoon, Ernst and Florence Brecht showed up at the emigration

office in Tor, capital city of Promontory, and volunteered to emigrate to the new planet

Islandia. The recruiting officer was delighted with this young couple, in such fine physical

condition, and did not delve too deeply into their background. He had a quota to fill, and

this couple satisfied all the necessary conditions. Within three days, the Brechts were

aboard a spaceship bound for lslandia.

 

The planet Islandia was so named because more than ninety percent of its surface area

was covered by water. These vast oceans were dotted by thousands of small islands,

many of them still unexplored. The islands were a biologist's paradise, since many

species of animals had evolved separately on each of the islands, making it an ideal

laboratory for testing theories of parallel evolution. In addition, the sea life was rich and

varied; most of the colonists' food and materials came from the oceans.

 

All the inhabited islands so far were located in the equatorial regions, making Islandia a

tropical paradise. Life there was easy and relaxed. At present there were only about

fifteen thousand people on the planet-though as word of its delights spread through the

Empire there would undoubtedly be a large influx of tourists and settlers looking for the

good life.

 

Jules and Yvonne settled right in, and for the first two weeks they were model citizens.

Jules took a job as a dispatcher for a small fleet of fishing boats; Yvonne worked in a

factory that processed lecthit, a native sea plant similar to kelp. They rented a small,

modest apartment and kept very much to themselves. On a new colony like Islandia, that

was all they needed to establish their identities.

 

They spent all their waking time away from their jobs studying the structure of life on

Islandia, analyzing it with their expert eyes and calculating its weak points to a fine

degree.

 

Although the planet's population was spread out over more than twenty islands, the

administration required to serve its fifteen thousand people was minimal and was

concentrated on Bantor, the largest inhabited island. The entire police force for all of

Islandia was a squad of thirty-six officers, only one-third of whom were on duty at any

one time-and of those on duty, only half remained at the central police station while the

rest patrolled around the islands in cruising air cars. The local SOTE office was merely a

formality, with only two agents assigned to it, keeping regular business hours rather than

around-the-clock protection.

 

"It's a lucky thing this planet isn't more valuable," Vonnie commented, shaking her head in

wonderment. "A baby could take it over."

 

"Isn't it nice to know we'll be performing a worthwhile service?" Jules agreed. "They'll be

much more careful after we get finished with them."

 

The first step of their plan was to obtain weapons. The local sporting goods shops

carried a wide assortment of stun-guns and stun-rifles for hunters. The settings on these

weapons available to the general public only went up as high as three--a half hour stun;

with the specialized training in weaponry that the d'Alemberts had received, however, it

was easy enough to modify the guns they bought to deliver a number four stun, sufficient

to knock a victim unconscious for two hours. They had the knowledge, had they wished,

to give their stunners a lethal capacity as well; but they specifically wanted to avoid killing

anyone during their little coup. The d'Alemberts had a great respect for innocent human

life, and didn't want to kill anyone just to achieve their aims. Besides, committing a

murder during their crime could very well lead to execution rather than banishment to

Gastonia. A two-hour stun would serve their purposes well enough.

 

With their weapons properly modified and concealed, the d'Alemberts walked brazenly

into the local SOTE office late one afternoon. The building SOTE rented on Islandia was

small, consisting of a storefront reception area, two separate offices for the agents, and

a locked room at the back where emergency equipment was kept. Jules and Vonnie

looked around and saw, as they'd expected, that they were the only "customers" in the

office.

 

The receptionist-a local employee rather than a SOTS agent-came up to greet them at

the front counter. "Can I help you?" he asked.

 

"Yes," Jules said hesitantly. "We ... that is, my wife and I ... we think we overheard some

people plotting against the Empire. This is the proper place to report that, isn't it?"

 

The man's eyes went wide. In the short time he'd been working here, the only problems

SOTE had had to deal with were immigration forms, visas and routine security checks of

police applicants and nominees for the still-forming local nobility. Nothing as exciting as

treason had ever even been intimated on this sleepy young planet.

 

"It certainly is," he said, unable to keep the quiver of excitement out of his voice. "You

just wait a minute and I'll get someone here to talk to you about it." Returning to his desk,

he buzzed the intercom for both agents, explaining the situation in a few crisp words.

Within seconds, both SOTE agents came out of their offices to greet the young couple.

 

The men introduced themselves and began asking for particulars. Jules and Yvonne

looked nervously to either side. "Are you sure we're alone here?" Vonnie asked. "I'm

afraid these people might kill us if they found out we were talking to SOTE."

 

"We're quite alone, I assure you," the chief agent said in soothing tones.

 

That was all the d'Alemberts had been waiting for. In one simultaneous gesture they

pulled out their concealed stunners and gave the three startled men a two-hour nap.

 

Vonnie clucked sympathetically as she stood over the unconscious bodies. "This'll look

bad on their efficiency reports," she said. "But they'll probably be better agents in the

future because of it."

 

They locked the front door to prevent other people from wandering in, then dragged the

three stunned men into one of the offices and tied them up securely. That accomplished,

they broke into the locked back room and stole all the weapons stored there. This SOTE

station was not as fully stocked as would be expected on a larger world; there were two

suits of battle armor--both of which were too tall to comfortably fit the d'Alemberts'

DesPlainian body shapes-and some hand weapons, including six blasters.. a dozen

stunners and extra power packs for each. There were no high-powers or mobile field

pieces, nor any indication of special Service spacecraft or attack vehicles. SOTE had not

been expecting much trouble on Islandia-which was why the d'Alemberts had chosen it

as their target. There was a subetheric communicator set against one wall; Jules blew it

apart with one of the captured blasters. It simply wouldn't do to let any calls for help go

off-planet before the d'Alemberts were ready for them.

 

With Phase One successfully completed, they drove to the police station and began

Phase Two. The tactics they had used on the SOTE people worked equally well here;

instead of treason, Jules announced that he had overheard some neighbors discussing a

drug smuggling operation.

 

The only difficulty here was that there were six police to be dealt with at the station, as

opposed to three men at SOTE headquarters. The d'Alemberts could only draw three of

them out to hear their story, while the rest were attending their routine chores throughout

the building. The agents had to settle for those three at once, and then spread out

through the station to take care of the others. The operation did not take very long; the

policemen were all natives of worlds with a standard gravitational field of one gee, and

as such they were no match for the stronger, faster DesPlainians. Jules and Yvonne

picked off the officers one by one before their victims even realized anything was wrong.

 

With the station now secure, they used the dispatcher's radio to call in the patrol craft

one at a time on a variety of pretexts. Within five hours, all the on-duty police-plus three

who had been off-duty and came into the station to begin their shifts were in the

d'Alemberts' custody. With scarcely any effort at all, the SOTE agents had immobilized

all the armed forces on this world that could conceivably be directed against them.

 

Swiftly they transported their prisoners from the SOTE building to the police station as

well. The jail cells were a perfect place for their captives, so they could eliminate the

unpleasant bonds on hands and feet. The d'Alemberts said very little as they escorted

their prisoners into cells, but they treated their captives with as much courtesy as the

situation allowed, and never spoke harshly to them. They wanted the people to

remember later that they had been exceedingly polite and nonviolent.

 

While Vonnie stayed behind at the police station-both to keep an eye on their current

prisoners and to catch any more police officers who reported in for work-Jules went out

alone to pay a call on the Duke of Islandia. Duke Phillip had only been appointed ruler of

this world by the Emperor eight months ago, as a reward for his many and valuable

services to the Crown. He had not even begun work on his ducal palace; his official

residence was merely a house slightly larger than normal size, set apart from the main

portion of the city on a parcel of land covering less than two hectares and surrounded by

a simple stone wall. Three bodyguards was the extent of the security force the Duke had

for himself and his family. Jules d'Alembert could have cracked through tougher defenses

blindfolded.

 

It was now midevening, and Jules knew that the Duke and his family would be at home

either reading, working on late reports, watching the trivision, experiencing the sensable,

or preparing for bed. It was a good time to catch them unprepared.

 

Parking his car a short distance from the wall, Jules got a running start and easily vaulted

over the barrier. He sprinted toward the house at a pace that would have made many

athletes envious, but which seemed only moderate to him. He was scarcely even

breathing hard as he made it to the side of the house and began disconnecting the simple

burglar alarm the Duke had installed to protect his home.

 

Jules entered the house through a window he forced open, into a darkened room on the

ground floor. He made his way through the room to the hall door and, stunner in hand,

began his exploration of the rest of the building. The house was not large, and within a

minute he had made his first encounter: the Duke's teenage daughter. The girl received a

taste of Jules's stunner before she even had time to cry out in alarm; she dropped

silently to the floor and Jules continued his prowl through the house.

 

He found people scattered around in ones, twos and threes never in a group so large

that he couldn't handle them quickly and efficiently. Family members, servants and

bodyguards all fell before the buzzing of his stun-gun. Jules finally confronted the Duke

himself in the study, with one final bodyguard. Jules stunned the guard and turned toward

the Duke. The man was obviously frightened for his life, but held firm despite his fears.

"What do you want from me?" Duke Phillip asked.

 

"Your job," Jules said in a matter-of-fact tone. "I've always wanted to be a duke, and I

figure I've got as much right to the title as you do, since neither of us was born to it." In

point of fact, Jules d'Alembert was of a far more noble lineage than the man he faced.

His father, Etienne d'Alembert, was the current duke of DesPlaines, and Jules was sixth

in line to inherit the title after his older brother Robert, Robert's three children, and his

sister Yvette.

 

But it was Ernst Brecht speaking now, not the young lord from DesPlaines. Duke Phillip,

staring down the muzzle of the stun-gun, might have been frightened but he wasn't

cowed. "You'll never get away with it," he said. "The police ... SOTE. . ."

 

"Interesting that you should mention them," Jules smiled. "I already attended to those

details before coming here, tovarishch. They won't give me any trouble."

 

"Do you think the Emperor will sit still for.. ."

 

Jules dismissed that with a wave of his hand. "The Emperor is old and far away. He

won't care what happens on some obscure little colony. What does it matter to him which

of us is duke, just as long as he gets his taxes on time?" He pointed his gun resolutely at

the Duke once more. "Now, please be so kind as to write your abdication letter. I'll

dictate it for you." "And if I refuse?"

 

"Then I'll just have to shoot you and forge it myself. No one but historians will ever have

the chance to verify it, and by then it will be too late."

 

The Duke set his jaw stubbornly. "You'd only kill me after I wrote it, anyway. Why should

I give you the satisfaction?" "Please. I'm not a bloodthirsty man. No one has yet been

permanently injured and if you behave yourself, no one will be. You have my word as a

duke on that." Jules smiled. "Once you sign over the planet to me, I'll have no need to kill

you. I may have to imprison you for a few months until the general populace adjusts to

the idea of my reign, but once that happens you'll be free to go. I have nothing against

you at all-you merely have something I want. Now, write as I say."

 

Duke Phillip looked over this strange man holding him at gunpoint, trying to evaluate him.

Jules had been unfailingly polite, if single-minded. Perhaps he was only a madman; per-

 

haps he would keep his word. In any event, Duke Phillip saw little alternative but to

comply with this man's wishes for now and trust to the future to correct the situation.

Slowly he took a piece of paper from the drawer of his desk and prepared to copy down

what he was told.

 

Jules paced pompously around the room as he dictated the resignation letter. "I, Phillip

Masson, former Duke of the planet Islandia, do from this day forward renounce and

abjure forever any and all claim I may have to ranks and titles bestowed upon me, and to

any lands ceded to me by Imperial statute; and furthermore, I hereby name Ernst Brecht

to be my legal successor to all aforesaid ranks, titles and lands, including the right of

inheritance to all his decedents. There. I think that should cover it well enough. Sign it,

date it and stamp it with the official seal."

 

Jules knew, of course, that the document would be proved illegal on several counts, the

most obvious being that it had been made under duress and was not legally binding. But

more than everything else he had done, this paper would assure his and Vonnie's trial on

charges of treason against the Throne rather than merely planetary charges of assault

and kidnaping. It was strictly illegal for any nobleman to abdicate his authority without

first making written petition to the Throne-and even when permission was granted, it was

totally illegal for the abdicator to name his own successor. The laws of inheritance were

strictly laid out in the Stanley Doctrine; if a noble, for some reason, wished to disinherit

his legitimate heirs, his only recourse was to deed his title back to the Throne and allow

the Emperor to appoint the successor.

 

By violating these basic tenets of Imperial law, Jules was rising above common

criminality-he was thumbing his nose at the Empire, usurping its authority and declaring

himself above it. That was treason, pure and simple-and the Empire was always eager

to prosecute for treason even above any other crimes a criminal might have committed.

In ruling a dominion so large and diverse, even the faintest hints of treason had to be

thoroughly and publicly quashed.

 

When the document was completed, Jules looked it over to make certain it was in order,

then forced Duke Phillip to accompany him to his ground car-leaving behind the body-

 

guards, servants and family. They would come around in a short while, hardly the worse

for wear-and they were scarcely important to the d'Alemberts' plan.

 

Jules drove to the planet's major radio station, where the Duke's authority and Jules's

gun allowed them to interrupt the broadcast to read the resignation letter over the air.

Jules then made a short speech to "his people," filled with platitudes about how

wonderful life would become under his regime. From the radio station, Jules took the

Duke back to the jailhouse, where Yvonne greeted them cheerily and escorted the Duke

to a private cell of his own.

 

Two hours later a ship rose from the Islandia spaceport into the sky. Jules and Yvonne

could see it from the police building, and smiled. The captain of the ship was undoubtedly

concerned about this coup, and wanted to get his ship away from any possible danger

while he still had the chance. He had no way of knowing that the coup consisted of only

two people, and he didn't want his cargo confiscated or his crew detained. Once out in

space, he would broadcast a distress signal that would let the Empire know what had

happened here. The d'Alemberts had waited to stage their coup until there were several

ships in port, so they could be sure that at least one captain would panic and leave to

spread the word.

 

With that accomplished, they settled back to await results. Around them, the world of

Islandia was in a turmoil. This was the most dramatic event in the planet's short history,

and everyone was talking and wondering what would happen next. Most people were

roused to anger-Duke Phillip was very popular on this world-but they were unable to

direct their rage constructively. With the Duke, the police and SOTE all imprisoned, there

were no leaders capable of welding the people into an effective force to fight back-nor

were the citizens' weapons 'any match for the artillery the d'Alemberts had captured from

SOTE and the police. The people stewed and did nothing.

 

For Jules and Yvonne, time dragged by in a slow routine. The police station became their

headquarters, and they did not leave; instead, they had spouses of the police officers

bring food and supplies in to them, to assure that everyone would be fed adequately.

This also served the function of letting the outside world know that all the prisoners were

being well treated; time and again, the visitors to the station would report back that no

one had been hurt, and that everyone was in high spirits despite the awkward

circumstances.

 

The d'Alemberts spent a lot of time talking to their captives, always being polite and even

friendly. Jules ordered in a local tailor and had himself measured for a military uniform of

his own outrageous design. Occasionally, on a whim, he would issue edicts as "Duke

Ernst," passing them outside to the throng of news reporters who had gathered outside

the building, waiting for any tidbit to pass along to their public. Ernst declared his and his

wife's birthdays to be public holidays, abolished taxes, raised the, speed limit for ground

cars, instituted a curfew and, in general, rewrote sections of the local ordinances. He had

no power to enforce anything, and he knew it; he merely wanted to make Duke Ernst

look as though he were serious about ruling the world.

 

The siege lasted three days. Vonnie, who had spent some time monitoring

communications on the police subcom unit, overheard fragments of a conversation which

allowed her to deduce that a special SOTS assault squad was on its way from the

nearby planet Appeny. After so many days of forced inactivity, the d'Alemberts were

glad that something was finally going to happen.

 

They knew the assault was to begin when the reporters were cleared away from the

building. Standard SOTE procedure for taking an occupied edifice was to try using

tirascaline first; tirascaline was one of the strongest sleeping gases ever developed, and

it would harmlessly knock out criminals and hostages alike, allowing SOTE to come in

peacefully and mop up. There were gas masks in the police station the d'Alemberts could

have worn to avoid such a fate, but they didn't bother. They could have held the station

for some time against a small army, but there would have been no point to doing so; they

wanted to be captured, and the less effort all around, the better.

 

They waited alone together in the front hall of the police station. "I don't think we'll get to

see each other much for a while," Jules said. `I'll need something to tide me over."

 

They kissed passionately for several minutes until they smelled the sickly sweet aroma of

tirascaline-and within seconds they were lying unconscious on the floor.

 

They awoke in prison in separate cells, but their time of imprisonment was short. The

Empire believed in giving traitors a speedy trial, and in making as big a spectacle of it as

possible to deter others from the same path. The case against Ernst and Florence

Brecht was clear-cut, and the imperial prosecutor finished in one day.

 

Jules insisted on defending both himself and his wife. He made no attempt to deny the

facts, and his closing statement was basically an arrogant diatribe on why he should be a

duke, and why the Emperor should be dismissed as an old fogey who was no longer

competent to tun a galaxy, and who should be ignored. It was neither apologetic nor

conciliatory, and helped settle any doubts about the verdict.

 

The Brechts were found guilty of treason. While every treason verdict carried an

automatic death penalty with it, clemency was granted because of the Brechts'

consideration of their prisoners, and their sentence was commuted to life exile on Gas-

 

tonia.

 

Although outwardly they acted stunned, inwardly the d'Alemberts were much relieved.

Taking over an entire world had been the easy part of their assignment; the hard part lay

ahead of them on the cold, forbidding exile world of Gastonia.

 

Chapter 4

The Paradise

 

Pias and Yvette Bavol faced a somewhat different problem how to work their way into

the pirates' base without being obvious about their intentions. It was a problem that Pias

attacked with his usual good humor.

 

"How does an ordinary honest citizen become a pirate?" he mused aloud as he and

Yvette were discussing their strategy. "It would be gauche to run an ad: 'Situation

wanted: pirate. Formerly free-lance, now seeks association with others. Good shot,

good tighter, no piloting experience. Prefers administrative position."'

 

"You never know," his wife laughed. "You might get some interesting offers." She cleared

her throat and grew serious again. "But they must get new recruits from somewhere. We

could make the rounds of the spaceport bars and underground hangouts until we hit

some contacts."

 

Pias made a face. "I had my fill of those places when I was hunting Rowe Carnety.

Three years of low dives can build up a toxic reaction. There has to be another way." He

paused and smiled at his wife. "Besides, my love, you should know by now that that's not

really my style. I prefer something with flash and elegance. Let the mountain come to

Mohammed; I'll be more valuable to them if they have to seek me out."

 

"I don't think they're that desperate for manpower; there are plenty of cheap blasterbats

for hire on any planet in the Galaxy. The only people they seek out are their victims."

 

Pias snapped his fingers and pointed at her triumphantly. "Then that's what I shall be. I'll

make myself such a great target they won't be able to resist me."

 

"You can't be serious."

 

"Why not? It worked for us before, didn't it? We smashed Ling's gang after they

captured the ship we were on."

 

"We were very lucky," Yvette reminded him. "We almost didn't make it out alive."

 

"That's because we stumbled into the situation accidentally. This time we'll be planning

the program in advance, so we can take the variables into account."

 

"But our job is to infiltrate the pirates, to join their organization and destroy it from the

inside. You can't do that if you're a victim."

 

"With my boyish charm, I'm sure I can reason the situation out with them."

 

"Your 'boyish charm' didn't work on Ling-and I'd like to see you reason with anyone after

you've been chucked out an airlock with no spacesuit."

 

"Mere details," Pias said with an expansive gesture. "They can be worked out more

conclusively once the broader plan is decided."

 

Though she loved her husband very much, Yvette would be the first to say that there

were times he vexed her considerably. One of those times was now. She was still more

used to working with her brother, and Jules had always preferred the direct approach.

Search and destroy had been his motto; on the few occasions when they'd been forced

to let the opposition find them, such as on Algonia during the Banion case, Jules was

always much happier after the waiting was over and he could go into action. With Pias,

she suspected, this was all much more of a great game; he seemed to enjoy the setting

up of ruses as much for their own sake as for their ultimate end.

 

Still, she could hardly fault his performance. Even though he didn't have the family

tradition in the Service that the d'Alemberts had, Yvette knew he was dedicated to their

job. And she had to admit, his methods got results. She had doubted him before in their

last mission, on Purity, but he had succeeded there, where her more direct attempts

could not.

 

Yvette sighed. She would go along with his plans, if only to keep a check on some of his

more extravagant ideas. But she still wished he were less unorthodox.

 

Pias's plan was to offer the pirates a target so irresistible that they would have to make

a try for it. "Pirates go for money," he reasoned. "We'll have to offer them one of the

richest ships in the Galaxy to guarantee their attack."

 

"Money alone isn't enough," Yvette countered. "Some of the richest people in the Empire

travel on the big liners all the time without worrying about safety."

 

Pias thought that over. "Liners don't have a high enough concentration of wealth," he

decided. "You have a few rich people and a lot more ordinary ones who are traveling on

business or who have saved up for years for a luxury vacation. A big liner is a hard

target, because it takes more manpower to overrun it-and for the small percentage of

really rich people, it's not worth the effort.

 

"From what I've heard of pirates, they prefer either a cargo ship with a load of freight

that can be resold at high profit margins or else the smaller private or chartered ships

with enough people to hold for ransom."

 

"I know," Yvette exclaimed. "We can start a cargo company, specializing in rare and

expensive merchandise, risky loads that other companies refuse to handle. That should

offer a tempting package for pirates."

 

Pias thought the matter over, then shook his head. "No, not good enough. For one thing,

how likely is it that we would form such a company? Neither you nor I can pilot a

spacecraft, and there isn't enough time to learn if we want to crack this case before the

Princess's coronation. Nor is it very likely that the nonflying owners of such a company

would waste their time flying on every one of their flights-and if we're not along, we don't

get a chance to meet the pirates.

 

"Besides," he added with a grin, "it's not flashy enough. It gives the pirates no incentive

to deal with us directly." Yvette's patience with her husband was momentarily pushed

beyond the exasperation point. "Then what is flashy enough for you, your majesty?"

 

Seeing that he'd upset her, Pias backed off a bit from his assumed stance of grandeur.

"Actually, I was thinking in terms of a gambling ship. If there's one thing I do know, it's

that."

 

Yvette's irritation dissipated as she considered the idea. Pias had spent three years

posing as an easy-going professional gambler while he sought revenge on Rowe

Carnery, the man who'd murdered his former fiancee. It was a role perfectly suited to

Pias's eccentric temperament-and one that added to the aura of mystery about him that

Yvette had found so fascinating at the time.

 

Pias watched her reaction and saw that she was calming down, so he proceeded to

outline his ideas. "Not just an ordinary gambling ship, either; if we want to attract the top

money to act as pirate bait, we'll have to give them something worth coming to. The most

glamorous space going casino ever conceived, an interstellar vessel overflowing with

decadence and luxuries."

 

Some of Pias's enthusiasm was now beginning to rub off on Yvette-as he'd been sure it

would. "An exclusive pleasure palace," she said, eyes beginning to glow as the idea

caught fire within her mind. "The more exclusive we make it, the more people will be

clamoring to get in-and the more select our clientele. Admission by invitation only, with a

basic two thousand ruble fee at the door."

 

"Fifty ruble minimum bets," Pias went on. "And a strict house policy of no credit.

Everything will be on a cash basis which will ensure our having plenty of rubles to lure the

pirates."

 

"We'll bill ourselves as being a hundred percent safe, completely pirate-proof. Not only

will that help our image with potential customers, but it will be a gauntlet in the pirates'

faces. If we keep shouting loud enough about how impossible it is for them to take us,

their own egos will eventually make them come to us."

 

"Is it possible to be completely safe?" Pias wondered. "And would we really want to be

even if it were?"

 

"Yes to both. As long as the pirates don't simply blast our ship out of the skies-which

would hardly be profitable for them-I can find us a crew to repel any possible boarding

party. And if we want them to deal with us as equals, and take us into their plans, they

have to respect us first. By beating them at their own game, they'll have to come to

terms with us."

 

Such was the genesis of the Paradise, the most lavish vessel of its kind ever conceived

and built in the history of the Empire.

 

It was not meant to compete with the large luxury liners; those were intended to impress

their passengers with their size and stateliness. Even drawing upon the fortunes of the

d'Alembert family and the Circus of the Galaxy, the Bavols could not have afforded such

a space going behemoth. The Paradise would be a smaller, but no less impressive,

spaceship.

 

The competition they would face ranged from dreadful to very good indeed. Gambling

ships had begun to grow popular thirty years earlier, their popularity coinciding with the

rise of a moral movement on many worlds against the "sin" of gambling. The antibetters,

as they were called, persuaded many planetary and local governments to forbid

gambling-a maneuver which produced an effect directly counter to what the reformers

had wanted. People who'd previously had only a mild interest in gambling suddenly

became obsessed; the lure of the forbidden was as strong as ever in the human spirit.

 

The antibetters petitioned the Emperor to ban gambling throughout the Empire, but

Stanley Ten would have none of that. He was, by that time, fifteen years into his reign

and well aware of the limits of any power. A government that tried to forbid basic human

drives would quickly lose all sympathy; trying to enforce unenforceable laws only made it

laughable. The need to test one's luck at games of chance was as old as humanity, and

would never be eradicated. The Emperor chose instead to take no position, and that was

that. The antibetters had no power to persuade him to do anything.

 

As a result, while gambling was illegal on many planets within the Empire, it was not

illegal in interstellar space, the region between the star systems where only Imperial law

was in effect. Gamblers and entrepreneurs were quick to take advantage of this

loophole, and the concept of the gambling ship-a spaceship traveling between the stars

for the sole purpose of providing its customers with a legal casino-was born.

 

Most gambling ships catered to citizens of ordinary means and were tawdry affairs-small

vessels with unpainted walls, holding perhaps twenty-five to fifty guests, with meager

living and dining accommodations. The more a customer was willing to pay, the better his

chances of finding something aesthetically pleasing.

 

The best of the gambling ships to date held upwards of a hundred guests at a level of

comfort equivalent to that of a good hotel, and cost a thousand rubles for a one-week

"cruise."

 

No one had built anything more extravagant because there didn't seem to be a market for

it; the very rich gambler could always afford to go to Vesa to indulge his hobby. In that

self-styled "Playground of the Galaxy" he could find luxury and indulgence to suit the most

decadent tastes.

 

Pias and Yvette, of course, did not care whether there was a long-term market for such

a gambling ship or not; they were not in this as a profit-making venture. For the few

months they needed their operation to work, they could create a market. People would

try anything at first if it was hard to get and promised them something original. All they'd

have to do was build a mystique, and the rest would take care of itself.

 

They would have preferred to build the Paradise from scratch, their own design from

beginning to end-but that would have taken six months just by itself, and they couldn't

spare the time. Instead, they bought an older gambling ship that was still in good

condition, brought it into a spacedock and had it completely refitted, inside and out. They

had work crews operating around the clock to get the job completed as quickly as

possible, and still it took more than a month before the Paradise was ready for its

maiden voyage. Money was no object; the Bavols threw rubles around like confetti. But

when they were done, not even the Paradise's former skipper would have recognized

her.

 

From the outside, the Paradise looked like an electronic genius's Christmas tree

ornament. It was onion-shaped, and its silvery hull was polished so that it reflected like

an enormous funhouse mirror. Few people ever saw the hull itself, though, for virtually the

entire outer surface of the vessel was covered with a myriad of flashing laser light

displays of all colors. So dazzling was its appearance that, in the depths of space, it was

visible to the naked eye almost a million kilometers away. "Any pirate who can't find

that," Pias remarked, "is no threat to anybody."

 

Inside, too, the Bavols had been equally innovative. The ship had originally been designed

with 107 passenger cabins of reasonably comfortable size, but the SOTE agents

decided that cramped quarters were not the image they wanted to project to their

luxury-minded customers. The amount of space within the ship was obviously limited by

the external hull, but they could create the illusion of vast spaces inside. Forty of the

passenger cabins were ripped out, and the rest expanded proportionately to give a

roomier feel. Many walls were torn out of the public sections of the ship as well. In place

of the three smaller dining rooms, Pias had them all combined into one magnificent

banquet hall. The smaller gambling rooms were also consolidated into larger casinos,

giving even those people who were not gambling at the moment a chance to mingle with

the crowd and sample the vicarious excitement. Pias left only three of the original small

gambling rooms untouched; they would serve to host the special high-stakes card games

that were an invariable feature of such cruises.

 

In the exact center of the ship, instead of more casino room, Pias had the walls ripped

out to construct a two-story tall entrance hall. In the middle of the floor stood a fountain

in which a larger-than-life sized gold statue of a woman wore a gown of raindrop

filaments; water trickled down the individual wires that composed the gown, producing a

shimmering effect in the ever-changing light that illuminated the fountain. The entire room

served no purpose but to create the appearance of lavish waste space; and since

interstellar vessels were notoriously economical in that regard, it could only create an

impression of extravagance in the customers' minds.

 

Yvette had charge of the actual decorating within the ship, and decided on a style she

called "early precious." All the colors were pastels, leaning heavily on cupid pink. There

were no bare walls anywhere; the interior surfaces of both the public areas and the

passengers' cabins had all been wallpapered, then covered over with thick velvet curtains

looped over elaborate gold wall sconces. The effect was to soften the hard lines of

naked bulkheads and again preserve the illusion of open spaces.

 

The chairs and lounges were all of real wood, with pink flocked velvet upholstery; the

gambling tables were all covered with pink tablecloths, and large crystal chandeliers hung

from the ceiling in the casinos. The thick plush carpeting was pure white, with small

touches of red scattered lightly throughout. In the corners of the room, tall potted plants

covered with red, pink and white blossoms reached upward toward the ceiling.

 

Pias and Yvette had had a long talk about the services the Paradise should provide its

patrons. Elegant casinos and gourmet food were not enough; if the Paradise was to

project the image of a rich people's playground, there would have to be "special

services" available, too. The morality was not appealing to either of them-both had been

raised in stern, straitlaced cultures-but they knew that their own feelings did not matter in

this issue. Excessive prudery would detract from their vessel's image and ruin all they

had worked so hard to build. For the sake of the Empire, they would have to put aside

their own personal prejudices.

 

The task of procuring the more exotic supplies fell to Yvette, since she would be the

official "hostess" of the ship. The liquor was the easiest to obtain; nearly all of it could be

bought through legal channels except for a few specialty items which had to be smuggled

off planets that discouraged the export of native substances. As for the paid companions,

she spent almost two weeks scouting talent, finally selecting ten beautiful young women

and agreeing to pay them on a salary-plus-commission basis; to be on the safe side, she

also hired five handsome men for any of the women guests who felt inclined to use the

ship's special services. The drugs were the hardest of all to track down, but Yvette had

enough previous experience to ask the right questions in the right places and was able to

pick up a variety of illegal substances to suit the tastes of the very rich and the very

bored.

 

While Yvette was rounding up her supplies, Pias had the job of attracting customers to

this unique enterprise. During the three years he had spent as "Pias Nav," a professional

gambler, he had learned the customs of the gambling world from top to bottom. The

richest customers, he knew, did not always frequent the most expensive clubs; certain

spots were more popular than others for the type of clientele he was striving for.

 

Pias and Yvette had chosen the Paradise's cruise route very carefully. It would travel the

quadrangle between the planets Egon, Bromberg, Hsoli and Kuragana. All four planets

were prosperous, all had thriving illegal gambling operations because gambling had been

officially forbidden there-and all four lay within the most heavily infested area of pirate

activity in this sector of the Galaxy.

 

Pias visited all four of the planets in turn, soliciting business in an almost casual way. On

each world, he would first spend a couple of days locating the casinos where the best

action could be found. He would then spend another few days observing who the most

important gamblers were. He made friends with dealers, croupiers and "hostesses,"

pumping them most discreetly to learn the latest scuttlebutt. His trained eye was sizing

up everyone in the house, and it seldom took him more than an hour to ascertain which

people would be of interest to him and which could be ignored.

 

Once he'd chosen his quarries, his plan of attack was carefully calculated. A few select

words about the wonders of the new gambling ship; a hint that the maiden voyage might

already be filled up; and a card he would hesitantly slip to an interested listener, a card

bearing only a subcom number to be called for a "ticket to Paradise." Pias refused to

answer any questions about the ship in person, giving his prospective clients the

impression he had already let out too much as it was. If they wanted to know more, he

told them, they would have to call the number and set up a screening appointment. Then

he moved on-usually without even giving his name.

 

By the time Pias had made the rounds of all four planets and returned to Egon, where

work on the Paradise was being completed, the clamor for tickets was surprising even to

him. Yvette was going slightly crazy trying to process all the applications by herself while

doing her own job as well; Pias promptly stepped in and relieved her of this

responsibility.

 

People he had talked to were unable to resist telling their friends about this unique

excursion, and the friends, in turn, had told even more people. Applications were even

coming in from outside the four planets where Pias had done his recruiting. As a result he

could afford to be quite selective, often rejecting people on seemingly trivial grounds.

With each rejection he sadistically sent along a full-color trioptic brochure showing all the

wonders the Paradise had to offer-and with each rejection, the demand seemed to

double.

 

Looking up from a stack of applications one evening, Pias told his wife, "You know, if the

pirates don't hit us on the first couple of trips, we may actually make a profit on this

whole deal. Even including all meals in the package, we've got a high enough basic fee;

with the house percentages of the take, plus our share of the money on the special

services, we could end up doing quite well for ourselves."

 

"Mon Dieu, I think you're starting to like this."

 

"Just thinking about job security. We've got to catch Lady A and her crew sometime-and

if there aren't any more plots, SOTE may put us out to pasture. I'm too old to learn brain

surgery-I have to have something to fall back on."

 

As Yvette had promised, she was responsible for obtaining the crew-a crew that would

never be overrun by pirates, no matter how well armed the outlaws were, no matter how

badly they outnumbered the ship's complement. Fortunately, this was the easiest part of

the entire operation. Yvette merely called for members of her family.

 

The Family d'Alembert was unique in human history. Throughout the Empire the family

was renowned as the principal performers in the Circus of the Galaxy-aerialists, ac-

 

robats, jugglers, animal tamers, magicians, clowns, wrestlers ... the whole gamut of

thrilling entertainment. The d'Alembert clan was synonymous with the Circus-more than a

thousand of them, constantly on _tour throughout the inhabited planets, playing to packed

houses wherever they went.

 

But that was only the surface appearance of this truly incredible family. Beneath the

glittery facade, the Circus was also one of the most valuable weapons in SOTE's arsenal

against treason. This was a fact that was known to only a handful of people outside the

d'Alembert family itself-that handful being the Imperial family, the Head of SOTE, and his

daughter/second-in-command. So secret was the Circus's connection with SOTE that no

mention had ever been made of it in writing and no records of its activities had ever been

put on file, lest some enemy gain access to SOTE's computer and learn the truth. The

d'Alemberts were not even on the Empire's payroll; through a complicated system of

maneuvering, the Circus's taxes were rebated to the d'Alemberts-and so successful was

the show that that money was more than sufficient to fund the family's activities for the

Service.

 

Yvette had at her disposal dozens of relatives to help staff the Paradise. All the

members of her prolific family were from the high-gravity world of DesPlaines-and as

such, they were the products of generations of forced evolution. Their reflexes were

three times quicker, their bones three times stronger and their muscles three times more

powerful than those of normal humans. DesPlainians in general were in great demand in

any job requiring speed and strength.

 

Added to that, though, was the d'Alembert family's longstanding tradition of physical

perfection. They were circus performers, their bodies well-oiled machines of classic

efficiency. The d'Alemberts were DesPlainians-plus; and that extra margin of ability was

sometimes the only advantage the Service had in its eternal struggle against the forces

of chaos.

 

With the exception of those men and women Yvette had hired exclusively for their

physical charms, each of Paradise's crew, people-from the captain down to the lowliest

galley boy-was a member of her talented family. Each was skilled enough to perform his

appointed task-and in a fight, there was simply no comparison.

 

Pias's only objection at first was on the subject of croupiers and dealers. He wanted to

put professionals in those positions, to guard against any card sharps that might slip past

even his thorough scrutiny. But Yvette put his mind to rest in that regard; all the people

she assigned to work the tables were proteges of her Uncle Marcel, the Circus's

magician. Not only were they adept at sleight of hand themselves, but their trained eyes

could spot any trickster in a moment. They gave Pias a free show, and the Newforester

left shaking his head ... but convinced that no cheats would manage to evade the

Paradise's security.

 

Finally, after seven long weeks of preparation, the Paradise was ready to begin its

historic maiden voyage. Pias made it a gala celebration, hosting an enormous party for

the press and public alike. He made a short, exciting speech about the thrills of the

excursion they were about to undertake, and of the many marvels that awaited the

Paradise's passengers. He announced that the first four voyages were completely

booked, and then asked for questions. Many of the inquiries dealt with him personally.

Who was this mysterious entrepreneur who had appeared out of nowhere to start this

daring project? Pias, who had assumed the pseudonym of "Brian Sangers," had a great

deal of fun dropping misleading and totally invented clues about his shady past-much of

which he stole shamelessly from the book reels he had read so avidly as a child. Finally,

a d'Alembert, who'd been planted in the audience as a member of the press, asked the

question the Bavols had been wanting raised all along. "With all the money and valuables

that will be on board your ship, aren't you afraid you might become a target for pirates?"

 

"Not at all," Pias replied with a casual toss of his hand. "As you might have guessed from

what I've told you of my background, I'm familiar with many aspects of violence in space.

I have devised a security system that makes the Paradise as immune to pirate attack as

an Imperial battle cruiser. Our patrons will be as safe aboard this ship as they would be

in their own homes. Safer, in fact; in your own home you always have to worry about

burglars, and there will be no burglars aboard the Paradise."

 

With that provocative little tidbit of information thrown to them, the reporters leaped on

the subject of security. They wanted to know whether the Paradise had its own heavy

space artillery to ward off attackers. Pias smiled as he replied, "You all know it's a

violation of Imperial law for any private vessel to travel armed through interstellar space."

 

The reporters did not consider that an answer, and kept pressing for more details. Pias

was delighted by their attention and milked it for all it was worth, while saying nothing in

the process. Finally he called a halt to this line of interrogation.

 

"Please, everyone-if I give you all the details of my security system, the pirates will know

them, too. Any successful gambler will tell you the value of keeping something in reserve.

That's all I intend to say on the subject."

 

The next morning, all the newsrolls were filled with the story of this mysterious Brian

Sangers, his incredible gambling ship-and his reputed "secret weapon" against pirates

that made his ship all but invincible. The Bavols read the reports and smiled. They had

thrown a challenge directly into -the pirates' faces; the next move was up to the other

side.

 

Two days later, the Paradise left orbit around the planet Egon on the first leg of its initial

voyage. The passengers were looking forward to fun and thrills; Pias and Yvette were

hoping to supply them with even more thrills than they'd bargained for.

 

Chapter 5

Traitor's World

 

Gastonia:

 

A planet the same size as Earth, circling a yellow dwarf star similar to Sol; a planet with

one large moon and three smaller ones; a planet with a breathable oxygen atmosphere

and an axial tilt of twenty-one degrees, providing the standard seasons; a planet with a

large abundance of water; a planet with a flourishing population of native plants and

animals; a planet composed of mountains and plains, of oceans and barren wastes; in

short, a planet not too dissimilar in many respects from Mankind's original homeworld.

 

There was, however, one crucial difference. Gastonia circled its sun at a mean distance

of 220 million kilometers. Being 14 times farther from its primary, it received only half the

amount of radiation that the Earth did. Gastonia was a cold world, harsh and forbidding

to people attuned to warmer climates. Its rivers and lakes were frozen over for large

portions of its long year; only the complex tidal actions of the four moons insured that the

oceans themselves remained fluid and ever-churning. In midsummer at the equator the

temperature could sometimes reach up as high as twenty-five degrees Celsius-but that

was hardly a time for rejoicing. Such temperature extremes from the normal climate

range only served to increase the furious wind currents, bringing storms that made

Earth's Asian monsoons look like spring showers.

 

This, then, was the world that "Mad Stephanie" had chosen as the permanent home of

those who opposed her regime. It was a habitable if not a happy place; there were

plenty of native plants and animals to serve as the settlers' food, and a guaranteed water

supply from the frequent snowfalls. The Empire supplied the basics of human comfort,

but little else; by opposing the Empire, these traitors had turned their backs on what the

Empire could provide, and now they were paying the consequences.

 

As the SOTE prison ship carrying the d'Alemberts to their new home approached

Gastonia, Jules and Yvonne were allowed a few quick peeks at the exile world. The

planet appeared very bright from space, with lots of cloud cover through which there

were tantalizing glimpses of blue ocean and white, snowcovered land. During the landing,

though, they were sent back to their cells and not allowed out until the ship had touched

down.

 

The ship landed at the single small spaceport on the entire planet, inside the walled

administrative garrison the Empire maintained to keep an eye on its prisoners. Gastonia

was one of the two inhabited planets in the Galaxy that was not ruled over by its own

duke, the other such planet being Earth; like Earth, it was considered the personal

property of the Emperor himself, and subject to his direct supervision. The Emperor

appointed a Governor to run the world, and the Governor, in turn, selected his own staff

and reported to the Emperor at intervals through SOTE.

 

The d'Alemberts were ushered unceremoniously off the ship and into the garrison, where

they underwent a thorough ID scan to make certain these were the same two prisoners

who'd been convicted on Islandia. When that was finished, they were treated to a

complete physical examination, certifying their health upon arrival. The administrative

center maintained the medical facilities on Gastonia and needed files on all the incoming

prisoners before any problems developed.

 

Check-in procedure completed, each of them was dressed in a warm thermal uniform

consisting of a shirt and slacks, thick leather boots and a heavy fur parka. A guard

escorted them to a door, handed them each a fistful of small brass coins, and pressed

the button that opened the portal. "Go through here and walk quickly to the other end.

The door will open for you there. Enjoy your new home."

 

"Wait a minute," Yvonne said. "Where are we supposed to live? What will we eat? How

do we meet the other prisoners? What ... ?"