second they slowed him down gave the mob that much more time to close in. He would

never be able to escape from twenty determined stranglers if they all got their hands on

him at once.

The killers were coming toward him from three sides now-from the direction of the ramp

and the direction exactly opposite it, and from the front where the group had been

seated. That left him only the back wall to retreat to-a move which the enemy obviously

expected. Not wishing to disappoint them, Jules made his way through the aisles of

boxes to the back wall, then turned to face the attackers.

They were moving toward him a bit more slowly now, confident of the final outcome and

not wanting to spoil things by tipping their hand too quickly. Overreaction could be

disastrous; they had their quarry boxed in and could afford to take the time to do it right.

Jules faced slightly to his right, away from the direction of the ramp, and seemed to be

giving that third of his attackers the majority of his attention. With his peripheral vision,

however, he was keeping close tabs on the advancement of the group in front of him and

to the left. Suddenly, when the positions were exactly right, he made his move.

From a standing start, he began running straight at the group coming from his left. They

were a bit startled at this direct assault, but they held their line firm and prepared to

meet the onslaught. Jules built up as much speed as he could and, when he came within

five meters of the killers, suddenly bent his legs under him and leaped through the air in a

low arc over the heads of the startled group. One of the killers, a bit faster on the uptake

than the rest, tried to jump up as Jules passed overhead and grab some part of his

clothing to at least slow him up; all he received for his efforts, though, was a kick in the

face as Jules used his aerialist's skills to twist about in midleap. The jumper fell violently

back into the midst of his fellows, creating more pandemonium.

The powerful muscles of Jules' legs acted as springs when he landed again, absorbing

much of the shock of impact. He rolled over forward once to absorb most of the rest of

the momentum, then, in one continuous motion, sprang to his feet and began running

toward the ramp. There was no one to block his way now, no obstacles to overcome;

Jules could concentrate purely on speed.

And speed he did. On DesPlaines, Jules in his best form would have been considered a

fast runner, though perhaps not a record holder. The recent injury to his leg slowed him

down more. But on worlds with lower gravities, there was just no comparison. Jules was

far and away the fastest man these crooks ever had or ever would see, a blur in human

form. He had reached the ramp before any of the Chandakhari could even think to pursue

him in that direction.

They did try to give chase, of course. To a man they raced in the direction of the ramp

and upward to the next level. But Jules had had too much of a jump on them and was

moving far too fast, tired though he was from all the fighting. By the time the first ones

reached the fourth level, the only trace left of Jules d'Alembert was the sound of his

receding footsteps as he raced upward and out of the building.

Garst was not pleased. Lessin, the man who had been Conducting the briefing in the

warehouse before the interruption occurred, had gone straight to his boss with the news

of the intruder. Now he was not so sure it was the safest thing he could have done.

"To be spied on is one thing, but to have discovered the spy and let him get away is rank

incompetence!" Garst's short, corpulent body was trembling with rage. Lessin knew

those rages-in fact, had seen them directed at other people. The results were never

pleasant, and he mentally braced himself for the punishment he knew would come.

"We all tried," he began to apologize. "I've never seen a man move like that before. He

was like a wild animal . .    .    . .

"And you only outnumbered him thirty-three to one," Garst sneered. "Panna-cats have

been caught barehanded at smaller odds than those. Your men are all well-trained and

good at their jobs; most of them have been with us for years, yet you could not catch one

simple person." He banged his palm with his fist in frustration.

Lessin waited in silence for Garst's rage to blow over. Anything he could say would only

add to the fury the other felt.

At length, Garst's temper subsided a little. He turned his back on Lessin and walked

around behind his large desk. "The question now is, who was that man? What kind of

threat does he represent? Was he acting on his own, or are there others with him?.

"The men from my Group Two know him. He started working at the docks with them a

couple of days ago. He calls himself Georges duChamps and he's originally from

DesPlaines. They had a bit of a problem with other workers in their outfit and this

duChamps intervened a couple of times-both for and against them. They can't figure him

out.

"A DesPlainian, eh?" Garst settled himself behind his desk and drummed his fingers

impatiently across the top. "Well, that may excuse some of your bungling; I've heard

some pretty impressive things about them. But still-thirtythree to one. . . ." His voice

trailed off and he shot Lessin a meaningful glance.

The subordinate decided to leap into the conversational breach before Garst had much

chance to contemplate further on the mishap. "I think he was just working on his own.

He'd had a few brush-ups with my men, and was curious about them, that's all. After all,

he couldn't be with the police     they wouldn't dare interfere with us. . . .

"But we can't be sure!" Garst banged a fist down hard on the solid wood desktop. "In

this business, Lessin, we can't afford to take any chances at all. Take nothing for

granted. There are other constabularies than our own, you know. So far, I grant you,

they have not seen fit to intercede in our business, because we've been careful not to be

too greedy. A little trickle diverted from a wide stream is never missed. But there is

always the possibility that we slipped up somewhere and alerted someone. We must

take great pains to find out the truth and, if that is the case, to rectify our error as quickly

as possible.

Garst stood up once more and came around the desk to face his minion. "We must

capture this duChamps fellow-alive. We have to question him to find out how much is

known about us, so that we can assess the danger. If he is just a man on his own, well

and good; he can be eliminated with no one being any the wiser. But if he is part of a

larger force, more drastic measures will have to be taken. I hate to even think about that,

but I know I'll have to.

He glowered sternly at Lessin. "Since it was you who bungled this matter, I'll let you be

the one to straighten it up. You will direct the search operations. I want every single man

we've got to have a description of duChamps. I want every single hiding place searched

beginning, of course, with his hotel room, though I doubt he'd be fool enough to return

there. We'!! scour every centimeter of Vesa if we have to, but I want that duChamps

found and brought to me alive. Is that understood?.

It was indeed understood. Lessin was actually glad Garst had put him in charge of the

search. It had been duChamps' fault that he'd had to come to Garst with this problem in

the first place, and he had that debt of honor to pay off. He would find the DesPlainian,

all right-and when he was finished, the spy would wish Garst had allowed Lessin to kill

him right away.

CHAPTER 8

Vanished.

Yvette got only about three hours' sleep following her chance meeting with Dak Lehman,

and even that was spent fitfully sitting up in a chair, facing the door and starting at the

slightest noise in the hall that might herald the return of the three men who had ambushed

her on the starliner. They had caught her by surprise once, and she vowed that would

never happen again. But this night was a false alarm; nothing untoward occurred.

At 0930 she finally dragged herself out of the chair to get ready for her rendezvous with

Dak. She had neglected to wipe off the makeup from last night and it bad gone gritty on

her face. Added to that were the dark circles under her eyes and flyaway hair from

sleeping in an awkward position. Taking a good look at herself in a mirror, she said, "Dak

must be crazy; nobody in his right mind would ever want to marry someone who looks

like that.

She gave serious consideration to calling him at his hotel and breaking off the date, or

even just standing him up without telling him anything. She hadn't told him where she was

staying; he might never be able to find her again, and all their mutual problems would be

solved. But, with a sigh, she realized she could never do that. She had promised to meet

him, and promises were sacred things to a d'Alembert. Her family pride would not permit

her the luxury of breaking this one.

She spent an extra amount of care in making up her face this morning, and by the time

she was finished much of the depression bad left her. The face that stared back at her in

the mirror was no longer haggard, and she declared herself satisfied with the results; a

less modest person would have realized that she was devastatingly beautiful. A quick

look at the clock beside her bed told her that she'd spent entirely too much time on her

makeup, though-it was just past 1030. Dressing quickly, she hurried out to the elevator

tube and up to the lobby level to grab a jit. There would be no breakfast for her this

morning, though perhaps Dak and she could go for lunch somewhere.

She arrived at the appointed spot five minutes late, cursing her own tardiness and the

complexity of Vesa's traffic. Yvette hated to be late for anything; it made her feel vaguely

incompetent. She dashed out of her jit and into the crowded casino, where she began

her search for Dak.

She did not see him immediately, and began to pray that he would be late, too, so that

he wouldn't notice her own tardiness. Even at this hour, though, the casino was quite

crowded; Vesa, being an underground settlement, did not depend on the arbitrary

rhythms of daylight and darkness, and was in bloom around the clock. Dak might have

been here, saw that she wasn't here, and decided to mingle in the mob for a few minutes

until she showed up.

Yvette waited. One minute turned into five, then ten. Still there was no sign of Dak.

Impatience began to play on her nerves, taking the form alternatively of anger and

concern. How dare he keep me waiting? He was the one who wanted this meeting so

badly. But what if he's hurt? What if he slipped in his bathtub and got a concussion.

She began to feel very conspicuous standing there alone in the entranceway while people

milled around her intent on their gambling. Finally deciding to take matters into her own

bands, she walked over to a public telephone, inserted a twenty-kopek piece in the slot

and called the Soyuz Hotel where Dak had told her he was staying. "Connect me with

Gospodin Lehman's room, please," she said when the hotel operator answered.

There was a momentary silence at the other end, then the voice came back, "I'm sorry,

Gospodin Lehman has left.

Yvette sighed with relief. "You mean he's on his way to an appointment.

"I wouldn't know, gospozha.

"Khorosho. Thank you." She rang off and went back to the casino to continue her waiting.

She waited for half an hour longer, growing increasingly puzzled with each passing

second. She knew it shouldn't take him more than fifteen minutes to get from his hotel to

here. What could be keeping him.

Could some other business have come up so pressing that he had to stand her up

without notifying her? She was modest enough to think that a lot of other things could be

more important to him than she was, but she remembered the pleading, desperate tone

he had used yesterday while begging her to meet him. He had sincerely meant that, and

it was hard to imagine anything coming between him and this so-desired date.

But he wasn't here, and his hotel said he had left. Could there have been a traffic

accident along the way? She looked outside and as far into the traffic tunnels as she

could; there seemed to be no impediments to the flow of vehicles approaching the

high-domed intersection out side the casino. For the moment she ruled out accident. But

what was there left to explain his absence? Where was he? He couldn't have just

vanished without a trace. . . .    `

Suddenly, Yvette froze with horror. "Mon Dieu!" she exclaimed under her breath. "It can't

be. It just can't!" But her logical mind told her that it all too easily could. What exactly had

the hotel operator meant by saying he'd left? Suddenly, nothing was more important in

the Universe to Yvette than finding out the, answer. Racing outside to the sidewalk, she

flagged down a jit. "Soyuz Hotel," she told the driver breathlessly. The woman nodded

and calculated the rate from here to there. Yvette stuffed a wad of bills into the driver's

hand without even bothering to count them and went to the back of the jit to sit by herself

and think.

She found, though, that thinking was a difficult process at the moment. Her normally

crisp, clear mind was drifting hopelessly in a sea of confusion, circling the problem

without ever stopping to focus on it. She did not want to face the issue, even though she

knew she'd have to in the immediate future. Her body was numb with fear, normally an

alien emotion to her. Fear for herself was almost an unknown quantity, but fear for

someone she cared about was a chilling thing.

After seven eternities the jit pulled up in front of the Soyuz Hotel. Yvette prodded her

shocked body into action. Running out of the jit and into the lobby, she raced up to the

desk clerk on duty. "Do you have a Gospodin Lehman registered here?.

The man checked his records. "We did. He checked out last night.

"Gospodin Dak Lehman?" "That's correct.

"What time last night?.

The clerk consulted his records once more. "About 0130 hours.

"Isn't that rather a strange time to be checking out?" "Not on Vesa," the clerk shrugged.

"Time is meaningless here.

"Did he leave any forwarding address?" Yvette asked, grasping at straws.

"Sorry, none.

The realization of what must have happened was worse than a physical kick in the

stomach. This was not some meaningless statistic in a musty old police file; this was a

flesh-and-blood man whom she happened to love very much. It couldn't be true.

In desperation she ran to a public phone in the lobby and invested a small fortune in

twenty-kopek pieces. She learned from Empress Spaceways, the company that owned

the Empress Irene, that Dak Lehman had cashed in his return ticket and no, he had not

bought one for a different date. Calls to every other transportation company servicing

Vesa brought only negative results-Dak Lehman had not booked passage with any of

them.

Like hundreds of thousand of people before him, Dak Lehman had vanished from the

surface of Vesa without a trace.

When the conclusion was at last inescapable, Yvette sat down on the seat in the phone

booth, turned her face toward the wall and cried. Damn it, it was supposed to be me,

Dak, not you. I was the target. I could have fought them back. Why did they take you

and not me.

Her brain felt as though it would burst, and the wall she was facing held no answers for

her. She sobbed uncontrollably for several minutes, letting the emotion wash over her.

When her grief had been expended, she lifted her head and the tears stopped flowing.

Once again she was the cold, calculating supersecret agent, dedicated to the Service of

the Empire. But the icy fury lurking behind her eyes would give warning to all that she

was no longer a lady to tangle with casually. Yvette d'Alembert was out for blood.

She had started out of the booth when something across the hotel lobby caught her

attention. Ducking back inside, she peered out through the crack in the door opening and

watched the tall man she'd called Gaspard walk up to the desk and start a conversation

with the clerk. From the way the clerk was shaking his head, it was a cinch that Gaspard

was asking much the same thing Yvette had asked-and was getting much the same

answer. Yvette hoped that the clerk wouldn't mention the woman who bad asked these

same questions just a short while ago.

Apparently he didn't; from her own conversation, Yvette recalled that the man

volunteered no information if he could possibly avoid it. At any rate, Gaspard grimaced at

the clerk's answers and walked abruptly away from the counter out of Yvette's viewing

range. The SOTE operative gave him a fifteen-second count, then opened the door and

stepped out of the booth.

Gaspard was nowhere to be seen, so she surmised that be had left through the front

door. Without a moment's indecision she went after him. He and his friends were her only

lead right now; they knew more about Dak than they were telling. Perhaps her initial

hunch was correct, that they were advance men for the conspiracy. But then why had

this tall one been so upset that Dak was no longer at his hotel.

At any rate, there were no other clues to follow. Even if her ambushing trio were not

personally responsible for Dak's fate (she could not bring herself, even now, to think

"death"), they had been following him around much more closely than she had. They must

have seen something that could help her in her further search.

Besides, she bad a debt to repay them . . . and a d'Alembert debts are always paid.

Gaspard got on a lit driving eastward through one of the tunnels. Yvette was able to flag

down an empty jit whose driver was more than delighted to take Yvette' s generous tip in

return for following another shuttle. Yvette sat right behind her driver, her sharp eyes

watching for any sign that her quarry was aware he was being followed, but the main

was obviously too engrossed in his own thoughts for that.

The ride was short and straight, only half a kilometer to the next domed intersection.

There Gaspard got off and went into a sidewalk café. He emerged a few seconds later

with a cup of hot liquid and a small tray of food. Finding a table all to himself, he sat and

slowly nibbled at his lunch, with apparent unconcern for the passing of time. Yvette, who

had gotten off her jit and walked across the street from the café, watched his actions

through the mirror of her compact while she pretended to be making up her face. She

decided he must be waiting for someone, probably one or both of his partners.

Her guess was confirmed several minutes later when Murgatroyd joined him. By this

time, Yvette had put away her compact and was observing the action across the street

by watching the reflections in a shop window. The two men across the way did not say

anything at first, and then began talking in low tones. As Gaspard explained his findings,

Murgatroyd became slightly more agitated. By the time the third man-a nondescript

fellow with gray-brown hair and a pencil-thin mustache-joined them, they were both

pretty upset.

The newcomer scowled when he was told the story. Abruptly, all three men stood up and

walked out of the café. To Yvette's great relief they did not take a jit-it was too damned

awkward trying to follow those infernal things each time-but walked instead down the

street to the entrance of a small, inexpensive hotel called the Vesa Arms. Yvette, across

the street, followed them, then crossed back to their side as they went into the hotel.

She waited outside the door for ten seconds, then followed them inside.

She came through the door just in time to see the three of them disappearing down an

elevator tube, apparently going to one of the hotel's sleeping rooms. She had no way of

knowing which level they were going to or what their room number was, but she knew

how to find out.

Think slut, she told herself. Unfastening the front of her jumpsuit almost down to the waist

and draping the houppelande casually over her shoulder, she sauntered over to the hotel

desk with a suggestive swing to her hips. She was perhaps a little overdressed to be a

common dyevka, but she doubted the clerk would pay much attention to that detail.

"You see them three guys that just walked through here?" she asked in as slangy an

accent as she could muster, "Yeah," the clerk responded. "What about 'em?" "I gotta

know their room number.

"Why?" The clerk's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "It's business.

"What kind of business would you have with them?" "Very personal business," Yvette

winked. "If you know what I mean.

The clerk knew very well what she meant. "If they wanted you with them, how come they

didn't take you themselves?.

Yvette winked again. "They, uh, didn't want to be seen with me in the lobby." Her voice

took on a more desperate whine. "Look, tovarishch, you gotta help me out. Gospodin

Ivanov and his two friends. . . .

"His name's not Ivanov," the clerk said curtly. "They're all Ivanov to me. Anyway, he and

his two friends asked me down to his room for a little while, only they left and forgot to

tell me the number. It's dumb, I know, but some guys are like that. They'll be really mad

if I don't get down there soon, and if they learn that you wouldn't give me their room

number. . . ." Her tone of voice implied that dire things might happen. "Twenty rubles,"

the clerk said.

"You're crazy!" Yvette exclaimed. "I'm only gettin' a hundred myself. I ain't givin' no

drappin' twenty percent commission to no drappin' hotel clerk! Ten roobs is it!" Actually,

Yvette could have paid the twenty and considered it a bargain; but she had to stay

believably in character, and the clerk might have been suspicious if she hadn't argued.

The man behind the desk paused, then nodded. "Smooth, ten. In advance." His palm

snaked out toward her across the counter.

"Muttering something about "drappin' blackmail," Yvette fished deep into her purse and

pulled out a ten-ruble bill. The desk clerk accepted it with an oily grin and said, "Room

412. Have a good time.

"Go bite yourself," Yvette retorted as she swiveled her hips over to the down elevator

tube. As she dropped on a cushion of air to the fourth level she did allow herself a tight

little smile for an act well done. The professional in her was pleased with her

performance, though the woman part had little to be happy about at the moment.

The hallway on the fourth level was narrow, but deserted. Dim overhead lighting did little

to illuminate the faded red carpet underfoot or the paint that was peeling off the wall in

large chunks. The dead smell of old dopesticks lingered through the corridor, causing

Yvette's sensitive nostrils to wrinkle in disgust. Somehow, the place just seemed to fit the

characters of the three men she was after.

Room 412 was down the hall to her left as she emerged from the tube. Sneaking silently

up to it, she put her ear to the door and listened. The sound of three male voices in

conversation was plain; though she couldn't make out too many individual words, the fact

that they were arguing about something was readily apparent.

After placing her houppelande on the floor and backing off from the door as far as the

narrow hallway would allow, Yvette charged the portal at top speed. She hit the door

with the full strength of her seventy-kilogram DesPlainian body and the door, made only

of cheap rikwood, gave way. As it burst inward, Yvette d'Alembert blew like a whirlwind

into the room.

The three men inside never had a chance. Gaspard and Murgatroyd were seated on the

bed, while the third -who appeared to be their boss-sat on a chair facing them. Surprised

as they were by Yvette's sudden entrance, they had no time to move before she was on

top of them. Murgatroyd was dispatched immediately with a sharp blow at the base of

his neck. Gaspard turned his bead toward her just in time to get a knee jerked savagely

into his face. As he doubled over with the pain, Yvette grabbed the back of his shirt and

used it to fling him against the wall, where he hit his head and slumped to the floor,

unconscious.

The third man had a moment to rise from his chair and reach into his jacket, fishing for a

gun. Yvette was over to him in a flash, grabbed his wrist before he could withdraw his

weapon and smashed it down hard against her knee. The man howled with pain as his

wrist bone cracked, but Yvette's store of mercy was all used up. Grasping her opponent

tightly by the front of his jacket, she hauled him into the room's tiny bathroom and shut

the door behind her.

"Things are a little different than the last time we met," she said harshly, pulling the man's

stun-gun out of his jacket. "This time I can say a few things, too, although you like talking

so much that I think IT !et you do most of it.

Taking off her left shoe, she pulled the heel off and took a small hyposprayer from a

secret compartment. "I'm going to ask you a few questions now," Yvette continued

coldly, "and I'm in no mood for funny answers. I presume you know what I've got in this

sprayer?.

The man trembled as he eyed the clear fluid. "N-nitrobarb," he guessed. It had to be.

Nitrobarb was the number-one most effective truth serum known to man. It was

impossible for anyone to lie under its influence. It also had a fifty percent mortality rate,

which was why it was on the proscribed list. Mere possession of it was a capital offense.

Yvette gave him a frozen smile. "I'm glad you said that; I dislike admitting to a felony.

Now then, I can administer what I have in this hyposprayer to you, or you can talk

voluntarily. The choice is entirely up to you. Which will it be?.

"You can put it away. I'll talk," the man said, cradling his right wrist tenderly with his other

hand. "I never wanted any trouble, honest. I'm just trying to do a job.

"Is attacking innocent women in their staterooms part of your job?" Yvette sneered. "Let

me have the whole story. Who are you and what's your connection with Dak Lehman?.

"My name's Myerson. My partners and I are with Cosmos Investigations.

"A detective?" This unexpected news made Yvette knit her brow in perplexity. "Can you

prove that?.

"My ID card's in my jacket pocket." He started to reach for it with his left hand, but

Yvette waved his gun at him and he froze in mid-motion.

"I'll get it," she said, and reached into his pocket for his wallet. Sure enough, she found

the identification card, together with photo and retinal pattern, stating that Rolf Myerson

was a licensed investigative agent under the laws of the planet Largo. This was a

development she did not like at all.

"I still don't see where it says you have the right to break and enter.

"Do you have that right?" Myerson glared at her.

"I have the gun," Yvette said coolly, "which at the moment gives me the right. I'm not

here to argue ethics. I want to know why you were after Dak Lehman.

"His wife hired us to look after him. She . . ." "Wife? He said nothing to me about any

wife." "Some married men neglect details like that. They were going to be divorced

anyway. The two of them own equal shares in the computer firm, though he was the

nominal head of the corporation. Gospozha Lehman heard a few rumors that her

husband was coming to Vesa to have a secret meeting with someone and sell corporate

secrets that would have made her stock in the company worthless. So she hired us to

keep an eye on her husband and make sure that no such deals took place.

"But wouldn't he have been cutting his own throat? If the corporate stock became

worthless, wouldn't that ruin him as well?.

"He had managed to accumulate, under a variety of other names, a large portfolio of

holdings. We thought he felt he could afford to make this spiteful gesture." "Does he hate

his wife that much?.

"In the initial divorce proceedings he's accused her of numerous infidelities. She hasn't

denied any of them, so far as I know." Myerson's voice was fiat; Gospozha Lehman may

have bought his time and services, but not his loyalty.

Yvette considered this latest development. Despite the fact that she'd been unprepared

for it, it did seem to make a good deal of sense. Myerson's men had always been

primarily concerned with Dak; they had not paid any attention to Yvette until she started

seeing the man they were following. Even then, they followed a very cautious approach,

trying merely to scare her off when they were afraid she might be getting too close to

Dak. She remembered how easily they could have killed her in her suite if they had

wanted to do so.

And she remembered all the little discrepancies in Dak's behavior. When she had asked

him about other women in his life he had skated neatly around the question-and she had

known then he was covering something up. Again, all the little false starts and hesitations

in their conversations, as though there were some secret he wanted to tell her but was

afraid to reveal. Having a wife -a mean, vindictive, unfaithful woman-back on Largo could

very well have been preying on his conscience as he charmed a lovely widow aboard the

Empress Irene.

The more she thought about it, the more she realized that Myerson's story was probably

the truth. Damn! she thought. I was so hoping he'd turn out to be one of the killers. I

would have loved to bash his brains out against a wall.

"What's happened to Gospodin Lehman now?" she asked, trying to keep her voice as

even and emotionless as before. "Why did he leave his hotel?.

"You know as much about that as I do. The last we know, Lansky saw him boarding a jit

with a friend he met in one of the casinos. Lansky overheard something about a private

party, but he didn't know where it was. He tried following, but these damned jits are so

elusive that he lost him. Then this morning we find that he vanished last night completely,

taking all his worldly possessions with him-which means I'll lose out on my fee for this

deal. Gospozha Lehman'll never pay us for losing him.

He looked straight into Yvette's face. "If you ask me, I think we've both been bummed. I

think he made his contact and vanished into the night, literally, leaving you and me both

holding the bag.

"Yeah," Yvette said cynically. "But I think you and your two friends had better get off

Vesa fast, on the next ship to anywhere. I have your stunner, now, and I know how to

use it. Next time I see any of your ugly faces, I will. You can take that as a promise."

She tucked the hyposprayer back into the heel of her shoe, turned and walked out of the

hotel room. Within seconds she was in an elevator tube going down to the seventh level.

If Myerson should decide to come looking for her, be would expect her to go up to the

lobby.

The hallway on the seventh floor was an exact duplicate of that on the fourth. Tucking the

detective's stungun inside her purse, Yvette paced up and down the carpeted hall, much

as she'd seen her brother do any number of times in the past. Jules always said he

thought better on his feet, but after trying it for a while Yvette came to the conclusion that

it only tired out the legs without aiding the brain. Finally she sat crosslegged on the floor

and leaned back against the wall.

Myerson's theory would have been a logical one, if that was all there was to the

situation. But Yvette knew there was more than that. Dak's disappearance fit too closely

into the pattern that had already been established over the past twenty years. A person

comes to Vesa, then suddenly vanishes without leaving. All worldly possessions vanish

with him. Of course, Dak Lehman could have bought a ticket under an assumed name if

he felt that he was being followed . . . but again, this disappearance matched too well

with all the others. They couldn't all have been selling corporate secrets.

Yvette sighed. She bad been hoping so much that Myerson and company had been with

the killers; it would have solved a lot of problems and given her new leads. She would tell

the Head about Myerson when she got back and his license would be revoked for

unethical conduct, but for now she was right back at the start again. Dak was gone, she

was untouched, and there was not the faintest clue as to who was responsible for what

was happening.

Absolutely nothing.

CHAPTER 9

The Not-So-Great Escape

Jules did not return to his hotel room following his narrow escape from the warehouse.

To do so, he knew, would be tantamount to suicide. The Chandakhari he had worked

with would have recognized him in the melee, and it would be a simple matter for them to

check his work records and discover his address. He mentally wrote off that room as a

loss; nothing of any great importance was kept there, and they would find no clues to his

real identity if they searched it. All his crucial supplies were kept in a public locker at the

spaceport terminal.

He was able to hail a passing jit as he raced out of the warehouse, and vanished into one

of the traffic tunnels before any of the people chasing him had even emerged from the

building. For the moment he was safe, but he could continue to be so only as long as he

kept a couple of jumps ahead of the opposition. Leaning back in his seat, he let the

gentle swaying motion of the jit relax his body, which was still tense from the surges of

adrenalin. Once he had calmed the physical part of him he turned to the mental.

Georges duChamps would have to disappear, there was no question about it. He hated

having to desert Laz Fizcono when the foreman was already shorthanded, but his duty to

the Empire came first. Certainly he could not show up for work without inviting the same

kind of "accident" that had befallen Rask.

It was equally certain that he would have to leave Vesa. These killers obviously had a

widespread conspiracy that enveloped the whole moon, and they would not take kindly to

being spied upon. They would turn Vesa upside down in their efforts to find him and, with

his distinctive DesPlainian body, he couldn't disguise himself well enough to ensure

anonymity.

He toyed with the thought of joining forces with Yvette, now that his cover in the lower

part of Vesa's society was broken. He knew where she was supposed to be staying, and

it would be easy enough to get in touch with her. The thought of working together with

her was a warming one; they had always been very close, and they worked at their best

as a team when they could bounce ideas off one another. And with the killers now

looking for him so avidly, the two of them could set a trap and catch some of them. A

quick shot of nitrobarb would then help them track down the rest of the mob.

But after some thought he vetoed that idea. Yvette was in the middle of her own

investigation; she had her own goals and her own cover identity. It would not be fair of

him to interrupt her work just because he'd messed up his own assignment. They had

agreed to try a twopronged attack on the problem in the hopes of solving it that much

faster. It still was a sound strategy, if he worked it right.

Besides, he had learned something crucial in the warehouse. Every single one of the

murderers assembled there had been a Chandakhar male. Some of them were rather

old, and a few, like Radapur, were quite young. Obviously there was some way killers

were recruited into this conspiracy, and just as obviously the recruitment was occurring

down on the surface of Chandakha. Clearing out all the murders on Vesa would do no

good if the factory for producing more of them was left untouched. Chandakha, then,

would have to be his next stop. But he would need some help.

He went to the spaceport, got his things from the locker and checked into a nearby hotel.

The instant he was alone be activated his room's vidphone and placed an intrasystem call

down to a very private number on Chandakha.

After a minute the connection was made, and the screen lit up with the face of a very

attractive lady. She also appeared to be a native of Cbandakha; she had a dark

complexion, brown eyes and long black hair that had just the slightest tipping of gray to

it. There were a few lines of responsibility and worry to her face, but they enhanced

rather than subtracted from her beauty. Her age could be anywhere from thirty-five to

sixty, it was impossible to tell. This would be Marask Kantana, the Service's chief for

Chandakha and Vesa.

"Who's there?" she asked peering into her screen, for Jules had kept the video part of

his transmission turned off. "What do you want?"

Jules said only one word: "Wombat.

The effect of that word on Kantana was startling. She had been given prior warning that

agents Wombat and Periwinkle would be conducting investigations in her area, and that

she was to give them all the assistance they required. Even had she not been told in

advance, however, the effect would have been the same; those two code names were

legendary in the Service, and commanded instant obedience. From a proud woman used

to issuing orders, Kantana's visage shifted to one of complete subservience. "What can I

do for you?" she asked.

"I'm on Vesa at the moment and I need to get down to Chandakha without being seen.

The spaceport will be watched. What do you suggest?.

"There's my private ship," Kantana replied without hesitation. "I could fly up to Vesa for

the day, and you could come back packed in my trunk-at least until we got you inside the

ship.

"Smooth." Jules decided instantly that he liked this woman. She thought quickly, and had

a no-nonsense approach to her job. No wonder the Head spoke so highly of her, he

thought.

They arranged the details of the pickup in code, though Jules strongly doubted whether

the murderers had the capacity to intercept or interpret this call. They had shown no

previous inclination to get involved on a political level, preferring to commit their crimes in

as quiet and businesslike a manner as possible. Then, when the call was over, Jules

leaned back on his bed to rest and think.

Six hours later, Gospozha Kantana's personal spacecraft docked on Vesa. She took her

luggage, which consisted of a small briefcase and a large trunk, to a hotel room that was

customarily set aside for her periodic trips to the moon. She left her things in the room

and went out for a couple of hours' recreation at the casino.

When she returned to her room, Jules was waiting for her. She gave him a polite nod of

the head and sat down in a chair in one corner of the room. It would be up to Jules to

speak first.

"I've been going over these," he began. holding up a couple of spools of tape. He had

requested that she bring up what files the Service had on the seven Chandakhari he had

worked with. "I think I've discovered a common pattern to them, and I'd like your advice

on the matter.

"My office is at your complete disposal, as you know." Jules shifted his weight on the

bed where he sat. "Each of these men had a criminal record before coming to Vesa.

Each came from a large family, of which he was either the sole or principal support-even

Radapur, who was only about twenty Earth years old.

"None of those facts is at all unusual on Chandakha," Kantana said matter-of-factly. "It is

not a pleasant place to live. It's a tropical world, and only one of its five continents is

habitable by humans; the rest are hellholes and breeding grounds for insects and

plagues. Even the one continent where we can live is ravaged periodically by rainstorms,

droughts, floods and insect swarms.

"Whichever bureaucrat came up with the idea of colonizing Chandakha decided that it

could best be done by using people who were already accustomed to these problems.

As a result, most of the colonists-my ancestors included-were recruited from the Indian

subcontinent of Earth and transplanted here. Some of our customs were brought over,

some were dropped and new ones were created. The caste system, which lingered on in

India even after it was officially abolished, is almost nonexistent here, though you still find

traces every so often. But one problem that took root here was overpopulation, which we

nearly had licked by the twenty-second century. We have it worse now than it's ever

been.

"It's not uncommon for a married couple here to have twenty or twenty-five children

during their lifetime. With modern medicine; most of those survive. At first, there was

plenty of land to go around, but we've been here three centuries now. Family parcels are

being whittled down, until now the average family is hard-pressed to support itself.

"Many people, fed up with farm life, move into the cities. But it's even worse there. We

have little heavy industry, since all the resorces of this continent are used to feed

ourselves, and the other continents can't be mined. Jobs are scarce, but people have to

live. Crime is the one profession they can turn to. It's been estimated that at least one

person in ten on Chandakha makes most of his living by illegal means. In the cities, that

ratio can be as high as four in ten.

Jules was flabbergasted by this revelation. "But who do they steal from?.

"The honest people. Each other. Anyone and everyone." Though Kantana's voice was

even, the look behind her eyes showed her true feelings. This was a sympathetic woman

who had long borne the burden of these people's problems even though, in her exalted

position as chief of the local SOTE office, she could have ignored them.

Jules was shaking his head. "I find it hard to believe that conditions like these could exist

in the Empire today. The Emperor can't condone these things." He remembered his one

meeting with His Imperial Majesty Stanley Ten-an old man, yes, but sharp-witted and

deeply caring for the people be ruled.

Kantana's voice was without bitterness. "The Emperor is very busy and very far away.

Chandakha is very peaceful, no threat to him or the Empire. When a man rules over

thirteen hundred planets he has to govern by crisis; the quiet problems get overlooked.

Besides, the problem has only really begun to emerge in the last fifty years; we've had a

string of undistinguished dukes who've fumbled around without accomplishing anything.

The present duke is only thirteen, and. . . ." She stopped abruptly. "I'm terribly sorry. You

didn't come here to listen to my problems or Chandakha's. You've . . . we've got a case

to solve, and the sooner we get onto that, the better.

Jules put his shock at the conditions on Chandakha to the back of his mind. Kantana was

right; they bad work to do. "What I'm thinking," he said, "is that there is a regular

program of recruitment going on. This conspiracy picks out people who already have

criminal tendencies and who have large families to support-men who are desperate

enough to do anything for money. They can be trained to be callous about anything, even

wholesale murder, if the incentive's right.

"If ever there was a recruiter's paradise for that sort of thing," Kantana agreed,

"Chandakha is it. In fact, as far as I can see, the hardest part of a recruiter's job would

be choosing from an almost limitless number of candidates.

Jules brooded on that for a bit. "Then what we have to do," he said at last, "is to make

sure I'm an irresistible candidate for them.

Before leaving Vesa, Jules phoned and bad an ad placed in the personal column of the

major newsroll: Chandakha sings a siren song. The natives are restless. Frenchie Yvette

would know from that that her brother had gone down to the planet's surface, and that

Chandakhari were somehow involved. He hated being so mysterious, but she had her

own independent investigation to perform, -and he didn't want to prejudice her findings.

At least she would know he was all right; if she had any further questions she could

contact Kantana, just as he did.

The transfer to Kantana's ship was accomplished smoothly, with Jules riding inside her

capacious trunk. The trunk was carried aboard ship through the passenger ramp; Jules

was jarred a bit, but he got past any possible spies at the spaceport without detection.

As Kantana piloted them down on the short flight to Chandakha, she and Jules discussed

his upcoming transformation into a leading criminal of the planet.

The physical part would be the hardest. Jules' light brown hair, fair skin and gray eyes

would never pass muster but Kantana assured him she had makeup experts at her

disposal who could administer skin and hair dyes that would last for several weeks.

Service opthalmologists could also dye his eyes temporarily to a more passable brown.

As for his distinctively DesPlainian physique, Kantana assured him that the standard garb

on Chandakha was a loosefitting garment cut like a caftan. By taking certain pills to

promote water retention, Jules could make most of his musculature look like just plain

flab. Sleep tapes helped him learn the local dialect in six nights.

Being more familiar with the culture of the planet, Kantana invented Jules' background.

He would be Har Koosman, twenty-eight, a family man with a wife and nine children to

support. He had lived all his life in Calpuna, the second largest city on the planet, and had

been in and out of jails since he was sixteen-she could fake the records for that easily

enough, and the local police would cooperate with her fully. Two months ago, he had

gotten into his most serious trouble by trying to break into the estate of the Baron of

Calpuna and steal his jewels. He was discovered and captured-but not before he had

killed two of the Baron's guards attempting to escape. He was imprisoned in solitary

confinement in Calpuna for a while, but managed to escape. He had just been recaptured

and the Service, acting at the request of the Baron, had stepped in to assist the local

police. Koosman was now being transferred to the Imperial prison at Bhangora,

Chandakha's largest city, where security would be a lot stricter. "And," as Kantana

pointed out, "where no one would be expected to know a criminal from Calpuna.

Har Koosman paced his small cell impatiently. He had been locked in with a man named

Passar, a tiny man about forty years old with the face of a weasel and eyes permanently

hardened to criminal activities. "Passar has connections all through the underworld,"

Kantana had told Jules. "If he doesn't know how to get you through to the recruiters, no

one will.

"I've got to get out of here," Jules muttered as he paced. He turned to look at Passar.

"You know this area better than I do, you must know a way out.

The older man chuckled grimly. "If I knew, would I still be here?.

"There must be a way out. No prison is escape proof." "True enough, tovarishch. Men

have escaped from here before. But they thought up their plans over the course of

months. You just got here this morning, what can you expect?.

Jules shook his head. "I've got a wife and nine kids, two aged parents and a

brother-in-law, none of whom can support themselves. I'm alone in a strange city, without

a friend to my name, being held on a charge of murder. What am I going to do?" Jules

sat down on the edge of the crude bunk he'd been provided and buried his face in his

hands.

"I'll tell you what you won't do," said Passar, becoming annoyed. "You won't bore me any

more with the tearful story of your problems. I've been in and out of jails for thirty years,

and I've had so many people sob on my shoulder that it's permanently soggy. Every cell

in this building has men who, by their own admission, shouldn't be there, and each has a

tale as pitiful as yours. This cell is three meters wide and four long; if you intend to share

it peacefully with me, you will keep your damned mouth shut and stop your wail of

self-pity.

"Why you miserable little bastard," Jules let his anger flare. "How dare you talk to me like

that? I'll kill you!" And with that, he surged off his cot and over to where his cellmate was

seated.

His large powerful hands closed over the smaller man's throat. To Passar it felt as

though the newcomer was using all his strength in a murderous rage, though in truth

Jules was using but a tenth of what he could have. He certainly didn't want to kill Passar,

though the other had to think he would.

Passar had just enough warning and enough air left in his lungs to yell for the guard. He

tried beating Jules off, but his blows were very light and struck uselessly on the

attacker's toughened bide. Jules shifted position slightly, in what looked like an attempt

to gain a better grip but what was actually a chance to let Passar get more air in his

lungs to scream. The weaselly little criminal did so with gratifying volume.

"What's going on here?" came a voice from outside the cell. A large, burly guard stood

there, his stun-gun drawn and aimed at the participants in the struggle. He was trying to

get a clear shot at Jules, but in another second he would fire at both men, on the theory

that stunning both of them would ease the problem and allow him time to sort out the

bodies in peace afterwards.

Before he could fire, through, Jules suddenly dropped Passar and lunged with his arm

through the bars at the guard. He caught the man's unhand and, with a vicious yank,

pulled the guard towards him. The man hit his bead hard against the metal bars and was

knocked unconscious. He would have slumped to the. floor had not Jules held his body

upright. The stun-gun dropped from the guard's limp hand onto the floor of the cell, but

Jules was much more interested in the other gun the guard had carried-a Mark Twenty

blaster. Stretching his other hand between the bars, he pulled the heavy weapon out of

the guard's holster. Then he let the man's body fall to the ground.

Wasting no time, Jules turned the blaster's sizzling beam on the lock mechanism of the

cell. Within three seconds the lock had been burned away. The DesPlainian kicked open

the door, picked up the stun-gun as well and turned back to the startled Passar, who had

watched the action while cowering in his bunk. "Thanks," Jules told him. "I needed a

commotion to draw the guard's attention, and it bad to seem realistic." He stepped out of

the cell. "Be seeing you.

"What about me?" Passar called after him.

Jules shrugged. "Door's open. You're free to try a break, too, if you want.

Passar's weasel brain was working overtime. "You'll never be able to get out of here

alone, and neither will I. You don't know the layout and I don't have a gun. Together,

though, we stand a chance.

Though Jules pretended to consider that, it was actually exactly what he'd hoped for. The

entire escape scene had been choreographed for Passar's benefit, with the guard being

part of the drama. Ordinarily the man would never have stood within arm's length of the

prisoners like that, and he would have stunned first and asked questions later. But the

breakout had to look realistic enough so that Passar wouldn't smell a trap. Jules needed

Passar, all right. Not to help him escape, as the old man thought Jules could have walked

unmolested out of the prison, and he'd memorized its floor plan; instead, he needed

Passar as a passport to whoever was recruiting the murderers.

"Khorosho, but hurry it up," he snarled. "The alarms must have gone off in the front office

by now.

"Of course they have, the instant that door was opened," Passar said, racing out of the

cell. "Let's go this way." "But the front entrance is that way," Jules protested, pointing in

the opposite direction. "I remember that much from when they brought me in.

"Sure-and that's exactly the direction they'll expect us to go. This way's the laundry

chute; they won't look for us in there right away." He pulled at Jules' sleeve. "Come on.

Jules followed the older man down the narrow corridors of cells. They passed plenty of

other prisoners who watched them go by silently. Some of the men gave Jules the high

sign as he went by, wishing him luck and wishing they could be along. None of them

would utter a sound or do anything to ruin his chances of escape. Such was the

camaraderie of prison life.

The sound of running footsteps came from the hall ahead of them. Passar found them a

small side door and they turned into it just as a group of guards appeared at the far end

of the hallway. While Jules and his partner scarcely dared breathe, the squad ran past

their hiding place and back down the corridor the pair had just come from. Passar waited

several seconds to make sure they'd all be gone, then burst out of the room and

continued on his way. Jules was right behind him, brandishing his weapons menacingly.

They came to the laundry chute. Passar opened it up and slid down it without hesitation;

again, Jules was right on his tai!. Together the two men tumbled down the metal slide

and landed with a soft whoosh amid a pile of smelly old prison uniforms. Climbing quickly

out of the bin, they looked around.

It was Passar who found what they needed-some guard's uniforms that had been stained

and were sent here for quick cleaning. Jules found one his size and was starting to get

into it when an inmate-a trusty, no doubt-came around the corner. Before he could do

much more than register his surprise, Jules had given him a light stun. As he fell to the

floor, Jules continued dressing.

There were no uniforms in Passar's size, so they hastily devised a plan. "I'll be a guard

transporting you to another cell block," Jules said. "If we play it right, no one'll give us a

second glance. Which way do we go?.

"'That way's out." Passar pointed to a small locked door that led out the side of the

laundry area. A short blast from Jules' gun and the door was no longer a barrier. The two

men walked out into the yard, Passar a little ahead with Jules holding the stun-gun on

him.

There was great confusion in the yard as guards rats around everywhere, trying to look

as though they did not know exactly what was going on. Actually, Jules' and Passar's

actions had been monitored each step of the way, and all the guards had been told that

the breakout was scheduled. Their major concern was to see that none of the other

prisoners took advantage of the situation and tried any breaks on their own.

A number of guard cars had been scattered about the yard. Jules and Passar took the

one that looked the fastest and got in. "We'll never get out the gates, though," Passar

was muttering. "They close automatically at an escape attempt, and can only be opened

from a guard station.

"Stop sniveling," Jules snapped at him. "I'm a guard now myself, remember? And I've got

a couple of guns." As he drove up to the gate, he said, "Get down on the floor where

they can't see you. I've got an idea." Passar did as he was told, and Jules stopped in

front of the closed steel gate. A guard came over to him and recognized him instantly as

the man he was supposed to let escape. Nevertheless, he had to make it look good.

"Where are you going?" he asked.

"The warden wants me to patrol the perimeter," Jules said. "He thinks they may have

found a way to get outside the walls, and he wants me driving around to see if I can spot

anything." He also winked at the guard, a gesture Passar could not see from his position

on the floor.

The guard gave an imperceptible nod and said, "Khorosho, pass through." With a wave

of his hand he signaled his companion in the booth to open the gate. As the monstrous

steel doors swung wide, Jules gave him a wave of his hand and drove quickly outside.

He started around the wall until he was out of sight of the sentry, then tore off across the

open countryside in the direction of Bhangora.

Passar climbed up off the floor to sit beside Jules again. "I didn't think it'd work," he said.

"I thought you had to have special papers or something to get out.

"Aah, we got them so confused right now they don't know what they're doing," Jules

excused.

"In any event, we won't have more than a couple of minutes before they realize we're

gone," Passar said. "Better gun it to Bhangora. That way." He pointed, and Jules drove

obediently in the indicated direction. From here on, he'd have to let Passar lead him if he

intended to get where he wanted to go.

Three minutes later, Passar, who'd been checking out the window behind them, said,

"They're on our tail." Indeed they were. At least a dozen police cruisers were chasing

them, making a pretense at trying to recapture them. Jules hit the accelerator as hard as

he could and the escapees' car zoomed ahead at maximum speed. Jules' reflexes were

superb, and he drove the car like an extension of himself. On the seat beside him, he

knew that Passar was sitting white-knuckled at the recklessness of his driving. All part of

the atmosphere, Jules thought, smiling inwardly.

If this were a real jailbreak, of course, there would be roadblocks ahead of them as well

as pursuit from behind. There would be copters and personal flyers spotting them from

the air, possibly even dropping small gas bombs. But this break was programmed to

succeed, and it couldn't be made too difficult. At the same time, those cars to their rear

had to be used so that it wouldn't look too easy to the suspicious Passar. The main point

was that events had to move so fast that he wouldn't have time to think; he would have to

accept events at their face value. For five minutes they zipped along country roads and

through open fields where families of peasants were tending their crops. After that,

though, they reached the edges of the city. Houses became bigger and more closely

spaced; other types of buildings-factories, shops, grocery stores-began to make their

appearance. People were more prevalent, too, walking along the sides of the road,

carrying bundles, engaging in commerce. Despite his desire to hurry, Jules had to slow

down to avoid hitting any of the pedestrians.

"We'll have to ditch the car soon," Passar said. "They'll have tracers on us in a little while.

We're getting into a neighborhood I know, though, so we'll be able to find hiding spots

until some of the heat's off." He began directing Jules along the proper course.

They were definitely within the city now, and Jules' speed had been reduced practically

to a crawl. The houses to either side were dirty and ill-kept. Windows were shattered

more often than not. Children played naked in the streets, their shouts and squeals

echoing down the canyons of buildings. Wash hung from lines that were strung across

the streets themselves, sometimes only a meter or two above the tops of passing

vehicles. The clothes could not get completely clean that way, but no one seemed to

care very much.

The people living in the houses, though, were the lucky ones. The sidewalks were

jammed sometimes two or three deep with people and their belongings. Tattered old

blankets stretched out on the ground served some people as mattresses. Others lay

down just in the hard-packed dirt or mud. Small fires were set right out at the edge of the

street, where soup kettles seemed to be constantly boiling. Everywhere was the look of

starvation and apathy. Jules shuddered to think of it, but kept his disgust hidden; as Har

Koosman, such sights should be as familiar to him as his own face in the mirror.

At length they came to a spot where the street was frankly impassable. The press of

people had become so great that they simply overflowed the sidewalks into the

thoroughfare, and no vehicle could hope to get through. Jules looked at Passar for

advice, but the latter only shrugged. "We'd've had to go on foot from here, anyhow," the

older man said.

Jules stripped off his guard uniform to the caftan beneath it and the two escapees

jumped from their car, leaving it stopped in the middle of the street to be stolen by

anyone passing by. Passar started running through the crowd, slipping between the

people who jammed the path as though he were a boneless figure. There obviously was

an art to dodging through crowds like this, but it was one that Jules had not mastered.

Try though he did to follow Passar's motions exactly, be found himself knocking people

over or stepping on their feet as he raced along after his companion. Every few meters

he would have to leap over the body of someone sleeping or, possibly, dead on the

sidewalk. How he managed to keep Passar in sight while maneuvering through the throng

he was never sure afterwards; somehow, though, desperation gave him the extra edge

he needed.

Passar never looked back to see whether Jules was following him or not. He assumed,

probably, that Jules was as adept at street running as he was, and consequently didn't

see how clumsy his partner really was. That might have broken Jules' cover right there.

But Passar's attention was focused on two things-first, to get them lost in the crowd as

thoroughly as possible so that the police following them would not be able to find them;

and second, to take them to a place of refuge.

At last, Passar turned off the main streets and into a back alley that ran between two

rows of buildings. He raced about a third of the way down the row, then descended a

short flight of stairs to a basement door. Jules broke free of the crowd in the streets and,

with an extra burst of speed, managed to catch up with the older man enough to make

him think he'd been right behind all the time.

Passar gave two quick raps on the door, paused, gave another rap, paused again, then

gave one more rap. The door swung inward, and Passar and Jules slid inside into a

darkened room. At first, Jules could not see a thing, his eyes being accustomed to the

glare of the light outside; but as his eyes became adjusted to the gloom he could see

that they were in a storage cellar. Racks of bottles ran the length of the room, with large

stacks of boxes scattered in the aisles between the racks.

"Where are we?" Jules asked.

"Safe," Passar said ambiguously. "It don't pay you to know more than that.

Jules took the hint and shut up. The place must be a bar or cocktail lounge, judging from

all the bottles piled around. It was also a hiding place of some repute, because the door

had opened immediately at Passar's knocks, indicating it was constantly manned. On a

planet where crime was as rife as on Chandakha, criminals would have systems of

hideouts. It was also likely, Jules thought, that they would have to pay a price for their

sanctuary.

"Oh, it's you, Passar," said the man who'd opened the door-a large, burly fellow with a

face that had suffered through a thousand barroom brawls. "Funny; I didn't think we'd be

seeing you for quite some time. We'd heard you'd found another hangout, eh?" He

laughed at his own small joke.

Passar joined him in the laughter. "Well, it seems they didn't like my company, so they let

me out a little early me and my friend here." He hesitated a moment, then added, "Ah,

the only trouble is that we packed in such a hurry that we neglected to bring our wallets.

"That is a shame," the doorman agreed solemnly. "Gospodin Tuhlman will have to be

apprized of this." "Of course," Passar said as the other man pressed an intercom button.

Turning to Jules, Passar said, "Don't worry, I know Tuhlman pretty well. He won't turn us

out. There's always little odd jobs that need doing. We can trade services for our keep.

Everything'll be all right." And he winked at Jules.

CHAPTER 10

Games

Yvette spent most of the day after her talk with Myerson wandering aimlessly around

Vesa, trying to get her thoughts in order. Think, girl, she commanded herself. You're

behaving like a schoolchild. Don't let your brain turn to jelly. Think.

There was one weak link in the chain of killings, one spot where the killers would have to

surface-the victim's hotel. Spaceship tickets could be cashed in over the phone and the

money deposited to a blind bank account, but somebody would have to go to the hotel

and remove the victim's belongings personally. The killers would have to have the

compliance of some person or persons on the hotel staff to be able to clean out a room

so thoroughly and so quickly. And they would need the assistance of someone to arrange

all the checkouts. Which meant widespread corruption throughout the staffs of each

tourist hotel on the moon.

At 0130 hours that night she walked calmly into the lobby of the Soyuz Hotel, where Dak

had been staying. Even at this hour there were large numbers of people crossing the

lobby or sitting around in chairs reading the local newsrolls. The nightclerk was on duty

behind the desk, sorting some incoming mail.

Yvette strode confidently up to the desk, her bouppelande swirling as she moved. "Were

you on duty here last night?" she asked.

"Yes, I was," the man replied without looking up from his task.

"I'm told that a man named Dak Lehman checked out exactly twenty-four hours ago.

"It's possible.

"I'd like to know some more of the details about his departure.

"Gospozha, so many people check in and out that I. . . ." He stopped suddenly as he

looked up from his work. Yvette was holding the stun-gun she had taken from Myerson,

and the muzzle was only ten centimeters from the clerk's face. The bulk of her body hid

the gun from the view of the rest of the people in the lobby. "What is this, a robbery?.

"No, as I said, I only want some information, and I think you can give it to me. Is there

somewhere private we can go?.

"Th-there's the office back here," the clerk said, never taking his eyes off the barrel of

the gun.

"Good; I suggest we go there at once. I also suggest you make no sudden movements. I

am, by nature, a very nervous person, and this stun-gun is set on eight. It would paralyze

you for days at least, with the possibility of permanent crippling. I'm sure you wouldn't

like that, would you?.

"No, gospozha, not at all," the man assured her. "Follow me, please.

He led her into a small, well-appointed office behind the front desk. She closed the door

behind them and motioned for him to sit down in the easy chair. When he'd done so, she

took a length of rope out of her purse and proceeded to tie him up quite securely.

"Now that we've got the preliminaries out of the way I can explain the rules of the game,"

Yvette said coolly. "I'll ask you questions and you'll provide me with answers. You have

three alternatives-you can either lie, remain silent or tell the truth. I also have three

alternatives-I can either accept what you've said, kick you where it hurts most or use my

gun. Very simple rules, don't you agree?.

The clerk was sweating profusely, and could only nod his head in reply.

Yvette had a fourth alternative, namely the nitrobarb that was still concealed in her shoe;

but using it on so insignificant a cog in the killers' machine would be pointless. One

doesn't use a blaster to kill gnats.

"All right, then, we'll begin. Did Dak Lehman actually check out last night?.

The man wet his lips with his tongue. "I can show you on the records that. . . .

"I saw the records yesterday afternoon. They don't prove a damn thing. You were there,

gospodin. Did Dak Lehman personally check out of this hotel?.

The clerk was on a spot and he knew it. This ferocious young lady meant business. "Not

personally, no. A friend of his checked out for him.

"A friend, eh? Did this friend also go up to the room and clear out all of Gospodin

Lehman's belongings?" "Yes, and he also paid the bill. Look, he had a key so I thought it

would be all right.

"Yes, I'm sure you did. This friend-had you ever seen him before?.

"What do you mean?.

"I'm asking the questions here. I would think my meaning was perfectly clear; I used only

two words with more than one syllable." She began limbering up her foot as though

preparing to kick him in a very sensitive area. The man watched her nervously.

"Uh, yes, I had seen him before.

Yvette cocked her head. "Talking to you, tovarishch, is like pulling teeth. I think we'll add

a new rule to the game. It's called completeness of answer, and the way it works is that

you try to answer each question as fully as you can, without making me ask a dozen to

get the whole story. Each time your answer is not as full as I'd like it, I break one of your

fingers. That's known as incentive. Now, would you like to try that last answer one more

time?.

The poor clerk was sweating blood now. "Yes, I'd seen him before. He comes in here

fairly regularly-two, three, sometimes four times a week. I don't know his name, though,

honest.

"And does he always check other people out of their rooms?.

"Always," the man nodded. "The first thing I know about it is when he comes down to the

desk with all their luggage packed. He hands in the key and pays the bill in cash. The

hotel doesn't care who checks out as long as the bill's paid.

"No, I don't suppose it does. He must be a remarkably friendly fellow to have so many

people trusting him with their belongings, don't you think? No need to answer that, it was

just rhetorical. Tell me, though, don't you think it's strange that he does this so often?.

"Yes, I do. But I don't think it's any of my business." "How much is this friend paying you

to think it's none of your business?.

"Fifty rubles each time. But listen, I've got a wife and kids to support, I need. . . .

"That answer is getting a little too full thank you. I'm not interested in your personal

problems, although I am interested in your morality." She stared straight into the man's

eyes. "You know what's happening to all these guests of yours, don't you? The ones who

never check out for themselves?.

The clerk took a long, deep breath. There was no point holding any more back-this

woman obviously knew most of the story anyway. She was toying with him, seeming to

enjoy every little twist of the psychological knife she had stuck in him. "Yes," he sighed.

"They're being murdered. It's a fact of life here on Vesa, and most people accept it. It's

only tourists who are killed, never us natives. We accept it.

"Accepting it is one thing, but you're actually helping it. How does that make you feel?

How can you go home to a wife and kids you supposedly love and yet know that you

have a hand in killing innocent people? How can you face them?.

The man shrugged as best he could while tied up. "If I didn't do it, somebody else would.

Why shouldn't I get the money out of it?.

Yvette sighed with exasperation. That rationalization had been in existence as long as

moral cowardice itself. There was probably at least one corrupt desk clerk in every hotel

on Vesa. There was no point arguing this matter further; to the best of this man's limited

moral vision he had done no wrong. She decided to change her tack. "Don't the police

ever bother you about these disappearances?.

"No, why should they? They're under orders not to interfere.

Under orders? That brought Yvette right back to the point that had initially been brought

up in the Head's office. "There's only one person who can give the police an order like

that, isn't there? The Marchioness.

"That's what I understand. Look, I'm not really a part of this whole thing, I'm only paid to

look the other way. I'm no murderer, I don't know anything about them. All I do know is

what I hear gossiped around, and people say that the Marchioness has given 'hands off'

orders. That's all I can tell you, honest. I don't know anything else.

Yvette was inclined to believe him. This clerk was just a minor part of the operation; he

wouldn't be privy to the conspiracy's inner secrets. He had given her several leads and

confirmed a lot of what she'd already suspected. She shouldn't press him for more.

"All right," she said aloud. "I'll tell you what I'm going to do. Because you've been so

good at playing this game, I won't hurt you." The man's body visibly sagged with relief. "I

will, however, have to keep you out of the way for a while, so that you don't tell anyone

about my visit here. I'm turning the setting on this stunner down to seven; you'll be out for

approximately thirty-six hours and groggy for a little bit after that, but there'll be no

permanent effects. I'd suggest, though, that you move to some other planet and find a

new job at once, if you know what's good for you-preferably an honest job.

The man started to protest, but to no avail. Yvette was already squeezing the trigger.

The clerk slumped bonelessly in his chair and Yvette stood up, put the gun back into her

purse and walked casually out of the office.

Looks like I'll have to go right to the top, she thought. Flagging down a jit, she headed

back for her hotel so that she could get some sleep before paying a call tomorrow on

Marchioness Gindri.

In most places, the social calendar of someone as high ranking as a marchioness would

have made it impossible for Yvette to get an appointment sooner than two or three days

away. In the hierarchy of nobility, marquises ranked just below dukes, who ruled

individual planets. A marquis was the lord of a continent-or, in the case of Vesa, a

moon-and had a vast territory to oversee. The responsibility was enormous, and the

amount of time available for private audiences was therefore limited.

Yvette knew well enough the weight of such nobility. Her father, Etienne d'Alembert, was

the Duke of DesPlaines; because he was usually busy managing the Circus-and its

clandestine activities for the Emperor the planet was usually run by Yvette's older brother

Robert who, as heir to the title of DesPlaines, went by the honorific of the next lower

rank, marquis. Robert was an anomaly among d'Alemberts-a man who preferred the

quiet harassment of running a world to the excitement of traveling with the Circus-and the

Duke was glad of the opportunity to dump the responsibility on the shoulders of his heir.

Yvette knew bow strenuous the governing of a planet could be from having seen her

brother in action, and she fully expected Marchioness Gindri to be as busy.

Instead, she found that-with the offer of a small bribe -she could convince the

Marchioness's appointments secretary to schedule her for that very afternoon. She was

a little surprised, but pleased with the fast action. She told the secretary that she was

interested in investing some of her considerable fortune on Vesa, and was informed that

the Marchioness would be eager to hear her plans.

When she arrived, Yvette found the palace gaudy and pretentious-but she had expected

as much. Vesa itself was like that, so why should its ruler be any different? Precious

metals, expensive woods and exquisite marbles comprised the setting, with gems inlaid

into even the most trivial of objects. The display of opulence and bad taste offended the

SOTE agent, but she kept her feelings strictly in line. Not everyone was raised in a tent,

she reflected. Tastes differ.

She found it harder to keep her emotions in check when she was finally ushered into the

Marchioness's presence. The meeting took place in the salon, a coo as ostentatious as

any Yvette had seen. The floor was an abstract pattern of inlaid tiles, the walls were of

brown marble and the high-vaulted ceiling was painted in an almost surrealistic design of

a spaceship battle that had never taken place. The arched entranceways were

supported by pillars a full four meters tall. The room was cluttered with furniture, all of it

upholstered in silver embroidered rose satin and wildly overstuffed.

In the center of the room, draped in pearls, sat the Marchioness Gindri, all one hundred

and fifty kilograms of her. Her pasty skin shook whenever she made the slightest

movement, like a tubful of jelly. Her eyes were deep-set and piggy, her nose large and

set flatly against her face. Her mouth seemed intrinsically incapable of closing

completely.

Beside and slightly behind the Marchioness's chair stood a man whose face impressed

Yvette immediately. His mouth was ringed by a full brown beard and mustache, his eyes

were sharp and missed no details as their gaze continually darted about the room. There

was a feral intelligence lurking behind those eyes, Yvette decided. The man was dressed

in a white tunic-jacket and slacks, with a fist-sized emerald hanging from a gold chain

about his neck. In other contexts Yvette would have thought him overweight, but standing

beside the Marchioness he looked positively emaciated.

No wonder she's got an empty calendar, Yvette thought. No one wants anything to do

with her.

Keeping a firm mask over her true feelings, Yvette curtsied and approached to within two

meters. As the daughter of a duke and sister of a marquis, she had been schooled in all

the courtly graces and could outpoint anyone on etiquette. But Carmen Velasquez was

supposed to be a commoner and, despite having a lot of money, was inexperienced at

dealing with nobility. Deliberately she made her curtsy awkward and projected a

nervousness at being in the Marchioness's presence that' she certainly did not feel. "Your

Highness she began fumblingly.

The man standing beside the Marchioness corrected her. "Your Excellency," he

prompted.

"Yes, oh, sorry, Your Excellency. I'm sorry, I've never met anyone of your exalted rank

before. My name is Carmen Velasquez and I asked to see you because I was wanting to

invest a great deal of my money on Vesa and I wanted to discuss various plans.

"Do you like Vesa?" the Marchioness asked. Her voice was quite raspy and seemed to

escape from rather than be uttered by, that large mouth and multiple chins.

"Oh, very much, Your Excellency. I've been here a couple of weeks now and I find it

fascinating. My husband died recently, leaving me with a considerable fortune, and your

moon looks like a good breeding ground for cash. A smart person could make a killing

here.

She scrutinized the faces of both people opposite her, but neither reacted to the word

"killing." She hadn't expected them to, but anything was worth a try.

"Many fortunes have indeed been made here, gospozha," said the man, "and small ones

have been enlarged. There is always room for capital investment. How much were you

thinking of investing?.

"Please pardon me, gospodin, but I don't recall having been told your name," Yvette

excused. "I don't mean to be rude, but my husband always told me to find out

beforehand who you're dealing with.

"Of course, dear lady; the apologies are all mine for not having spoken up sooner. My

name is Garst, and I am Her Excellency's First Advisor.

Though her face remained placid, her mind was spinning as she tried to place that name.

Garst. I know I've heard it somewhere before. But where? "Thank you, Gospodin Garst.

I was considering a modest sum to start out with-say, seven or eight million rubles?.

The way Garst's eyes lit up, she could tell he considered that sum to be slightly better

than modest. He began eyeing her in much greater detail now, trying to peek behind the

figurative mask she was wearing to discover more about this mysterious rich widow. She

could almost hear the gears clicking in his brain. Then suddenly, as his eyes were

traveling over her body, he froze for the slightest of instants. A scowl flew quickly across

his face and disappeared. "That's a very attractive offer from a very attractive

DesPlainian," he said. Did she detect an ever-so-slight emphasis on that last word.

"I'm not a DesPlainian, though you're close," she hastened to point out. "I'm originally

from Purity, though I saw the error of those ways early enough to leave before becoming

thoroughly conditioned. The gravities of the two planets are remarkably similar, though,

and lead to similar body structures, so I can understand the confusion.

"My mistake, gospozha. Please forgive the error." His voice was now carefully neutral,

giving not the slightest clue to his feelings.

Suddenly Yvette remembered where she'd heard Garst's name before. Dak had

mentioned it. He'd said he was going to a private party at the home of someone named

Garst, a local VIP. It was the last thing on his agenda the day he . . . disappeared.

Myerson had confirmed that Dak had set out to Garst's party, and that was the last

anyone had ever seen of him. Suddenly this fellow Garst took on a strange new

fascination for Yvette.

He doesn't leave the Marchioness's side, she noticed. It was as though Vesa's ruler

depended on him for more than just advice. "I'm glad you find my offer attractive," she

said casually. "I know you have plenty of hotels and casinos here already, but you also

have so many tourists that I thought one more could always help. To be a little different, I

was thinking of subsidizing the construction of a transparent dome up on the actual

surface of the moon-with, naturally, transportation tunnels linking it to the rest of Vesa

underground. It would be something unique here, and I think the tourists would go for it in

a big way.

"The thought of a surface dome has been brought up before," Garst said. "There are, of

course, numerous problems to overcome, such as the threat of meteor damage. So far

there hasn't been anyone with sufficient capita! and incentive to follow through on the

idea. Perhaps you will be the first.

They continued to talk for another fifteen minutes, but the conversation quickly became a

verbal sparring match between Yvette and the First Advisor. While the Marchioness sat

idly by and listened only to what was said, the other two antagonists were carefully

measuring each other's words, tones and inflections for hidden meanings and possible

weaknesses. It was a serious verbal game of cat-and-mouse, with neither side willing to

concede a point to the other. Yvette detailed her "plans" for the dome and Garst

promised the Marchioness's support of the project; but below that level, nothing was

accomplished other than a suspicious circling.

By the time she had to leave, Yvette had firmed up several of her suspicions.

Marchioness Gindri was not the brains behind this conspiracy of murder, that much was

certain; Yvette saw her as a silly-and very sadwoman. She might well know what was

going on, would almost have to, in fact, to give the police their "hands off" orders; they

wouldn't take such orders from anyone less, even the First Advisor, lest they be

discovered. But Gindri had neither the cunning to set up such an organization nor the

drive to keep it going. That would take someone with a lot more guile and a lot fewer

weaknesses.

Garst fit that description perfectly. There was an innate craftiness about him that would

allow him to conceive of such a scheme; a coldness that would brush aside all moral

inhibitions; and a high position that would allow him to act virtually unchecked.

She was definitely going to have to learn more about this Gospodin Garst-and as quickly

as possible.

As soon as the Velasquez woman had left the palace, Garst excused himself from the

Marchioness's presence and went to ca!! his lieutenant, Lessin. "Is there any word yet on

duChamps?" he asked.

"None," Lessin reported, "but it shouldn't be much longer. I've had an artist do up a

composite sketch on his face, and every man we've got here has seen it. I've even sent a

copy down to the school, on the off chance he'll show up there.

"Good. There's someone else we may have to check out, a woman named Carmen

Velasquez. She also looks to be a DesPlainian, which is what made me suspicious. She

came in here with too good an offer, and I think she's fishing for something. She claims

to be an ex-Puritan, but I've known a few of them and they're not at all like her. Whoever

she Is, she's awfully shrewd-too shrewd to be just what she appears.

"Do you want her eliminated?.

Garst shook his head. "No, not yet. There's still the chance that she might be legitimate,

and her business deal would be a very good one if we could swing it. But I do want to

keep a check on her. She said she's staying at the Hotel Regulus. I want her watched all

the time. I want to know where she goes, what she does and who she talks to." And

particularly, he thought, whether she contacts a DesPlainian calling himself Georges

duChamps. She could be the key to cracking that mystery.

CHAPTER 11

School for Stranglers

As Passar had told him, everything turned out all right better than all right, in fact. Jules

had not dared hope to be so successful so quickly.

Passar took Jules upstairs and introduced him to Tuhlman, a short, oily man built like a

barrel and smelling like a locker room. Tuhlman was full of pointed questions about their

escape, which he viewed as nothing short of miraculous. Jules let Passar do most of the

talking. Tuhlman would believe the story more if it came from someone he knew-and

besides, Passar did such a good job of embellishing it that Jules could hardly recognize

their escapades himself. Any slipups he might have made were covered nicely by

Passar's exaggerations.

Then came the matter of paying for their sanctuary. Passar was no problem-he had

plenty of contacts and could line himself up with a lot of work in no time. But Jules was

another matter. Tuhlman questioned him in depth about his past, and Jules answered

carefully from the background Chief Kantana had prepared for him. The picture that

resulted was that of a man who would be hunted down like an animal if he stayed on

Chandakha, who had a large family that he wanted desperately to support, and who

would do anything-including killing to get money. The portrait, Jules hoped, of an ideal

recruit for the Vesan conspiracy.

Tuhlman took the bait. He asked Passar to leave the room for a few minutes, and talked

to Jules privately about an organization that might help him get off world and at the same

time look after his family. The work they would require of him would be both easy and

safe, though Tuhlman was careful not to go too deeply into specifics. He spoke in such

glowing terms that Jules was convinced the man got a commission for each recruit he

gathered. It was a hard sales pitch to resist, and Jules did not want to. He told Tuhlman

he'd be delighted to sign up, and the two men shook hands on the deal. Tuhlman then

had Passar and Jules shown to a small room where they had a good hot meal and spent

the night.

Bright and early the next morning, two men came and awakened Jules brusquely,

rousting him out of bed and telling him to dress quickly. He got only a fast cup of tepid

tea as he was rushed out to a waiting copier that took off as soon as he and the men

were aboard. The men put a blindfold on him and circled around the city for a while until

they were sure his sense of direction had been scrambled, then set off for their

destination. Jules asked where they were going and was told bluntly to shut up and mind

his own business. The rest of the trip was conducted in silence.

The quiet was just as well. Jules, not having a watch or any artificial method of gauging

the time, took advantage of the lack of conversation to count his own heartbeats. He had

to find out how far away from Bhangora the training center was; and that biological

rhythm would be his only clue.

About an hour and a half elapsed, according to his estimate, before the copier touched

ground again. The blindfold was taken off and Jules looked around, blinking at the harsh

daylight after so long a period of darkness.

The copier was in the middle of a large open courtyard, with dirt underfoot. Around them

were clumps of men going through various drilling exercises in groups of six or seven. A

stone wall six meters high enclosed the yard on three sides, while on the fourth were a

series of barracks-like buildings. It's a regular army camp, Jules thought, impressed.

They've certainly got organization, if nothing else.

Jules' guards led him to the nearest of the buildings, which had a slightly more official

look to it than the others. Inside, he was escorted to a small anteroom and told to wait.

Two minutes later, he was ushered into the inner office.

The room was Spartan in its simplicity. A battered wooden desk, a swivel chair, a table,

two straight-backed wooden chairs and a chalkboard were the only furnishings. The

window glasses had been partially opaqued to cut down on the glare from outside, and

Jules-whose eyes had just gotten used to the brightness-now had to adjust to the lower

level of lighting once again.

The man standing behind the desk had an impressive military bearing. He was one of the

tallest Chandakhari Jules had ever seen, easily two meters tall, His posture was

frighteningly erect, and his face bore the scars of countless street fights and melees. He

was dressed in a simple brown caftan that went all the way to the floor.

"Welcome, Gospodin Koosman, to our little school." The man made no offer to shake

hands, and instead pointed to a chair. Jules crossed the room and sat down; after he

was seated, the other sat down as well. "My name is Jakherdi, and we will be getting to

know each other quite well over the next few weeks.

"I'm sure I'll enjoy that, sir," Jules said politely.

The other man sneered. "I doubt that very much. I'm told that in your past experience you

have killed men before. Is that correct?.

"Sure, it's hard to avoid it out on the streets." "How many?.

"I never counted. Maybe a dozen, I don't know. There were two guards in the palace of

the Baron of Calpuna, I do know that.

Jakherdi gave a small snort. "You'll have to become accustomed to perhaps three times

that number in a week if you work for us. And you will not kill them in a haphazard,

streetfighter's style, either. Your kills will be neat, trim and businesslike. We will train you

until it becomes routine, and you'll be working with others who've been as thoroughly

trained as you. You will without emotion, for one motive only-profit. Killing out of passion

weakens the soul, and we do not employ weak souls. Do I make myself clear?.

"Yes, very. But the police are looking for me. . . ." "They won't be looking for you on

Vesa, which is where we will take you when you've finished your training. Nor will they be

looking for you here, since they don't know this place exists. Let us worry about the

risks, Koosman; your sole concern is to learn what we teach and to perform well. If you

do those two things, you will be rewarded far beyond your expectations. That's all I have

to say to you now; someone will show you to your barracks and get you the supplies

you'll need, then you'll join a novice training group. Good luck.

"Thank you, sir.

Jules was escorted to a building toward the back of the camp and assigned a bunk of his

own. Since he had escaped from the prison without any belongings, he had no unpacking

to do. Clothes were found that were approximately his size; he changed into them and

was led outside to be introduced to the other new recruits.

That day was spent mostly in classroom activity. Jules received the basic indoctrination

on what the group was like, what its motivation was and how it operated. He learned that

victims were chosen at random by an advance member of the team who specialized in

this kind of contact. This lead man would approach the victim or victims, strike up a

casual conversation and determine whether they were worth killing. If they were, he

would quickly work his way into their confidence and find some way of isolating them

from everyone except his own people. They would be killed by strangulation, a team

maneuver that made the victim helpless and made the kill most efficient. Their bodies

would be stripped of valuables and then disposed of while one or two members of the

team would go to the victim's hotel room and clean it out, leaving no trace. Return

spaceship tickets were then cashed in, and the person ceased to be.

"There must be no doors left open behind us," the teacher emphasized. "This operation

has lasted for twenty years because we carefully close off each possible lead to

ourselves. There is no handle on us to grab. We are like the wind, sweeping what we

can before us and then vanishing without trace.

"Excuse me, sir," Jules said, raising his hand. "May I be permitted a question?.

"You're here to learn, and questions help.

"You mentioned disposing of the bodies. If there are as many as you say, how can we

dispose of them all without someone spotting them?" This had been the major puzzle he

and Yvette had been unable to decipher. He hoped to get an answer now.

"Very intelligent point. We utilize the nature of Vesa itself. It is a closed, airless moon and

has to recycle as much of its material as it can. Vesa had an admirably efficient recycling

plant. We simply send the bodies there and they help maintain the balance of life on

Vesa.

Once the explanation was given, the simplicity of it washed over Jules like a wave

coming in to shore. Of course that was the answer! There would be no recognizable

traces of the victims left, just a few centiliters of metallic wastes at the bottom of the

recycling bin. Whoever had thought of this scheme had been thorough and brilliant in

carrying it through.

After the classes they had a small lunch, then spent the rest of the afternoon out in the

yard doing exercises and team drills, learning how to react to situations as a group and

how to work together to achieve their objectives. The workout was easy to Jules, after

the regimen he'd had to undergo as a circus performer, but it seemed grueling to his

fellow students and so he pretended to be as tired as any of them when the day was

through and they were fed their dinner. In the evening, there were classes in philosophy

and meditation, to help them reach a state of peace within themselves so that the idea of

mass murder would not seem so horrible. By 2200 hours, everyone was more than

eager to get into bed and sleep.

Jules waited until he was sure everyone else in his barracks was asleep. then stole

outside into the courtyard. He had to discover the location of this place if the Service was

to make a clean sweep of the operation. Earlier in the day, while he'd been exercising. a

breeze had wafted by, carrying with it a slight scent of the sea. He could hear no

breakers, though, so he knew they must be some distance inland. The birds that perched

on the wall were unfamiliar to him, but did not appear to have webbed feet; that wasn't

much of an indication one way or another, though.

The night was clear, which was a blessing because he could see the stars. He had no

instruments handy and no watch, so he could not even attempt to guess his longitude, but

he could make a rough stab at latitude. He did not know the local constellations, but he

could memorize the configurations of stars closest to the northern and southern horizons.

When he was able to check some star charts at a later time, he'd be able to guess his

approximate latitude-and with that information, plus the knowledge of the flying time in a

copier from Bhangora, plus the knowledge that a seacoast was nearby, SOTE should be

able to track down where this school was. It might take a little bit of effort, but the

Service could muster a lot of resources if it needed them.

His observations completed, Jules started back to the barracks. He heard a noise and

slipped into the deeper shadows as a sentry walked past. The man continued on his way

without seeing anything and, as soon as he was gone, Jules returned to his bunk. With

no indication that anything was amiss or that his absence had been noted, Jules slipped

between the covers and went right to sleep.

The next day started as an exact copy of the one before. After a communal breakfast,

Jules and his barracks mates were taken to a classroom and more instruction was begun

on the philosophy of killing and the techniques the stranglers were to use. Films were

shown depicting actual kills, with the instructor commenting on good and bad points of

the killer's performances. To Jules, the idea of watching such a film was hideous, but he

sat stony faced along with the others in the class and watched the action unfold before

him.

Halfway through the film, though, there was an interruption as a messenger came into the

room to tell the teacher that Jules was wanted in Jakherdi's office at once. Wondering

what this obvious change in procedure could mean, Jules accompanied the messenger

back to the administration building.

The secretary who had been in the outer office building yesterday was not there at

present, leaving that room strangely quiet. Jules was instantly on guard against

treachery. The messenger told Jules to go right into the inner office, that he was

expected. Maybe a little too expected, Jules thought as he reached for the doorknob.

He opened the door, but made no immediate move to enter the room; instead, he looked

around inside. Standing directly before him, silhouetted against the window, was

Jakherdi, looking as impressively military as yesterday. On the desk in front of Jakherdi

was a piece of paper that looked like a sketch of a face. Jules didn't need much intuition

to tell him who the sketch represented.

They certainly work fast up on Vesa, he thought with a mental sigh. Faster than I'd

hoped.

"Come in, Koosman," Jakherdi said crisply.

There were only two ways to go, forward or back. Even as he ticked off those options,

Jules could feel the rear exit being closed. Some sixth sense told him of the presence of

several people in the corridor outside the anteroom. Any attempt to go out that way

would get him shot before he even reached the door.

Going into the office was the only alternative, and even that had to be a trap. Jules was

sure the camp's superintendent would have at least one armed man on each side of the

doorway out of view, just waiting for him to step inside. He didn't know whether the men

had orders to stun or kill, but it made little difference; even if they only captured him now,

they were certain to kill him later-after a shot of nitrobarb, more than likely.

He dared not hesitate. To do so was to reveal that he suspected the trap, in which case

the gunmen would simply step out into view and shoot him instantly. He had no choice but

to enter the trap; the method of entry, however, would be distinctly his own.

"Yes, sir," he answered aloud, taking the first step inside. "May I ask what the matter

is?.

Then, before any more could be said, Jules acted. As his left foot came down from that

first step, he bent it quickly under him and leaped forward. It was an off balance leap and

he wasn't able to get as much strength into it as he would have liked-but, coming as a

surprise to the men inside the office, it was effective enough.

Jules landed just in front of the desk on his right leg, still off balance. He used that fact to

advantage, spinning counterclockwise backwards on his right foot quickly off to the right

side of the room. As he spun, he noticed that there were indeed two other men in the

room, one on each side of the doorway, but they were caught flatfooted by his dramatic

entrance. Before they could re-aim their weapons, Jules had braced his feet squarely;

bent the knees and used his superpowerful leg muscles to propel him directly at the

standing form of Jakherdi.

The camp master ducked, which was what Jules had been hoping he'd do. Curling

himself into a ball, Jules tucked his head down and braced himself. His body hit the glass

window like a hundred-kilo cannon ball. The shattering sound threatened to engulf the

entire universe as Jules passed through the shards into the courtyard beyond.

There were a thousand little stings from the glass cuts, but they were mostly on his

hands, the top of his head and the back of his neck-nonlethal places. His face and eyes

had been securely tucked inside. He tumbled as he flew through the air toward the

ground, but it was the controlled tumbling of a skilled aerialist. When he hit ground, he

used the momentum of his flight to roll forward and spring to his feet, preparatory to

running. A quick look around, however, was very discouraging.

The yard was filled with men, all armed with stunners.

They were surprised to see him come hurtling through the superintendent's window, but

the time it took Jules to come to his feet gave them enough opportunity to overcome their

surprise. They glared at him without emotion, but determination was written in their

stances.

Even though he knew there was no chance against this number, Jules' spirit did not sag. I

can at least show them that a d'Alembert goes out fighting, he thought, and charged at

the nearest cluster of men.

A number five stunbeam lanced out and dropped him where he stood, and he fell to the

ground in black oblivion.

Jakherdi looked out the hole in his window and gave a tight little smile upon seeing Jules'

unconscious body. "Is he still alive?" he asked his men.

"Yes, sir. He'll be out for hours, though.

"Good. Tie him up securely. Remember, he's a DesPlainian and can break out of

ordinary ropes. Make sure he has barely enough room to breathe, then bring him in here

to me. We have to ship him alive up to Vesa for questioning.

I pity you, Koosman or duChamps or whoever you are, the superintendent added silently

to himself. I know Garst and his methods. By the time he's finished with you you'll be

begging him for death-only by that time it'll be far too late.

CHAPTER 12

Secret Assaults

By the time she reached her hotel after her interview with the Marchioness, Yvette

realized that there were several pairs of eyes watching her intently. Ignoring the stares,

she strolled casually across the lobby and took the elevator tube down to her room.

Garst had obviously decided to keep tabs on her, but it was a move she'd been

expecting--she'd have done the same thing in his position.

She stayed in her room for half an hour, freshening up and making phone calls, then went

out and spent the rest of the afternoon in innocuous activities like gambling and a

sensable show. She took great pains to be obvious about what she was doing-she didn't

want to lose those tails. At least, not yet.

In the early evening she returned to her hotel and ate a leisurely dinner in the dining

room, then made no attempt to stifle a huge yawn as she descended the elevator tube to

her room once more. It should be readily apparent to anyone watching that she was

worn out and would be retiring for the night. Of course, that was not her intention at all.

Once safely inside the suite, there was no hint of fatigue as she set about her real

purpose with determination. Forty-five minutes in front of a mirror with her makeup kit

completely changed her face from that of the demure widow who had entered the room

such a short while before. A long blonde wig in a carefully planned state of divine

disarray added to her change in look. A skin-tight black leather jumpsuit-striking

contrasted to the more moderate outfits worn by Carmen Velasquez completed the

disguise. Only the shrewdest of observers would recognize her as the same woman who

had spent the day in such casual pursuits.

After a quick check to make sure she had all her equipment with her, she opened the

door and walked out of her suite. One of the men Garst had assigned to follow her was

seated on a bench by the elevator tubes at the end of the hallway. He looked up when

her door opened and stared for a moment at her disguise, not believing it. Then his

trained instincts came to the fore and he looked back at his newsroll, pretending not to

notice.

Yvette sauntered up to him, noticing as she did so that there was no one else in the

hallway at the moment. That would simplify things. As she reached into her bag, she

said, "Good evening," then drew out Myerson's stunner and casually shot the man at

point blank range before he could react. The number four stun would knock him out for at

least two hours-plenty of time for her to get away without anyone being the wiser.

She took the up tube to the lobby and strolled through it. Every male eye in the place

was on her as she swiveled her hips in sexy gyrations. Sometimes, she knew, the best

disguise was to be blatant. The men who'd been assigned to follow her were watching,

too, but they were seeing her as a sexual object, not as an assignment. She had an

impish urge to walk directly up to one of them and wink at him broadly, but managed to

resist the impulse. After all, there was no point in tempting fate.

Garst's men made no attempt to tail her as she left the lobby and hailed a jit on the

street outside. They would have liked to, of course, but for entirely different reasons than

before.

She had had no trouble earlier that day finding out where Garst lived; a few discreet

phone calls from her room before she'd gone out gambling had gained her that

information. She had checked the location on a map and formulated a plan of attack from

that. Now she directed the driver of her jit to take her to the dome intersection that

contained the entrance to Garst's house.

The more she thought about it, the more convinced she was that Garst had to be the

man behind this whole conspiracy. It had been obvious from the meeting this afternoon

that he could wrap the Marchioness around his little finger and make her do anything he

wanted. He had the intelligence, the cunning and the coldness to set up an organization

like this and keep it running for two decades without detection.

As one of the top agents for the Service of the Empire, it was well within her authority to

declare him a traitor just on the basis of what she already knew and execute him on the

spot. Without his genius for organization, the conspiracy he had fostered so carefully

would struggle along and eventually break up into small cliques that could be dealt with

more efficiently by local agencies. Her assignment would be considered accomplished

and no one, not even the Head himself, would be able to criticize her handling of the

affair.

But that was not the way Yvette d'Alembert liked to work. She was well aware of the

responsibility that went with her authority over matters of life and death. She had to have

irrefutable proof that Garst was indeed behind this before she would act-and it was to

obtain such proof that she was now paying a visit to his house. Besides, she was hoping

to get enough information to crack the whole gang wide open immediately, rather than

waiting for it to fall apart on its own after Garst's demise.

The jit reached her destination and Yvette got off and surveyed the area. The job would

be a little harder than she'd anticipated, as she realized that breaking and entering was a

much more hazardous occupation on Vesa than anywhere else in the Empire. Nearly all

houses were built underground, below street level, meaning that there were no windows

or upper stories to enter through. Also, being an underground settlement, the lights were

kept on round the clock, making it most difficult to skulk about in shadows.

The only way to break in, Yvette decided, would be to confront the problem directly. The

hour she bad chosen for her break-in was technically nighttime, though that meant little

on Vesa. People could be-and were-awake at all hours, but she was hoping that Garst

would not be at home. Walking boldly up to the door, she tried pushing down the latch. It

would not move, indicating the door was locked. That usually meant either no one was

home or the occupants were asleep, and that was an encouraging sign.

Reaching into her purse, Yvette pulled out a small passkey kit. The door lock was a

standard one that could be opened by the right combination of electronic impulses. The

passkey device she held was an extremely intricate and expensive piece of equipment.

An ultra miniature computer, it systematically ran through billions of possible

combinations in a matter of seconds, making an almost untamperable lock passable. In

less than a minute, Yvette heard the click informing her that the lock mechanism had

been turned off and the door could be opened.

She replaced the passkey in her purse and removed now the current detector. Far and

away the most common burglar alarm in use was one that would go off if an electrical

circuit were broken-by, for instance, opening the door while the alarm was turned on.

Sure enough, a quick check with her sensor revealed that Garst's door was wired with

just such a system. The detector allowed Yvette to trace the circuit around the door

frame; then, with a pinpoint laser drill, she bored through the wooden frame at specific

sites and was able to jump the system with some cables she had brought herself. Then,

after another check to make sure there were no other alarms attached, she quietly

opened the door and slipped inside.

The interior of the house was dark, but Yvette had come prepared for that eventuality.

She slipped on a pair of specially treated goggles and pulled a small infrared flashlight

out of her purse. The glow it gave the house was an eerie one, but it was good enough

for Yvette to see by without alarming anyone who might be inside. Thus equipped, she

set off to explore Garst's mansion.

The long hallway contained just a few chairs, a small table and a clock hanging on the

wall. The closet was just that, a place to hang cloaks and hats; she rapped lightly on the

walls, floor and ceiling, but could detect no hiding places within it.

She moved on to the first room, which was a living room. Yvette noticed that Garst had

top-quality furniture, better than the Marchioness's though less flashy; obviously, he was

a man of some taste. There were a lot of places for her to check, particularly two rows

of bookcases against the far wall, but she went through them with the efficiency of the

professional that she was. The next room, the dining room, was more sparsely furnished,

and it too checked out clean.

One door led out of the dining room to what she presumed would be the kitchen;

another, smaller door stood on the other side locked and defiant. A quick check showed

her that the room was locked mechanically rather than electronically, but that there were

no alarms attached to the door. Using her laser drill in a slightly different fashion, she

quickly burned out the lock mechanism and opened the door.

She found herself in a room that was smaller than either the living room or dining room. It

appeared to be a study of some sort, probably very comfortable but at the same time

there was something about it that seemed menacing. A small wooden desk stood in one

corner, its top littered with papers and bookreels. The residue receptacle was crammed

with the butts of stale cigarettes and dopesticks.

Yvette went quickly over and examined some of the papers. The writing did not show up

very well under her infrared light, but it did seem to be strings of numbers. Of course, it

was only natural that the Marchioness's First Advisor would be doing paperwork involving

figures, but Yvette wondered whether these numbers might not represent other interests

as well. Taking her minicam out of her purse, she proceeded to photograph the pages so

that they could be studied in more detail at her leisure.

When she'd finished with the papers on the top of the desk she tried the drawers to see

what she would discover in there. The drawers were locked, but she was able to force

them open with nothing more elaborate than her pocketknife. There seemed to be the

usual office supplies and stationery in most of the drawers, but in the bottom one she

detected a false backing. Prying it out, she discovered a set of bookreels. I wonder why

he's hiding these. Could they contain the records for his criminal organization.

Her sharp ears detected a slight sound behind her and she whirled around, her hand

simultaneously reaching into her purse for Myerson's stunner. But at that same instant

the lights in the room were switched on abruptly, blinding her through the goggles with

their sudden intensity. Blinking back tears, she strained to see who had surprised her.

"Easy, gospozha," came a cool voice. "There are four guns trained on you this instant. I'd

suggest you take your hands out of the purse very slowly.

As her eyes rapidly adjusted to the light she could make out that the speaker was not

Garst, but a short, stubby man. He had spoken the truth, though; behind him were three

other men, and all of them were armed with stunners.

Yvette did as the man suggested, looking for the precise moment when their guards

would relax enough for her to make her move. The one thing that was working in her

favor was that they probably would not be expecting a woman to be as fast and tough as

she was.

When he could see that her hand was empty of weapons, the man relaxed a bit. "That's

better. Now, toss your purse over in the corner there." Again, Yvette complied. "Garst

was expecting something on this order, and when we found you'd slipped our noose back

at your hotel we came straight here." He stepped to within a meter of her, the muzzle of

his gun dropping ever so slightly. "Please hand over that bookreel, if you don't mind.

In a casual gesture, Yvette raised her left hand to brush the long blonde hair of her wig

out of her eyes. The wig was held onto her head by a special glue that would come off at

a sharp tug without pulling her real hair with it. "Since you asked so politely, all right," she

said evenly, picking the bookreel up off the desktop with her right hand and extending it

toward the leader of her captors.

As he reached out to take it from her, Yvette acted. Whipping the wig off her head with

the left hand, she flung it directly into the man's face. Her captor instinctively lifted both

arms to protect his eyes from the flying object and Yvette took advantage of the opening.

Lunging forward, she drove her powerful right fist-still clutching the reel-into his solar

plexus. The man gave a dismal whoosh, dropped his gun and fell to the floor doubled

over with the pain. He would be in no condition to oppose her for several minutes at

least.

There were three other armed men to contend with; but Yvette was in motion while they

were starting from a standstill. All three had been backed up against the wall behind their

leader, which left them little room to maneuver. Yvette swung around to their sides, so

that only the first of them would have a chance to shoot her; his body would block the

shots of the other two.

In a movement so fast it looked like a streak, Yvette slapped the gun out of his hand.

The stunner crashed against the wall and then fell to the ground. Long before it reached

the floor under the slow pull of Vesa's gravity, however, Yvette had brought up her right

foot and kicked the gunman squarely in the gut. The man fell backwards into his two

companions, and the trio toppled groundward.

Yvette recovered her balance from the kick and dived after them. She landed on top of

the unholy heap, grabbed each of the men in turn by his hair and banged his skull hard

against the floor. All three were out cold and the fight was over within fifteen seconds of

her first move with the wig.

Going over to the stumpy man who'd done al! the talking, she picked up his stunner and

sat waiting, poised on the edge of Garst's desk with the muzzle pointed directly at him.

He choked and gasped for several minutes: when she felt he was ready to converse

again she nudged him with the toe of her boot. "Where's Garst?.

The man shook his head. "Don't . . . don't know." "He is the head of this murderer's guild

of yours, isn't he?.

"Y-yes, but . . , out. He's out.

Yvette grimaced. She had the confirmation she wanted, but not the man. "Where's his

appointment calendar?" "Top drawer.

Yvette found what she was looking for quickly and checked today's date. According to

his schedule, Garst was supposed to be meeting now with Marchioness Gindri at her

palace. "Thanks for the help," she said, then squeezed the trigger stud on the stunner.

The man collapsed from the number four bolt, and Yvette knew he'd be safely

unconscious for at least a couple of hours.

Moving over to the desk phone, she put in a call to the private number she'd been given

for Marask Kantana. When the SOTE chief answered, Yvette identified herself quickly

and told her to get every available agent she could up to Vesa immediately. She was to

dispatch one person to Garst's mansion to pick up the four men who would be waiting

there unconscious; the rest were to meet her at the Marchioness's palace.

Kantana nodded assent. When agent Periwinkle gave an order, any SOTS chief who

valued her job would obey without question. She informed Yvette that it would take two

hours to get from Cbandakha, where she was based, up to Vesa, but that she would be

there in not one second more. Yvette accepted the explanation and signed off. She still

had some work to do.

After seeing to it that all four of her would-be captors received stuns that would keep

them here until the next SOTE agent arrived to arrest them, Yvette retrieved her purse

from the corner where she'd tossed it and, making no pretense at silence or caution,

raced out of the house to the street. Hailing a jit after two minutes, she directed it to the

Marchioness's palace. The driver was startled by Yvette's appearance--after all, one did

not normally visit the Marchioness at this hour in a black leather jumpsuit and disheveled

hair-but offered no objections when Yvette gave her a twenty-ruble tip to hurry.

The time for all pussyfooting was over, a fact that made Yvette feel very, very good. The

surges of adrenalin through her body were being matched by feelings of vengeance as

she conjured up a mental image of Dak's handsome face. Now IT get them for you, Dak,

she thought as the jit rolled along through the tunnels of Vesa. Her hands clenched in

anticipation.

When the shuttle arrived at the palace, Yvette leaped out and ran up to the massive front

gates. There was a doorman on either side, but Yvette did not have the time to

determine whether they were just honest servants or possible spies in the employ of

Garst; to make sure, she gave them each a number four jolt from her stunner. She had

made sure Myerson's gun was fully charged before she left her hotel room, meaning that

she still had nearly fifty shots left. There wouldn't be nearly that many staff on duty

tonight, which meant she could take out everyone inside. She blessed the fact that the

stun-gun was such a humane weapon-she could use it indiscriminately, without having to

make instant decisions about guilt or innocence, and there would be no permanent

after-effects if her move was wrong.

She passed through the gates without stopping and moved into the palace itself. Racing

down the long, cold hallways she shot at everyone she met with pinpoint accuracy,

leaving a trail of unconscious bodies in her wake.

She stormed through every room in the enormous palace, clearing it of potential foes,

until at last she came to the Marchioness's boudoir.

The hereditary ruler oh Vesa was lying in her enormous plush bed eating what must have

been for her a light snack-a small capon, a plate of vegetables and a goblet of white

wine. So quickly and quietly had Yvette moved through the palace that the Marchioness

had had no warning of this invasion. She looked up, startled, then belatedly recognized

Yvette as the woman she'd spoken to earlier that day. "You!" she exclaimed. "What are

you doing here? What gave you the audacity. . . ?.

Yvette at first had ignored the fat woman. This was the last room of the palace, and as

yet she had seen no sign of Garst. Her eyes quickly swept the room, but there was no

trace of the First Advisor here, either. She turned to the Marchioness Gindri, gun pointed,

and cut off the diatribe. "Where's Garst?" she demanded.

The Marchioness was quite flustered to have a weapon aimed at her. Nothing like that

had ever happened before. "Why should I tell you?.

"Because if you don't I'll give you a shot of nitrobarb that could kill you, and you'll tell me

anyhow. There's no use calling for help, I've neutralized everyone in the palace. It's just

you and me." She gestured menacingly with the stunner. "Now talk.

"He . . . he was here until just a little while ago," Gindri stammered nervously. "Then he

got a call and he left.

"What was the call about?.

"I don't . . . don't know, exactly. Something about a DesPlainian spy being caught or

something. He had to go question him.

Yvette's heart skipped a beat. That "DesPlainian spy" could only be Jules! She had seen

his message in the newsroll a week ago that he was going down to Chandakha; when

had he returned, and how had he been captured? She had to know. Grabbing the fat,

ugly woman by the shoulders and digging her fingers deeply into the mealy flesh, she

said, "Where did he go to meet them?.

"I don't . . . wait, I think he said something about the recycling plant. That way, they

wouldn't have far to go to get rid of the body afterwards, he said.

"How long ago was that?" "Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.

There may still be time, Yvette thought. Looking at her watch, she saw that it would be

more than an hour yet before Kantana arrived With her people. I can't wait that long, she

decided. Jules' life may be at stake.

Aloud, she said, "Thanks for your help, even if it was involuntary." Then she gave the

Marchioness a number four stun, the same as everyone else.

Taking a stylus and pad from her purse, she quickly encoded a message explaining the

situation and where to meet her, then posted the note where Kantana could not miss it

as she entered the palace.

I only hope I won't be too late, she thought as she waited impatiently for a jit to come by

that she could commandeer to take her to the recycling plant.

CHAPTER 13

The Battle of the Recycling Plant

Consciousness returned slowly to Jules. The first thing he was definitely aware of was a

constriction in his chest, a difficulty in breathing. By reflex he began gasping, but there

was something preventing him from expanding his chest as far as he needed for comfort.

The inside of his mouth was exceedingly dry, as though it had been washed out with

desert sand. His throat was sore, and swallowing was difficult. He winced involuntarily as

he tried gulping the small amount of saliva his glands had produced.

He felt light-headed and dizzy. In fact, his entire body felt light, as though he were

floating in a sea of jelly. As his consciousness drifted in and out, he realized slowly that

he must be either out in space or back on Vesa, where the gravity was far less than on

Chandakha. But for the moment the fact was only of academic interest; his mind was still

too fuzzed over to care about such things.

He tried to open his eyes, but the lids felt glued together. There was light -around him,

though; he could tell from the redness penetrating the membranes. There were sounds

around him, too, voices drifting in and out of some auditory fog, but individual words

utterly failed to register on his brain. He floated in this state of apathy for an

indeterminate time, not caring what happened to him.

He was jolted out of the dreamy state by a band slapping him hard across the right

cheek. The shock was enough to open his eyes and stir up the thought processes in his

brain once more. His vision was blurred and doubled, and it took all the power of his

still-numbed mind to concentrate and focus on his surroundings.

Standing before him was a lanky man whom he belatedly recognized as the man who'd

been lecturing at the warehouse the night he'd spied on them. Behind him were two

dozen other men, equally threatening. There was a tight grin of vengeance on the man's

face as he stared down at Jules, who found that he was seated on a chair, bound tightly

hand and foot. "Well," the man's voice boomed in Jules' ears, "so you've finally come out

of it, have you?.

Jules was still too dazed to reply. His tongue lay like a lump of lead in his mouth, refusing

to move. As the fog began to lift from his senses, he became aware of the foul odor in

the air. It seemed a mixture of every disgusting smell known to man, from the aroma of

fecal matter through the stench of decaying meat. Jules tried closing his nostrils, an

impossible feat, and finally had to settle for breathing through his mouth as much as

possible.

The man stood over Jules and slapped him again, this time with the other hand. He hit

with such force that it literally made Jules' teeth rattle inside his mouth. Jules found his

temper rising and had to force himself to keep it under control. "It's not for nothing that

the phrase `losing your head' is equivalent to 'losing your temper'," he remembered his

father telling him. A man blinded by rage could miss an opportunity that a calmer man

would spot. I should be thankful he's hitting me, Jules thought. He's bringing me out of the

stupor a lot faster, and that's to my advantage.

He tried to maintain the glazed look on his face a little while longer, though, as he stared

about the rest of the room. It was big, easily one of the largest chambers he'd ever

seen. The ceiling was literally covered with pipes of various diameters, some of which

went out through holes in the wall to other rooms, and others of which were connected to

the enormous vats that stood like giant sentinels scattered about the floor. The smallest

of the vats was easily five meters tall and eight meters in diameter, and there were

others that absolutely dwarfed it in size. Metal ladders ran up and down the lengths of

these vats, and catwalks encircled the tops. And everywhere was the disgusting stench

of death and decay.

"You've got a lot to answer for, you know," the man in front of Jules said, forcing the

DesPlainian to return his attention to immediate concerns. "We've had to waste a lot of

our time and energy trying to find you. We didn't like that.

Jules' tongue was feeling less fuzzy now, and he could attempt to talk. "If I'd known," he

slurred, "I'd have left my business card.

His inquisitor hit him again, but this time Jules was expecting it and was able to turn his

head with the blow to minimize its effect. "Insolence will not be excused," the man said

harshly. "I will give you your due, however. You fought quite well. And no one has ever

been able to infiltrate our training camp before. You must have had help-very highly

placed help.

Jules had to get his questioner off that train of thought. If that idea were followed to its

logical conclusion, it would be obvious that Jules was working for SOTE. Only the

Service of the Empire would have been able to concoct his phony prison record, get him

into the prison and help him bust out so convincingly. And if these crooks ever got even

the faintest suspicion that SOTE was on to them, they'd vanish into the night and the

Service would never be able to track them all down. Not to mention the fact that Jules

would be dead the instant after they came to that realization.

To forestall the man's thinking the problem out to the inevitable conclusion, Jules said,

"Nah, it wasn't any problem at all. Your people'd take a cross-eyed nangabat if it flew in

and asked for a job.

The man raised his arm to strike once more, then stopped. "No, I think there's been

enough- of that for now," he decided. "We'll have to think of some other way to entertain

you. . . .

There was a knocking at the door to one side. "Get that," the man called to some of the

other men in the room. Then, thinking better of it, he said, "No, I'll get it. It's probably

Garst.

As he walked away, the eyes of the others all went with him. All, that is, except for those

of one young man who silently detached himself from a group of his fellows and edged

between the vats to stand beside Jules. The SOTE agent recognized the lad as

Radapur, the Chandakhar he'd saved from Rask's mad attack out on the spaceport field.

No one else in the room saw Radapur approach or stand beside him. The youth bad a

sharp knife clutched firmly in his hand. There was an expression on the lad's face that

was impossible for Jules to fathom, so twisted was it with conflicting emotions. Is he

coming to kill the or free me? he wondered.

Radapur was behind him now and, with several quick slashes, cut the bonds that held

Jules in place. "The debt is paid," the youth said tersely. "I can do no more." And he

moved away again so quickly that Jules would hardly have believed he'd ever been there,

were it not for the slashed ropes behind him.

He had no chance to make any break now, however, as the door opened and closed

quickly and attention was turning back in his direction. The ropes were hanging more

slackly on him, and Jules hoped fervently that no one would notice until he had an

opportunity to make his move.

"Whew," said the newcomer, "I'd forgotten the stench of this place. I'm glad I don't have

to come down here much anymore. Where's the spy?.

"Over this way." The tail man led the newcomer over to where Jules was seated. It was

obvious from the deference in his attitude that the late arrival was a man of importance in

this organization-perhaps the big boss himself. Jules stared at the face, but the man was

no one he had met. There was a craftiness to that face, though, and an evil glint behind

the eyes.

As Jules was studying his face, the boss-Garst, he had been called-was studying Jules.

"DesPlainian, all right," be mused aloud. "The skin's dyed of course, now, but even so . .

. there's more than a superficial resemblance to that girl.

Yvete! Had she already tangled with this man? If so, what had happened? Why was he

still free to walk around, and what had become of his sister? Those questions and a

thousand others flooded Jules' mind. It was only with a great force of will that he put

them aside and concentrated on his position of the moment. He could worry about Yvette

sometime later, when he was less worried about himself.

Garst gave him no more clues. Instead, he turned to his lieutenant and asked, "All right,

Lessin, what have you learned from him so far?.

"Nothing yet. He's only just come out of stun. I wanted to wait until you got here before

giving him the juice. You would know better what questions to ask him." Garst nodded.

"Okay, get on with it.

Lessin reached into a leather pouch at his belt and pulled out a hyposprayer filled with a

clear fluid. The "juice," as he had called it, could only be nitrobarb, which would knock its

victim into a coma for twenty minutes, after which he would have to answer any and all

questions put to him. For Jules, it would be the death knell; even if the drug itself did not

kill him, Garst and his men were certain to once they learned what he knew. His life was

on the line, and he'd have to make his move now.

As Lessin approached him with the sprayer, Jules suddenly lifted one leg and kicked the

strangler squarely amidship. The man let out a grunt of surprise and pain, and fell

backwards. The hyposprayer flew from his hand and landed across the room, shattering

on impact with the floor and spilling its lethal contents harmlessly on the concrete

surface.

Long before that happened, however, the rest of the room had exploded into action.

Garst, his reflexes faster than Jules would have given him credit for, backed away from

the DesPlainian the instant his foot lashed out at Lessin, and began reaching for the gun

be had tucked away in his jacket pocket. The rest of the gang, two dozen of them, were

all armed as well-they'd seen Jules in action before and had come prepared for anything.

Even Radapur was reaching for his gun. Apparently the young man felt that cutting the

bonds and giving Jules a chance to fight for his freedom was ample enough repayment;

from now on it would be no quarter asked or given. Jules accepted that as an unhappy

fact of life and planned accordingly.

He had been hoping to grab Garst and hold him in front as a hostage to ensure safe

passage out of here, but the man had jumped out of reach too quickly for him to

accomplish that. Besides, with a group like this there was always the possibility of one of

the lesser murderers taking it into his head to shoot the boss as well and take over for

himself. While in the long run that might lead to the group's unity dissolving in internal

rivalries, in the short run it would do Jules no good whatsoever.

The SOTE agent sized up the situation quickly. Al! his opponents were armed; while

some of the weapons they had were stunners, most were equipped with bigger stuff

-blasters, and heavy-duty ones at that. This game was being played for keeps, and Jules

could afford no mistakes. One slip here and he was dead.

Getting quickly to his feet Jules bounded abruptly in the direction opposite to Garst. The

long high leap left him in a vulnerable position momentarily as it took several seconds for

Vesa's light gravity to pull him back to the ground again; but his aerialist training came to

his assistance once more as he curled, himself into a small ball and spun through the air,

offering a minimal target surface for the killers to aim at. He felt the scorching heat as

several bolts passed by within half a meter of him, but fortunately these killers were used

to strangling their victims and were not as adept with guns as they might be.

Jules had gauged his leap to take him behind one of the nearby vats. He straightened out

as he approached ground level, noticing as he did so that there were no more bolts going

past his immediate vicinity. He was out of direct, straight-line range, and therefore

safe-for the moment.

"Watch those blasters in here!" Garst called out. "We can't afford to damage anything, or

we might all be flooded out. Stunners only, unless you've got an absolutely clear shot.

Don't move too quickly, don't overcommit yourself. Remember, there's only one way out

and we're guarding it. He's trapped in here and we outnumber him, so it's only a matter

of time.

Garst is right, Jules grimaced. As long as he was weaponless and there were armed

men at the door his chances of escape were virtually nil. He could bounce around for

hours, gradually wearing himself out, while they could move at their leisure and hunt him

down. Getting possession of a weapon of his own would be a big help, but in the

meantime he would have to stay in motion and avoid letting the enemy get any clear

shots at him.

As he touched ground he jumped again, this time for the ladder that went up the side of

the vat next to him. Using the handrails he pulled himself up five rungs at a time until he

was almost to the top. The sounds of running footsteps told him that his pursuers were

coming around after him, closing in on the spot where he'd disappeared from their view.

Turning around and bracing himself against the ladder, he leaped through the air towards

the top of the next vat some five meters away. Again, his leap seemed agonizingly slow

to him as Vesa's low gravity worked lazily to pull him down. One of the men below him

spotted him during his leap and fired a blaster bolt up at him, but it passed harmlessly a

meter away as Jules finally came down on the catwalk around the rim of the vat he'd

aimed for.

As he landed, the forward momentum of his leap almost carried him headfirst into the

vat, but he managed to grab the railing and stop his motion. As he was leaning over the

vat, though, he got a good strong whiff of its contents-hundreds of thousands of liters of

human waste products. Though efforts had been taken to neutralize the odor they were

never a hundred percent successful. The fumes were so overpowering that Jules sank to

his knees, gagging and retching. This is obviously the recycling plant, he thought as he

knelt there helplessly for a moment. And if I don't want to get recycled myself, I'd better

get moving again.

Still choking, he pulled himself to his feet and raced around the perimeter of the vat.

Shots were fired up at him, but none of them came close. One shot did hit one of the

overhead pipes, however, burning a hole in it and showering the entire area with a

steamy, salted liquid. Keeping his head bowed down so that none of the fluid would get

in his eyes, Jules continued running. Below him, he heard Garst chewing out his men and

telling them to be more careful about how they shot.

From his lofty vantage point, Jules could see one man off to one side, separated from

the rest of his fellows and out of their sight. With an outward leap, Jules plunged off the

catwalk toward the ground, falling much faster than the normal gravity would allow

because he had given himself a push in the right direction. In midair he twisted his body

around like a cat so that he was falling feet first. A fall from such a height under Earth

gravity could be fatal to an untrained person, and even on Vesa it could have serious

consequences, but Jules knew precisely what he was doing.

His feet hit the lone gangster squarely in the chest just under the chin. The man crumpled

to the floor with his ribs caved in, but his body broke Jules' fall and cushioned the landing

impact. The DesPlainian rolled to his feet, grabbed the man's gun-only a stunner,

unfortunately-and began running. He reached another vat and began climbing the ladder.

making it halfway up before he was spotted again. The man who saw him gave cry, but it

was the last thing he ever did; Jules mowed him down with one perfectly placed shot,

and his stunner was set on ten-instantly lethal.

He made it to the top of the vat and looked around. The contents of this tank was

garbage of various sorts, but the odor was no more pleasant than the last one. From this

spot, though, Jules could get a clear look at the door and the two men standing guard in

front of it. Since they weren't part of the chase, they had no definite idea as to where he

was. Their eyes scanned the room nervously, waiting for him to make a break in their

direction so that they could gun him down.

Two quick shots were all Jules needed to fell that pair in their tracks. He had hoped that,

in the excitement, no one would notice that he had gotten them and he would be able to

slip out the door. But Garst's sharp eyes spotted their deaths immediately. Barking crisp

orders, the leader of the murderers sent another pair of his men to guard the egress, but

this time he told them not to stand immediately in front of the door unprotected. Instead,

he bad them take up positions behind the vats with their guns trained on the door.

Anyone trying to get out would be instantly killed in the crossfire.

A blaster bolt struck the handrail just centimeters from Jules' hand, turning the rail to

molten slag in that spot and making it too hot for Jules to hold onto. He backed away and

aimed a fast shot at the man who'd fired at him, but the other had ducked back under

cover too quickly.

There are just too many of them, Jules thought as he recovered his breath and prepared

to move to a new perch. I can't keep hopping around like this indefinitely. Sooner or later,

one of them's bound to get lucky and hit me. But he knew there was no choice he had to

try.

Just as he was preparing for another leap, though, the doors to the plant burst open

inward and Yvette raced in, stunner in hand. She stopped for a moment to evaluate the

wild scene before her, and everyone else stopped as well, startled by this unexpected

development. The guards watching the door also hesitated; they were expecting to shoot

someone trying to get out, not trying to get in, and they were undecided what to do.

Their indecision would only last a second, though, and Yvette was a sitting duck in her

exposed position unless she could be warned.

The age-old circus danger call of "Hey, Rube!" had survived through the centuries, albeit

in an abbreviated form. So Jules' cry of "Rube!" evoked an instant response from his

sister. She dived forward, low to the ground, just as two blaster bolts criss-crossed

through the space where her head had been a split second earlier. She hit the deck,

rolled, and came up ready for action.

Yvette's sudden appearance made Jules feel reborn. The odds of twenty to one had

seemed almost hopeless, but now they were down to ten to one. Why, that was

practically child's play.

With renewed spirits, he suddenly changed role from hunted to hunter. Each opponent be

could pick off would reduce the odds that much more, and each of the men on the ground

knew that they no longer had only one quarry to contend with. They had to watch from all

angles at once, lest they be picked off by Jules' new ally. They sensed immediately a

change in the atmosphere, and switched to a defensive posture.

Yvette was a hurricane on legs as she raced about the vast chamber in a cold fury. She

seemed to have no fear at all as she ran at top speed between the vats, sometimes

straight at groups of the killers. At one point she felled four of the men in half as many

seconds by coming on them by surprise, before they had a chance to react. She was

driving the stranglers frantic with her relentless assaults on their positions-and if any of

them was careless enough to move too quickly out of her way, Jules was usually

perched right above to pick him off from that direction. Steadily the number of opponents

dwindled until, after only a couple of minutes, it was they who were on the defensive

totally, just trying to stay live between this Scylla and Charybdis of DesPlainian fury.

Jules had never seen his sister so worked up, so absolutely coldblooded about her

business. She took risks some of them quite unnecessary, in his opinion-as though she

had no fear of death. She's a demon today, he thought as he watched her flit like a black

shadow across the floor. I wonder what's gotten into her. But he was kept too busy

shooting it the murderers to spend much time thinking about it. He recovered his breath

and his strength as he concentrated on his target practice.

Soon the number of the enemy had been whittled down until only Garst was left alone.

He had taken to hiding at the far corner of the room, protected by machinery on several

sides. But now, with the attention of both DesPlainians focused solely on him, he knew

he would never be able to hold out. In desperation he bolted from the spot, running along

the back wall of the plant in an effort to reach the door before the two SOTE agents

could get to him.

Jules found he was entirely out of position to try to capture Garst, and the crime boss

was out of stunner range. Instead, the DesPlainian started leaping from vat to vat,

working his way across the room in an attempt to reach the door before Garst could.

Yvette, who was already down on the floor, would have a better chance of confronting

Garst directly.

Garst had a good lead on her, but Yvette was moving at superhuman speed at the

moment and closed the gap between them rapidly. Stopping in front of a large opened

door marked "Chemical Reprocessing," the First Advisor took careful aim with his blaster

and directed a bolt straight at Yvette. The female d'Alembert made a minute swerve and

the deadly beam touched ground only centimeters from her feet, scorching the concrete

flooring. Yvette didn't even slow down.

A look of terror now crossed the face of the man whose organization had so callously

doomed hundreds of thousands of people to death. This was more a machine than a

person coming at him, a black-clad juggernaut bent solely on his destruction. He tried to

start running again, but his foot slipped on the ground that was now covered by the liquid

spewing from the leaking pipe above. He spread out his arms to regain his balance, but

to no avail. With a cry of doomed anguish he fell through the opened door and

disappeared from view.

As she came to the wet spot, Yvette slowed her own charge so that she wouldn't suffer

the same fate. Walking carefully up to the edge of the door, she peered inside.

Below her, surrounded by a narrow walkway, steamed a vat of chemicals whose

purpose was to reduce organic materials to their basic molecular components. These

components would then be filtered out into separate tanks and recombined in more

acceptable form for human consumption. There was no chance that any living thing could

fall in there and survive.

As she stared into the greenish liquid her hands clenched and unclenched several times in

frustration. She had wanted to take Garst apart personally, piece by piece, but consoled

herself with the thought that his death had not been a particularly pleasant one. She

found that her lower jaw was trembling, and stopped it with an act of will. "He's gone,"

she announced simply.

Her brother came racing up to her and put his arms around her. Suddenly all the tensions

of the last two days hit Yvette at once and she leaned, trembling, in his embrace. Jules

held her tightly and said nothing. He wanted very much to ask her what the matter was,

but he knew his sister too well for that. He didn't want to hurt her pride. When she was

ready to tell him the story, she would do so. In the meantime he would offer her all the

aid he could without invading her privacy.

After a couple of minutes Yvette pulled herself together and smiled up at her brother.

"This affected me a little more strongly than I thought.

He nodded. "You know, I've discovered I don't like working on my own nearly as well. It

gets awfully lonely sometimes.

"Yes." She continued to smile weakly, then looked down at her feet. "Yes, it does." After

a moment she looked back up at him, her face back to its normal composure. "Chief

Kantana and her agents should be arriving soon at the Marchioness's palace. I asked

them to meet me there, since that was where I thought Garst would be. Gindri was in

collusion with Garst, but he was the brains. As soon as I learned he would be here, I left

a note for them to follow me." She looked around at the devastation the evening's

activities had wrought at the plant. "There's nothing really for them to do here. Why don't

you go back to the palace and help them sort out the pieces there?.

"What about you?.

"I'll be along in a little bit. I just have a private goodbye to say here, that's all. Don't

worry, I'll be all right." Jules gave her a quizzical glance, but said nothing. As he walked

out the door, he turned to look back. Yvette was standing beside the opening to the

chemical processing vat, staring blankly into it. There were tears in her eyes, though

whether they were from the chemical fumes or some inner grief he could not tell. With a

shrug of the shoulders, Jules turned and left his sister to work out her emotions for

herself.

CHAPTER 14

The Chandakha Solution

They sent a coded report directly to the Head the next day, and received an answer

within two hours. They were ordered to return on the next available ship, and to leave the

mopping-up operations in the capable hands of Chief Kantana. They were both a little

sorry not to be able to finish completely what they'd started, but they realized the

wisdom of their superior's decision. After all, they were his top agents and their talents

shouldn't be wasted on trivia. There were plenty of other people to handle the routine

work.

Despite their own impatience, the Head suggested that they take their time getting back.

The ship on which they booked passage took a leisurely ten days to make the trip to

Earth-time they used well for both emotional and physical healing. Yvette told her brother

all about Dak and her feelings for him, and he comforted her to the best of his ability. By

the time they reached Earth, Yvette was reconciled to Dak's death. He was only a dull

ache in the back of her mind-if not forgotten, at least put aside for other matters.

They came down at the Canaveral Spaceport in Florida and drove in their own jet-car to

the Hall of State building for Sector Four, located in Miami. Landing on the rooftop, they

took the private elevator tube down to the Head's office, where Duchess Helena showed

them in with great ceremony.

Grand Duke Zander von Wilmenhorst was seated behind his large desk which was, as

usual, buried beneath a mass of paperwork. He looked much more at home in these

surroundings than he did in his spaceship; the milieu was suited to his basic personality.

He waved them casually into chairs and Helena went automatically to the bar. Knowing

the d'Alemberts' preference for nonalcoholic beverages, she fixed them both orange juice

freezes.

"Once again I have to commend you two on a superlative job," he said when everyone

had gotten comfortably settled. "It threatens to become a habit. Of course it's a pleasant

habit to acquire, considering the alternatives.

"You're no doubt wondering how the mop-up operations went. I got a report in just

yesterday from Kantana, and her work has been perfect. The ledger reel you found,

Yvette, did indeed contain some of Garst's records, as well as some notes that let

Kantana discover where he'd hidden the rest of his files. They went right back to the

beginning of his organization, more than two decades ago. The wealth that flowed

through that group was greater than the Gross Planetary Products of many smaller

worlds! It was an incredible system. Garst was an organizational genius, and I'm glad

he's dead. I'd hate to know he's still out there plotting. It was only an accident that led us

to him at all.

"So many criminals slip up by getting too greedy, but Garst kept a tight rein on that. He

preyed on only small numbers of tourists-comparatively, of course-where a lesser man

might have tried for bigger scores. By keeping at a low level continuously, he was able to

get away with his crimes far longer than he should have.

The Head absently shifted papers from one stack to another as he spoke. "Once we had

the records, of course, it was a simple matter for Kantana to round up all the members

of the gang on Vesa, including the corrupt police and hotel and recycling plant

employees. And from the information you gave her, Jules, she was able to track down

their training school. There wasn't much left of it Jakherdi had burned it down and

scattered his personnel the moment word reached him about Garst's death-but Garst's

records were complete enough that she knew who she was looking for. A few of the

small fry have escaped detection in Chandakha's crowds, but all the major officers in the

conspiracy have been captured.

Shifting uneasily in his chair, Jules sipped at his drink and looked thoughtful. When he

was certain that his boss had finished speaking for the moment, he began, "On the way

back to Earth I did a bit of thinking. We've smashed the conspiracy on Vesa for now, but

I really don't think we've solved the problem.

The Head raised an eyebrow speculatively. "Oh? How do you mean?.

"Well, the real menace is Chandakha. Garst could never have set up the system he did if

he didn't have a steady supply of people to commit his murders. He needed hundreds of

men who were so desperate for money and so calloused about the value of human life

that they could kill automatically, like machines. Chandakha is a breeding ground for

exactly that sort of person. Life is the cheapest commodity they have there. People are

so crammed together, crime is so rampant, that recruiting for a strangler's guild is

simplicity itself. Transport a man from the slums of Bhangora to the flashy casinos of

Vesa and he's bound to feel resentment against the rich. Why shouldn't he take what

they have if he can? They have more than enough, and his family is starving.

The Head nodded gravely. "Everything you're saying is right. What do you propose be

done about it?" "The people have to be dispersed," Jules said with determination. "They

can't go on living jammed together like that. Garst was actually providing Chandakha with

a safety valve, though I doubt whether he thought of it in those terms. By perpetually

bleeding off the worst members of Chandakha's society, he kept the planet from erupting

into uncontrolled violence. Now there is no such outlet. If we want to avoid having

Chandakha blow up in our faces, we'll have to disperse the population, reduce its

density.

"But the other continents on the planet are uninhabitable.

Yvette now felt it was her turn to speak. "There are other planets, some very sparsely

settled as yet, where the Chandakhari's knowledge of agriculture could be invaluable. I

would suggest sponsoring a series of cash grants to encourage the citizens of

Chandakha to move elsewhere. Many of them are desperate enough to accept such an

offer.

"Ah yes," the Head smiled, "but now we run into a question of money-money to

encourage them to leave Chandakha, money to transport them elsewhere, money to help

the emigres relocate on their new planet. Where, pray tell, is all this money going to

come from?.

"Simple," Yvette explained. "Vesa has more than enough coming in; they scarcely know

what to do with it all. And now that the murderers are out of the way, there'll be more

money there than ever. The Emperor could authorize the Duke of Chandakha to levy a

special tax for the purpose, to be paid by all the merchants of Vesa. In the long run it

would be a small price for them to pay for security.

The Head's smile broadened immensely. "I really do like the way you two think-especially

since your thoughts parallel my own so nicely. Just yesterday morning I sent the Emperor

a note detailing a plan almost identical to the one you just suggested.

Jules looked startled. "You did?.

"Yes, occasionally this old man has an idea or two himself," laughed the Head with a

twinkle in his eye. "After all, it's not enough for us to detect trouble after it's brewing. The

Service is ultimately responsible for the total security of the Empire, and that includes

finding the danger zones before they flare up; that way, remedying the problem is usually

much simpler. I admit we failed the first time on Chandakha, which is why I'm doubly

anxious to avoid repeating the mistake.

"Do you think the Emperor will follow your advice?" Yvette asked.

"Bill knows me pretty well by now, and he knows I don't make such recommendations

lightly. I can almost guarantee he'll act as we suggest. He was already agreeing to my

suggestion for the new Marchioness of Vesa.

"Yes, that was something I was wondering myself. What about Gindri?" Jules asked.

The Head sighed. "Gindri Lohlatt was a very weak woman, completely dominated by

Garst. She knew what was going on, but had no inclination to stop it as long as she got

everything she wanted. She'll be hauled up before a High Court of Justice, and

condemnation by her peers is inevitable. I suspect they'll vote to banish her to Gastonia

rather than have her executed-it's a sentence equivalent to death in any case, since her

heart will never be able to stand the strain of an Earth-normal gravity like Gastonia's. In

any event, that leaves the title open, since she has no heirs. I recommended to His

Majesty that he appoint Marask Kantana as the new Marchioness of Vesa, and he

agreed.

"Of course," Yvette smiled. "She's the perfect choice." "Yes," said the Grand Duke of

Sector Four, "I thought so, too. But she turned it down.

"What?" Jules and Yvette exclaimed, practically in unison.

"She thought she could be of more use to the Empire by continuing in SOTE-and I have

to admit, I was sorry at the thought of losing her. Since she felt so strongly about the

subject, the Emperor agreed to grant her request. He's now studying the various other

political nominees who have come forward.

"Kantana's damned good," Jules commented. "I think it's a shame for her to get stuck on

a backwater planet like Chandakha.

"So do I, so I dug out her records. Do you know she'd never been given the

thousand-point test? She rose to her position as Chief entirely through the ranks, starting

out as an ordinary field agent-and since Chandakha is such a comparatively minor world,

nobody paid her any attention. I ordered the situation rectified immediately and

discovered, not much to my surprise, that her score is nine ninety-six.

Jules gave out a low whistle. The thousand-point test was an examination of the total

person, both physically and mentally. Currently Jules was the only thousand pointer alive,

with his sister only a point below him. For Kantana to rank so highly was a considerable

compliment.

"Yes indeed." The Head was amused by Jules' reaction. "As soon as her wrap-up on

Vesa is complete, I'm having her reassigned as a special executive assistant to myself.

She's going to be in charge of visiting as many planets as she can and spotting potential

trouble zones like Chandakha before they ignite.

"I know she'll do an outstanding job," Yvette said. "She may even eliminate the need for

us altogether." Their boss shook his head. "There are some thirteen hundred planets in

our Empire. Good as Kantana is, she can't be everywhere at once. No, my friends, as

long as there is human greed and corruption, there will always be a need of your very

special services.

And, as usual, he was right.