ONE:

The Bedroom Murmured

The bedroom murmured to itself gently. It was almost below the limits of hearing--an irregular little sound, yet quite unmistakable, and quite deadly.

            But it wasn’t that which awakened Biron Farrill and dragged him out of a heavy, unrefreshing slumber. He turned his head restlessly from side to side in a futile struggle against the periodic burr-r-r on the end table.

            He put out a clumsy hand without opening his eyes and closed contact.

            “Hello,” he mumbled.

            Sound tumbled instantly out of the receiver. It was harsh and loud, but Biron lacked the ambition to reduce the volume.

            It said, “May I speak to Biron Farrill?”

            Biron said, fuzzily, “Speaking. What d’you want?”

            “May I speak to Biron Farrill?” The voice was urgent.

            Biron’s eyes opened on the thick darkness. He became conscious of the dry unpleasantness of his tongue and the faint odor that remained in the room.

            He said, “Speaking. Who is this?”

            It went on, disregarding him, gathering tension, a loud voice in the night. “Is anyone there? I would like to speak to Biron Farrill.”

            Biron raised himself on one elbow and stared at the place where the visiphone sat. He jabbed at the vision control and the small screen was alive with light.

            “Here I am,” he said. He recognized the smooth, slightly asymmetric features of Sander Jonti. “Call me in the morning, Jonti.”

            He started to turn the instrument off once more, when Jonti said, “Hello, Hello. Is anyone there? Is this University Hall, Room 526? Hello.”

            Biron was suddenly aware that the tiny pilot light which would have indicated a live sending circuit was not on. He swore under his breath and pushed the switch. It stayed off. Then Jonti gave up, and the screen went blank, and was merely a small square of featureless light.

            Biron turned it off. He hunched his shoulder and tried to burrow into the pillow again. He was annoyed. In the first place, no one had the right to yell at him in the middle of the night. He looked quickly at the gently luminous figures just over the headboard. Three-fifteen. House lights wouldn’t go on for nearly four hours.

            Besides, he didn’t like having to wake to the complete darkness of his room. Four years’ custom had not hardened him to the Earthman’s habit of building structures of reinforced concrete, squat, thick, and windowless. It was a thousand-year-old tradition dating from the days when the primitive nuclear bomb had not yet been countered by the force-field defense.

            But that was past. Atomic warfare had done its worst to Earth. Most of it was hopelessly radioactive and useless. There was nothing left to lose, and yet architecture mirrored the old fears, so that when Biron woke, it was to pure darkness.

            Biron rose on his elbow again. That was strange. He waited. It wasn’t the fatal murmur of the bedroom he had become aware of. It was something perhaps even less noticeable and certainly infinitely less deadly.

            He missed the gentle movement of air that one took so for granted, that trace of continuous renewal. He tried to swallow easily and failed. The atmosphere seemed to become oppressive even as he realized the situation. The ventilating system had stopped working, and now he really had a grievance. He couldn’t even use the visiphone to report the matter.

            He tried again, to make sure. The milky square of light sprang out and threw a faint, pearly luster on the bed. It was receiving, but it wouldn’t send. Well, it didn’t matter. Nothing would be done about it before day, anyway.

            He yawned and groped for his slippers, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his palms. No ventilation, eh? That would account for the queer smell. He frowned and sniffed sharply two or three times. No use. It was familiar, but he couldn’t place it.

            He made his way to the bathroom, and reached automatically for the light switch, although he didn’t really need it to draw himself a glass of water. It closed, but uselessly. He tried it several times, peevishly. Wasn’t anything working? He shrugged, drank in the dark, and felt better. He yawned again on his way back to the bedroom where he tried the main switch. All the lights were out.

            Biron sat on the bed, placed his large hands on his hard-muscled thighs and considered. Ordinarily, a thing like this would call for a terrific discussion with the service staff. No one expected hotel service in a college dormitory, but, by Space, there were certain minimum standards of efficiency one could demand. Not that it was of vital importance just now. Graduation was coming and he was through. In three days he’d be saying a last good-by to the room and to the University of Earth; to Earth itself, for that matter.

            Still, he might report it anyway, without particular comment. He could go out and use the hall phone. They might bring in a self-powered light or even rig up a fan so he could sleep without psychosomatic choking sensations. If not, to Space with them! Two more nights.

            In the light of the useless visiphone, he located a pair of shorts. Over them he slipped a one-piece jumper, and decided that that would be enough for the purpose. He retained his slippers. There was no danger of waking anybody even if he clumped down the corridors in spiked shoes, considering the thick, nearly soundproof partitions of this concrete pile, but he saw no point in changing.

            He strode toward the door and pulled at the lever. It descended smoothly and he heard the click that meant the door release had been activated. Except that it wasn’t. And although his biceps tightened into lumps, nothing was accomplished.

            He stepped away. This was ridiculous. Had there been a general power failure? There couldn’t have been. The clock was going. The visiphone was still receiving properly.

            Wait! It could have been the boys, bless their erratic souls. It was done sometimes. Infantile, of course, but he’d taken part in these foolish practical jokes himself. It wouldn’t have been difficult, for instance, for one of his buddies to sneak in during the day and arrange matters. But, no, the ventilation and lights were working when he had gone to sleep.

            Very well, then, during the night. The hall was an old, outmoded structure. It wouldn’t have taken an engineering genius to hocus the lighting and ventilation circuits. Or to jam the door, either. And now they would wait for morning and see what would happen when good old Biron found he couldn’t get out.  They would probably let him out toward noon and laugh very hard.

            “Ha, ha,” said Biron grimly, under his breath.  All right, if that’s the way it was.  But he would have to do something about it; turn the tables some way.

            He turned away and his toe kicked something which skidded metallically across the floor.  He could barely make out its shadow moving through the dim visiphone light.  He reached under the bed, patting the floor in a wide arc.  He brought it out and held it close to the light.  (They weren’t so smart.  They should have put the visiphone entirely out of commission, instead of just yanking out the sending circuit.)

            He found himself holding a small cylinder with a little hole in the blister on top.  He put it close to his nose and sniffed at it.  That explained the smell in the room, anyway.  It was Hypnite.  Of course, the boys would have had to use it to keep him from waking up while they were busy with the circuits.

            Biron could reconstruct the proceedings step by step now.  The door was jimmied open, a simple thing to do, and the only dangerous part, since he might have wakened then.  The door might have been prepared during the day, for that matter, so that it would seem to close and not actually do so.  He hadn’t tested it.  Anyway, once open, a can of Hypnite would be put just inside and the door would be closed again.  The anesthetic would leak out slowly, building up to the one in ten thousand concentration necessary to put him definitely under.  Then they could enter--masked, of course.  Space!  A wet handkerchief would keep out the Hypnite for fifteen minutes and that would be all the time needed.

            It explained the ventilation system situation.  That had to be eliminated to keep the Hypnite from dispersing too quickly.  That would have gone first, in fact.  The visiphone elimination kept him from getting help; the door jamming kept him from getting out; and the absence of lights induced panic.  Nice kids!

            Biron snorted.  It was socially impossible to be thin-skinned about this.  A joke was a joke and all that.  Right now, he would have liked to break the door down and have done with it.  The well-trained muscles of his torso tensed at the thought, but it would be useless. The door had been built with atom blasts in mind. Damn that tradition!

            But there had to be some way out. He couldn’t let them get away with it. First, he would need a light, a real one, not the immovable and unsatisfactory glow of the visiphone. That was no problem. He had a self-powered flashlight in the clothes closet.

            For a moment, as he fingered the closet-door controls, he wondered if they had jammed that too. But it moved open naturally, and slid smoothly into its wall socket. Biron nodded to himself. It made sense. There was no reason, particularly, to jam the closet, and they didn’t have too much time, anyway.

            And then, with the flashlight in his hand, as he was turning away, the entire structure of his theory collapsed in a horrible instant. He stiffened, his abdomen ridging with tension, and held his breath, listening.

            For the first time since awakening, he heard the murmuring of the bedroom. He heard the quiet, irregular chuckling conversation it was holding with itself, and recognized the nature of the sound at once.

            It was impossible not to recognize it. The sound was “Earth’s death rattle.” It was the sound that had been invented one thousand years before.

            To be exact, it was the sound of a radiation counter, ticking off the charged particles and the hard gamma waves that came its way, the soft clicking electronic surges melting into a low murmur. It was the sound of a counter, counting the only thing it could count--death!

            Softly, on tiptoe, Biron backed away. From a distance of six feet he threw the white beam into the recesses of the closet. The counter was there, in the far corner, but seeing it told him nothing.

            It had been there ever since his freshman days. Most freshmen from the Outer Worlds bought a counter during their first week on Earth. They were very conscious of Earth’s radioactivity then, and felt the need of protection. Usually they were sold again to the next class, but Biron had never disposed of his. He was thankful for that now.

            He turned to the desk, where he kept his wrist watch while sleeping. It was there. His hand was shaking a little as he held it up to the flashlight’s beam. The watch strap was an interwoven flexible plastic of an almost liquidly smooth whiteness. And it was white. He held it away and tried it at different angles. It was white.

            That strap had been another freshman purchase. Hard radiation turned it blue, and blue on Earth was the color of death. It was easy to wander into a path of radiating soil during the day if you were lost or careless. The government fenced off as many patches as it could, and of course no one ever approached the huge areas of death that began several miles outside the city. But the strap was insurance.

            If it should ever turn a faint blue, you would show up at the hospital for treatment. There was no argument about it. The compound of which it was made was precisely as sensitive to radiation as you were, and appropriate photoelectric instruments could be used to measure the intensity of the blueness so that the seriousness of the case might be determined quickly.

            A bright royal blue was the finish. Just as the color would never change back, neither would you. There was no cure, no chance, no hope. You just waited anywhere from a day to a week, and all the hospital could do was to make final arrangements for cremation.

            But at least it was still white, and some of the clamor in Biron’s thoughts subsided.

            There wasn’t much radioactivity then. Could it be just another angle of the joke? Biron considered and decided that it couldn’t. Nobody would do that to anyone else. Not on Earth, anyway, where illegal handling of radioactive material was a capital offense. They took radioactivity seriously here on Earth. They had to. So nobody would do this without overpowering reason.

            He stated the thought to himself carefully and explicitly, facing it boldly. The overpowering reason, for instance, of a desire to murder. But why? There could be no motive. In his twenty-three years of life, he had never made a serious enemy. Not this serious. Not murder serious.

            He clutched at his clipped hair. This was a ridiculous line of thought, but there was no escaping it. He stepped cautiously back to the closet. There had to be something there that was sending out radiation; something that had not been there four hours earlier. He saw it almost at once.

            It was a little box not more than six inches in any direction. Biron recognized it and his lower lip trembled slightly. He had never seen one before, but he had heard of them. He lifted the counter and took it into the bedroom. The little murmur fell off, almost ceased. It started again when the thin mica partition, through which the radiation entered, pointed toward the box. There was no question in his mind. It was a radiation bomb.

            The present radiations were not in themselves deadly; they were only a fuse. Somewhere inside the box a tiny atomic pile was constructed. Short-lived artificial isotopes heated it slowly, permeating it with the appropriate particles. When the threshold of head and particle density was reached, the pile reacted. Not in an explosion, usually, although the heat of reaction would serve to fuse the box itself into a twist of metal, but in a tremendous burst of deadly radiation that would kill anything living within a radius of six feet to six miles, depending on the bomb’s size.

            There was no way of telling when the threshold would be reached. Perhaps not for hours, and perhaps the next moment. Biron remained standing helplessly, flashlight held loosely in his damp hands. Half an hour before, the visiphone had awakened him, and he had been at peace then. Now he knew he was going to die.

            Biron didn’t want to die, but he was penned in hopelessly, and there was no place to hide,

            He knew the geography of the room. It was at the end of a corridor, so that there was another room only on one side, and, of course, above and below. He could do nothing about the room above. The room on the same floor was on the bathroom side, and it adjoined via its own bathroom. He doubted that he could make himself heard.

            That left the room below.

            There were a couple of folding chairs in the room, spare seats to accommodate company. He took one. It made a flat, slapping sound when it hit the floor. He turned it edgewise and the sound became harder and louder.

            Between each blow, he waited; wondering if he could rouse the sleeper below and annoy him sufficiently to have him report the disturbance.

            Abruptly, he caught a faint noise, and paused, the splintering chair raised above his head. The noise came again, like a faint shout. It was from the direction of the door.

            He dropped the chair and yelled in return. He crushed his ear up against the crack where door joined wall, but the fit was good, and the sound even there was dim.

            But he could make out his own name being called.

            “Farrill! Farrill!” several times over, and something else. Maybe “Are you in there?” or “Are you all right?”

            He roared back, “Get the door open.” He shouted it three or four times. He was in a feverish sweat of impatience. The bomb might be on the point of letting loose even now.

            He thought they heard him. At least, the muffled cry came back, “Watch out. Something, something, blaster.” He knew what they meant and backed hurriedly away from the door.

            There were a couple of sharp, cracking sounds, and he could actually feel the vibrations set up in the air of the room. Then there followed a splitting noise and the door was flung inward. Light poured in from the corridor.

            Biron dashed out, arms flung wide. “Don’t come in,” he yelled. “For the love of Earth, don’t come in. There’s a radiation bomb in there.”

            He was facing two men. One was Jonti. The other was Esbak, the superintendent. He was only partly dressed.

            “A radiation bomb?” he stuttered.

            But Jonti said, “What size?” Jonti’s blaster was still in his hand, and that alone jarred with the dandyish effect of his ensemble, even at this time of night.

            Biron could only gesture with his hands.

            “All right,” said Jonti. He seemed quite cool about it, as he turned to the superintendent. “You’d better evacuate the rooms in this area, and if you have leadsheets anywhere on the university grounds, have them brought out here to line the corridor. And I wouldn’t let anyone in there before morning.”

            He turned to Biron. “It probably has a twelve-to-eighteen-foot radius. How did it get there?”

            “I don’t know,” said Biron. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “If you don’t mind, I’ve got to sit down somewhere.” He threw a glance at his wrist, then realized his wrist watch was still in the room. He had a wild impulse to return after it.

            There was action now. Students were being hustled out of their rooms.

            “Come with me,” said Jonti. “I think you had better sit down too. “

            Biron said, “What brought you out to my room? Not that I’m not thankful, you understand.”

            “I called you. There was no answer, and I had to see you.”

            “To see me?” He spoke carefully, trying to control his irregular breathing. “Why?”

            “To warn you that your life was in danger.”

            Biron laughed raggedly. “I found out.”

            “That was only the first attempt. They’ll try again.”

            “Who are ‘they’?”

            “Not here, Farrill,” said Jonti. “We need privacy for this. You’re a marked man, and I may already have endangered myself as well.”

            TWO:

            The Net Across Space

The student lounge was empty; it was dark as well. At four-thirty in the morning it could scarcely have been otherwise. Yet Jonti hesitated a moment as he held the door open, listening for occupants.

            “No,” he said softly, “leave the lights out. We won’t need them to talk.”

            “I’ve had enough of the dark for one night,” muttered Biron.

            “We’ll leave the door ajar.”

            Biron lacked the will to argue. He dropped into the nearest chair and watched the rectangle of light through the closing door narrow down to a thin line. Now that it was all over, he was getting the shakes.

            Jonti steadied the door and rested his little swagger stick upon the crack of light on the floor. “Watch it. It will tell us if anyone passes, or if the door moves.”

            Biron said, “Please, I’m not in a conspiratorial mood. If you don’t mind, I’d appreciate your telling me whatever it is you want to tell me. You’ve saved my life, I know, and tomorrow I’ll be properly thankful. Right now, I could do with a short drink and a long rest.”

            “I can imagine your feelings,” Jonti said, “but the too-long rest you might have had has been avoided, momentarily. I would like to make it more than just momentarily. Do you know that I know your father?”

            The question was an abrupt one, and Biron raised his eyebrows, a gesture lost in the dark. He said, “He has never mentioned knowing you.”

            “I would be surprised if he did. He doesn’t know me by the name I use here. Have you heard from your father recently, by the way?”

            “Why do you ask?”

            “Because he is in great danger.”

            “What?”

            Jonti’s hand found the other’s arm in the dimness and gripped it firmly. “Please! Keep your voice as it has been.” Biron realized, for the first time that they had been whispering.

            Jonti resumed, “I’ll be more specific. Your father has been taken into custody. You understand the significance?”

            “No, I certainly don’t understand. Who has taken him into custody, and what are you getting at? Why are you bothering me?” Biron’s temples were throbbing. The Hypnite and the near death had made it impossible to fence with the cool dandy sitting so close to him that his whispers were as plain as shouts.

            “Surely,” came the whisper, “you have some inkling of the work your father is doing?”

            “If you know my father, you know he is Rancher of Widemos. That is his work.”

            Jonti said, “Well, there is no reason you should trust me, other than that I am risking my own life for you. But I already know all that you can tell me. As an example, I know that your father has been conspiring against the Tyranni.”

            “I deny that,” said Biron tensely. “Your service to me this night does not give you the right to make such statements about my father.”

            “You are foolishly evasive, young man, and you are wasting my time. Don’t you see that the situation is beyond verbal fencing? I’ll say it outright. Your father is in the custody of the Tyranni. He may be dead by now.”

            “I don’t believe you.” Biron half rose.

            “I am in a position to know.”

            “Let’s break this off, Jonti. I am in no mood for mystery, and I resent this attempt of yours to--”

            “Well, to what?” Jonti’s voice lost some of its refined edge. “What do I gain by telling you this? May I remind you that this knowledge of mine, which you will not accept, made it plain to me that an attempt might be made to kill you. Judge by what has happened, Farrill.”

            Biron said, “Start again and tell it straight. I’ll listen.”

            “Very well. I imagine, Farrill, that you know me to be a fellow countryman from the Nebular Kingdoms, although I’ve been passing myself off as a Vegan.”

            “I judged that might be a possibility by your accent. It didn’t seem important.”

            “It’s important, my friend. I came here because, like your father, I didn’t like the Tyranni. They’ve been oppressing our people for fifty years. That’s a long time.”

            “I’m not a politician.”

            Again Jonti’s voice had an irritated edge to it. “Oh, I’m not one of their agents trying to get you into trouble. I’m telling you the truth. They caught me a year ago as they have caught your father now. But I managed to get away, and came to Earth where I thought I might be safe until I was ready to return. That’s all I need to tell you about myself.”

            “It is more than I have asked for, sir.” Biron could not force the unfriendliness out of his voice. Jonti affected him unfavorably with his too-precise mannerisms.

            “I know that. But it is necessary to tell you so much at least, for it was in this manner that I met your father. He worked with me, or, rather, I with him. He knew me but not in his official capacity as the greatest nobleman on the planet of Nephelos. You understand me?”

            Biron nodded uselessly in the darkness and said, “Yes.”

            “It is not necessary to go into that further. My sources of information have been maintained even here, and I know that he has been imprisoned. It is knowledge. If it were merely suspicion, this attempt on your life would have been sufficient proof.”

            “In what way?”

            “If the Tyranni have the father, would they leave the son at large?”

            “Are you trying to tell me that the Tyranni set that radiation bomb in my room? That’s impossible.”

            “Why is it impossible? Can’t you understand their position? The Tyranni rule fifty worlds; they are outnumbered hundreds to one. In such a position, simple force is insufficient. Devious methods, intrigue, assassination are their specialties. The net they weave across space is a wide one, and close-meshed. I can well believe that it extends across five hundred light-years to Earth.”

            Biron was still in the grip of his nightmare. In the distance there were the faint sounds of the lead shields being moved into place. In his room the counter must still be murmuring.

            He said, “It doesn’t make sense. I am going back to Nephelos this week. They would know that. Why should they kill me here? If they’d wait, they’d have me.” He was relieved to find the flaw, eager to believe his own logic.

            Jonti leaned closer and his spiced breath stirred the hairs on Biron’s temple. “Your father is popular. His death--and once imprisoned by the Tyranni, his execution becomes a probability you must face--will be resented even by the cowed slave race the Tyranni are trying to breed. You could rally that resentment as the new Rancher of Widemos, and to execute you as well would double the danger for them. To make martyrs is not their purpose. But if you were to die in a faraway world, by accident, it would be convenient for them.”

            “I don’t believe you,” said Biron. It had become his only defense.

            Jonti rose, adjusting his thin gloves. He said, “You go too far, Farrill. Your role would be more convincing if you pretended to no such complete ignorance. Your father has been shielding you from reality for your own protection, presumably, yet I doubt that you could remain completely uninfluenced by his beliefs. Your hate for the Tyranni cannot help being a reflection of his own. You cannot help being ready to fight them.”

            Biron shrugged.

            Jonti said, “He may even recognize your new adulthood to the point of putting you to use. You are conveniently here on Earth and it is not unlikely you may be combining your education with a definite assignment. An assignment, perhaps, for the failure of which the Tyranni are ready to kill you.”

            “That’s silly melodrama.”

            “Is it? Let it be so, then. If the truth will not persuade you now, events will later. There will be other attempts on your life, and the next one will succeed. From this moment on, Farrill, you are a dead man.”

            Biron looked up. “Wait! What’s your own private interest in the matter?”

            “I am a patriot. I would like to see the Kingdoms free again, with governments of their own choosing.”

            “No. Your private interest. I cannot accept idealism only, because I won’t believe it of you. I am sorry if that offends you.” Biron’s words pounded doggedly.

            Jonti seated himself again. He said, “My lands have been confiscated. Before my exile it was not comfortable to be forced to take orders from those dwarfs. And since then it has become more imperative than ever to become once again the man my grandfather had been before the Tyranni came. Is that enough of a practical reason for wanting a revolution? Your father would have been a leader of that revolution. Failing him, you!”

            “I? I am twenty-three and know nothing of all this. You could find better men.”

            “Undoubtedly I could, but no one else is the son of your father. If your father is killed, you will be Rancher of Widemos, and as such you would be valuable to me if you were only twelve and an idiot besides. I need you for the same reason the Tyranni must be rid of you. And if my necessity is unconvincing to you, surely theirs cannot be. There was a radiation bomb in your room. It could only have been meant to kill you. Who else would want to kill you?”

            Jonti waited patiently and picked up the other’s whisper.

            “No one,” said Biron. “No one would want to kill me that I know of. Then it’s true about my father!”

            “It is true. View it as a casualty of war.”

            “You think that would make it better? They’ll put up a monument to him someday, perhaps? One with a radiating inscription that you can see ten thousand miles out in space?” His voice was becoming a bit ragged. “Is that supposed to make me happy?”

            Jonti waited, but Biron said nothing more. Jonti said, “What do you intend doing?”

            “I’m going home.”

            “You still don’t understand your position, then.”

            “I said, I’m going home. What do you want me to do? If he’s alive, I’ll get him out of there. And if he’s dead, I’ll--I’ll--”

            “Quiet!” The older man’s voice was coldly annoyed. “You rave like a child. You can’t go to Nephelos. Don’t you see that you can’t? Am I talking to an infant or to a young man of sense?

            Biron muttered, “What do you suggest?”

            “Do you know the Director of Rhodia?”

            “The friend of the Tyranni? I know the man. I know who he is. Everyone in the Kingdoms knows who he is. Hinrik V, Director of Rhodia.”

            “Have you ever met him?”

            “No.”

            “That is what I meant. If you haven’t met him, you don’t know him. He is an imbecile, Farrill. I mean it literally. But when the Ranchy of Widemos is confiscated by the Tyranni--and it will be, as my lands were--it will be awarded to Hinrik. There the Tyranni will feel them to be safe, and there you must go.”

            “Why?”

            “Because Hinrik, at least, has influence with the Tyranni; as much influence as a lickspittle puppet may have. He may arrange to have you reinstated.”

            “I don’t see why. He’s more likely to turn me over to them.”

            “So he is. But you’ll be on your guard against it, and there is a fighting chance you may avoid it. Remember, the title you carry is valuable and important, but it is not all-sufficient. In this business of conspiracy, one must be practical above all. Men will rally about you out of sentiment and respect for your name, but to hold them, you will need money.”

            Biron considered. “I need time to decide.”

            “You have no time. Your time ran out when the radiation bomb was planted in your room. Let us take action. I can give you a letter of introduction to Hinrik of Rhodia.”

            “You know him so well, then?”

            Your suspicion never sleeps very soundly, does it? I once headed a mission to Hinrik’s court on behalf of the Autarch of Lingane. His imbecile’s mind will probably not remember me, but he will not dare to show he has forgotten. It will serve as introduction and you can improvise from there. I will have the letter for you in the morning. There is a ship leaving for Rhodia at noon. I have tickets for you. I am leaving myself, but by another route. Don’t linger. You’re all through here, aren’t you?”

            “There is the diploma presentation.”

            A scrap of parchment; Does it matter to you?”

            “Not now.”

            “Do you have money?”

            “Enough.”

            “Very well. Too much would be suspicious.” He spoke sharply. “Farrill!”

            Biron stirred out of what was nearly a stupor. “What?”

            “Get back to the others. Tell no one you are leaving. Let the act speak.”

            Biron nodded dumbly. Far away in the recesses of his mind there was the thought that his mission remained unaccomplished and that in this way, too, he failed his dying father. He was racked with a futile bitterness. He might have been told more. He might have shared the dangers. He should not have been allowed to act in ignorance.

            And now that he knew the truth, or at least more of it, concerning the extent of his father’s role in conspiracy, there was an added importance to the document he was to have obtained from Earth’s archives. But there was no time any longer. No time to get the document. No time to wonder about it. No time to save his father. No time, perhaps, to live.

            He said, “I’ll do as you say, Jonti.”

            Sander Jonti looked briefly out over the university campus as he paused on the steps of the dormitory. Certainly there was no admiration in his glance.

            As he stepped down the bricked walk that wound unsubtly through the pseudo-rustic atmosphere affected by all urban campuses since antiquity, he could see the lights of the city’s single important street gleam just ahead. Past it, drowned in daytime, but visible now, was the eternal radioactive blue of the horizon, mute witness of prehistoric wars.

            Jonti considered the sky for a moment. Over fifty years had passed since the Tyranni had come and put a sudden end to the separate lives of two dozen sprawling, brawling political units in the depths beyond the Nebula. Now, suddenly and prematurely, the peace of strangulation lay upon them.

            The storm that had caught them in one vast thunderclap had been something from which they had not yet recovered. It had left only a sort of twitching that futilely agitated a world here and there, now and then. To organize those twitchings, to align them into a single well-timed heave would be a difficult task, and a long one. Well, he had been rusticating here on Earth long enough. It was time to go back.

            The others, back home, were probably trying to get in touch with him at his rooms right now.

            He lengthened his stride a bit.

            He caught the beam as he entered his room. It was a personal beam, for whose security there were as yet no fears and in whose privacy there was no chink. No formal receiver was required; no thing of metal and wires to catch the faint, drifting surges of electrons, with their whispered impulses swimming through hyperspace from a world half a thousand light-years away.

            Space itself was polarized in his room, and prepared for reception. Its fabric was smoothed out of randomness. There was no way of detecting that polarization, except by receiving. And in that particular volume of space, only his own mind could act as receiver; since only the electrical characteristics of his own particular nerve-cell system could resonate to the vibrations of the carrier beam that bore the message.

            The message was as private as the unique characteristics of his own brain waves, and in all the universe, with its quadrillions of human beings, the odds against a duplication sufficiently close to allow one man to pick up another’s personal wave was a twenty-figured number to one.

            Jonti’s brain tickled to the call as it whined through the endless empty incomprehensibility of hyperspace.

            “…calling…calling…calling…calling…”

            Sending was not quite so simple a job as receiving. A mechanical contrivance was needed to set up the highly specific carrier wave that would carry back to the contact beyond the Nebula. That was contained in the ornamental button that he carried on his right shoulder. It was automatically activated when he stepped into his volume of space polarization, and after that he had only to think purposefully and with concentration.

            “Here I am!” No need for more specific identification.

            The dull repetition of the calling signal halted and became words that took form within his mind. “We greet you, sir. Widemos has been executed. The news is, of course, not yet public.”

            “It does not surprise me. Was anyone else implicated?”

            “No, sir. The Rancher made no statements at any time. A brave and loyal man.”

            “Yes. But it takes more than simply bravery and loyalty, or he would not have been caught. A little more cowardice might have been useful. No matter! I have spoken to his son, the new Rancher, who has already had his brush with death. He will be put to use.”

            “May one inquire in what manner, sir?”

            “It is better to let events answer your question. Certainly I cannot foretell consequences at this early date. Tomorrow he will set off to see Hinrik of Rhodia. “

            “Hinrik! The young man will run a fearful risk. Is he aware that--”

            “I have told him as much as I can,” responded Jonti sharply. “We cannot trust him too far until he has proved himself. Under the circumstances as they exist, we can only view him as a man to be risked, like any other man. He is expendable, quite expendable. Do not call me here again, as I am leaving Earth.”

            And, with a gesture of finality, Jonti broke the connection mentally.

            Quietly and thoughtfully, he went over the events of the day and the night, weighing each event. Slowly, he smiled. Everything had been arranged perfectly, and the comedy might now play itself out.

            Nothing had been left to chance.

            THREE:

            Chance and the Wrist Watch

The first hour of a space-ship’s rise from planetary thralldom is the most prosaic. There is the confusion of departure, which is much the same in essence as that which must have accompanied the shoving off of the first hollowed-out tree trunk on some primeval river.

            You have your accommodations; your luggage is taken care of; there is the first stiff moment of strangeness and meaningless hustle surrounding you. The shouted last-moment intimacies, the quieting, the muted clang of the air locks, followed by the slow soughing of air as the locks screw inward automatically, like gigantic drills, becoming airtight.

            Then the portentous silence and the red signs flicking in every room: “Adjust acceleration suits....Adjust acceleration suits....Adjust acceleration suits.”

            The stewards scour the corridors, knocking shortly on each door and jerking it open. “Beg pardon. Suits on.”

            You battle with the suits, cold, tight, uncomfortable, but cradled in a hydraulic system which absorbs the sickening pressures of the take-off.

            There is the faraway rumble of the atom-driven motors, on low power for atmospheric maneuvering, followed instantly by the giving back against the slow-yielding oil of the suit cradle. You recede almost indefinitely back, then very slowly forward again as the acceleration decreases. If you survive nausea during this period, you are probably safe from space sickness for duration.

            The view-room was not open to the passengers for the first three hours of the flight, and there was a long line waiting when the atmosphere had been left behind and the double doors were ready to separate. There were present not only the usual hundred-percent turnout of all Planetaries (those, in other words, who had never been in space before), but a fair proportion of the more experienced travelers as well.

            The vision of Earth from space, after all, was one of the tourist “musts.”

            The view-room was a bubble on the ship’s “skin,” a bubble of curved two-foot-thick, steel-hard transparent plastic. The retractile iridium-steel lid which protected it against the scouring of the atmosphere and its dust particles had been sucked back. The lights were out and the gallery was full. The faces peering over the bars were clear in the Earth-shine.

            For Earth was suspended there below, a gigantic and gleaming orange-and-blue-and-white-patched balloon. The hemisphere showing was almost entirely sunlit; the continents between the clouds, a desert orange, with thin, scattered lines of green. The seas were blue, standing out sharply against the black of space where they met the horizon. And all around in the black, undusted sky were the stars.

            They waited patiently, those who watched.

            It was not the sunlit hemisphere they wanted. The polar cap, blinding bright, was shifting down into view as the ship maintained the slight, unnoticed sidewise acceleration that was lifting it out of the ecliptic. Slowly the shadow of night encroached upon the globe and the huge World-Island of Eurasia-Africa majestically took the stage, north side “down.”

            Its diseased, unliving soil hid its horror under a night-induced play of jewels. The radioactivity of the soil was a vast sea of iridescent blue, sparkling in strange festoons that spelled out the manner in which the nuclear bombs had once landed, a full generation before the force-field defense against nuclear explosions had been developed so that no other world could commit suicide in just that fashion again.

            The eyes watched until, with the hours, Earth was a bright little half coin in the endless black.

            Among the watchers was Biron Farrill. He sat by himself in the front row, arms upon the railing, eyes brooding and thoughtful. This was not the way he had expected to leave Earth. It was the wrong manner, the wrong ship, the wrong destination.

            His tanned forearm rubbed against the stubble of his chin and he felt guilty about not having shaved that morning. He’d go back to his room after a while and correct that. Meanwhile, he hesitated to leave. There were people here. In his room he would be alone.

            Or was that just the reason he should leave?

            He did not like the new feeling he had, that of being hunted; that of being friendless.

            All friendship had dropped from him. It had shriveled from the very moment he had been awakened by the phone call less than twenty-four hours earlier.

            Even in the dormitory he had become an embarrassment. Old Esbak had pounced upon him when he had returned after his talk with Jonti in the student lounge. Esbak was in turmoil; his voice overshrill.

            “Mr. Farrill, I’ve been looking for you. It has been a most unfortunate incident. I can’t understand it. Do you have any explanation?”

            “No,” he half shouted, “I don’t. When can I get into my room and get my stuff out?”

            “In the morning, I am sure. We’ve just managed to get the equipment up here to test the room. There is no longer any trace of radioactivity above normal background level. It was a very fortunate escape for you. It must have missed you only by minutes.”

            “Yes, yes, but if you don’t mind, I would like to rest.”

            “Please use my room till morning and then we’ll get you relocated for the few days remaining you. Umm, by the way, Mr. Farrill, if you don’t mind, there is another matter.”

            He was being overly polite. Biron could almost hear the egg-shells give slightly beneath his finicky feet.

            “What other matter?” asked Biron wearily.

            “Do you know of anyone who might have been interested in--er--hazing you?”

            “Hazing me like this? Of course not.”

            “What are your plans, then? The school authorities would, of course, be most unhappy to have publicity arise as a result of this incident.”

            How he kept referring to it as an “incident”! Biron said dryly, “I understand you. But don’t worry. I’m not interested in investigations or in the police. I’m leaving Earth soon, and I’d just as soon not have my own plans disrupted. I’m not bringing any charges. After all, I’m still alive.”

            Esbak had been almost indecently relieved. It was all they wanted from him. No unpleasantness. It was just an incident to be forgotten.

            He got into his old room again at seven in the morning. It was quiet and there was no murmuring in the closet. The bomb was no longer there, nor was the counter. They had probably been taken away by Esbak and thrown into the lake. It came under the head of destroying evidence, but that was the school’s worry. He threw his belongings into suitcases and then called the desk for assignment to another room. The lights were working again, he noticed, and so, of course, was the visiphone. The one remnant of last night was the twisted door, its lock melted away.

            They gave him another room. That established his intention to stay for anyone that might be listening. Then, using the hall phone, he had called an air cab. He did not think anyone saw him. Let the school puzzle out his disappearance however they pleased.

            For a moment he had caught sight of Jonti at the space port. They met in the fashion of a glancing blow. Jonti said nothing; gave no sign of recognition, but after he had passed by, there were in Biron’s hand a featureless little black globe that was a personal capsule and a ticket for passage to Rhodia.

            He spent a moment upon the personal capsule. It was not sealed. He read the message later in his room. It was a simple introduction with minimum wordage.

            Biron’s thoughts rested for a while upon Sander Jonti, as he watched Earth shrivel with time there in the view-room. He had known the man very superficially until Jonti had whirled so devastatingly into his life, first to save it and then to set it upon a new and untried course. Biron had known his name; he had nodded when they passed; had exchanged polite formalities occasionally, but that was all. He had not liked the man, had not liked his coldness, his overdressed, overmannered personality. But all that had nothing to do with affairs now.

            Biron rubbed his crew cut with a restless hand and sighed. He actually found himself hungering for Jonti’s presence. The man was at least master of events. He had known what to do; he had known what Biron was to do; he had made Biron do it. And now Biron was alone and feeling very young, very helpless, very friendless, and almost frightened.

            Through it all, he studiously avoided thinking of his father. It would not help.

            “Mr. Malaine.”

            The name was repeated two or three times before Biron started at the respectful touch upon his shoulder and looked up.

            The robot messenger said again, “Mr. Malaine,” and for five seconds Biron stared blankly, until he remembered that that was his temporary name. It had been penciled lightly upon the ticket which Jonti had given him. A stateroom had been reserved in that name.

            “Yes, what is it? I am Malaine.” The messenger’s voice hissed very faintly as the spool within whirled off its message. “I have been asked to inform you that your stateroom has been changed, and that your baggage has already been shifted. If you will see the purser, you will be given your new key. We trust that this will cause no inconvenience for you.”

            “What’s all this?” Biron whirled in his seat, and several of the thinning group of passengers, still watching, looked up at the explosive sound. “What’s the idea?”

            Of course, it was no use arguing with a machine that had merely fulfilled its function. The messenger had bowed its metal head respectfully, its gently fixed imitation of a human smile of ingratiation unchanging, and had left.

            Biron strode out of the view-room and accosted the ship’s officer at the door with somewhat more energy than he had planned.

            “Look here. I want to see the captain.”

            The officer showed no surprise. “Is it important, sir?”

            “It sure as Space is. I’ve just had my stateroom shifted without my permission and I’d like to know the meaning of it.”

            Even at the time, Biron felt his anger to be out of proportion to the cause, but it represented an accumulation of resentment. He had nearly been killed; he had been forced to leave Earth like a skulking criminal; he was going he knew not where to do he knew not what; and now they were pushing him around aboard ship. It was the end.

            Yet, through it all, he had the uncomfortable feeling that Jonti, in his shoes, would have acted differently, perhaps more wisely. Well, he wasn’t Jonti.

            The officer said, “I will call the purser.”

            “I want the captain,” insisted Biron.

            “If you wish, then.” And after a short conversation through the small ship’s communicator suspended from his lapel, he said urbanely, “You will be called for. Please Walt.”

            Captain Hirm Gordell was a rather short and thickset man, who rose politely and leaned over his desk to shake hands with Biron when the latter entered.

            “Mr. Malaine,” he said, “I am sorry we had to trouble you.”

            He had a rectangular face, iron-gray hair, a short, well-kept mustache of slightly darker hue, and a clipped smile.

            “So am I,” said Biron. “I had a stateroom reservation to which I was entitled and I feel that not even you, sir, had the right to change it without my permission.”

            “Granted, Mr. Malaine. But, you understand, it was rather an emergency. A last-minute arrival, an important man, insisted on being moved to a stateroom closer the gravitational center of the ship. He had a heart condition and it was important to keep ship’s gravity as low as possible for him. We had no choice.”

            “All right, but why pick on me as the one to be shifted.”

            “It had to be someone. You were traveling alone; you are a young man who we felt would have no difficulty in taking a slightly higher gravity.” His eyes traveled automatically up and down Biron’s six-feet-two of hard musculature. “Be. sides, you will find your new room rather more elaborate than your old one. You have not lost by the exchange. No indeed.”

            The captain stepped from behind his desk. “May I show you your new quarters personally?”

            Biron found it difficult to maintain his resentment. It seemed reasonable, this whole matter, and then again, not reasonable either.

            The captain was saying as they left his quarters, “May I have your company at my table for tomorrow night’s dinner? Our first Jump is scheduled for that time.”

            Biron heard himself saying, “Thank you. I will be honored.”

            Yet he thought the invitation strange. Granted that the captain was merely trying to soothe him, yet surely the method was stronger than necessary.

            The captain’s table was a long one, taking up an entire wall of the salon. Biron found himself near the center, taking an unsuitable precedence over others. Yet there was his place card before him. The steward had been quite firm; there was no mistake.

            Biron was not particularly overmodest. As son of the Rancher of Widemos, there had never been any necessity for the development of any such characteristic. And yet as Biron Malaine, he was quite an ordinary citizen, and these things ought not to happen to ordinary citizens.

            For one thing, the captain had been perfectly correct about his new stateroom. It was more elaborate. His original room had been what his ticket called for, a single, second class, while the replacement was a double room, first. There was a bathroom adjoining, private, of course, equipped with a stall shower and an air dryer.

            It was near “officer’s country,” and the presence of uniforms was almost overpowering. Lunch had been brought to his room on silver service. A barber made a sudden appearance just before dinner. All this was perhaps to be expected when one traveled on a luxury space liner, first class, but it was too good for Biron Malaine.

            It was far too good, for by the time the barber had arrived, Biron had just returned from an afternoon walk that had taken him through the corridors in a purposely devious path. There had been crewmen in his path wherever he had turned--polite, clinging. He shook them free somehow and reached 140 D, his first room, the one he had never slept in.

            He stopped to light a cigarette and, in the interval spent thus, the only passenger in sight turned a corridor. Biron touched the signal light briefly and there was no answer.

            Well, the old key had not been taken from him yet. An oversight, no doubt. He placed the thin oblong sliver of metal into its orifice and the unique pattern of leaden opacity within the aluminum sheath activated the tiny phototube. The door opened and he took one step inside.

            It was all he needed. He left and the door closed automatically behind him. He had learned one thing immediately. His old room was not occupied; neither by an important personage with a weak heart nor by anyone else. The bed and furnishings were too neat; no trunks, no toilet articles were in sight; the very air of occupancy was missing.

            So the luxury they were surrounding him with served only to prevent his taking further action to get back his original room. They were bribing him to stay quietly out of the old room. Why? Was it the room they were interested in, or was it himself?

            And now he sat at the captain’s table with the questions unanswered and rose politely with the rest as the captain entered, strode up the steps of the dais on which the long table was set, and took his place.

            Why had they moved him?

            There was music in the ship, and the walls that separated the salon from the view-room had been retracted. The lights were low and tinged with orange-red. The worst of such space sickness as there might have been after the original acceleration or as the result of first exposure to the minor gravity variations between various parts of the ship had passed by now; the salon was full.

            The captain leaned forward slightly and said to Biron, “Good evening, Mr. Malaine. How do you find your new room?”

            “Almost too satisfactory, sir. A little rich for my way of life.” He said it in a flat monotone, and it seemed to him that a faint dismay passed momentarily over the captain’s face.

            Over the dessert, the skin of the view-room’s glass bubble slid smoothly back into its socket, and the lights dimmed to nearly nothing.  Neither sun, earth, nor any planet was in view on that large, dark screen.  They were facing the Milky Way, that longwise view of the Galactic Lens, and it made a luminous diagonal track among the hard, bright stars.

            Automatically the tide of conversation ebbed.  Chairs shifted so that all faced the stars.  The dinner guests had become an audience, the music a faint whisper.

            The voice over the amplifiers was clear and well balanced in the gathered question.

            “Ladies, gentlemen! We are ready for our first Jump. Most of you, I suppose, know, at least theoretically, what a Jump is. Many of you, however--more than half, in point of fact--have never experienced one.  It is to those last I would like to speak in particular.

            “The Jump is exactly what the name implies.  In the fabric of space-time itself, it is impossible to travel faster than the speed of light.  That is a natural law, first discovered by one of the ancients, the traditional Einstein, perhaps, except that so many things are credited to him.  Even at the speed of light, of course, it would take years, in resting time, to reach the stars.

            “Therefore one leaves the space-time fabric to enter the little-known realm of hyperspace, where time and distance have no meaning.  It is like traveling across a narrow isthmus to pass from one ocean to another, rather than remaining at sea and circling a continent to accomplish the same distance.

            “Great amounts of energy are required, of course, to enter this ‘space within space’ as some call it, and a great deal of ingenious calculation must be made to insure re-entry into ordinary space time at the proper point.  The result of the expenditure of this energy and intelligence is that immense distances can be traversed in zero time.  It is only the Jump which makes interstellar travel possible.

            “The Jump we are about to make will take place in about ten minutes.  You will be warned.  There is never more than some momentary minor discomfort; therefore, I hope all of you will remain calm.  Thank you.”

            The ship lights went out altogether, and there were only the stars left.

            It seemed a long while before a crisp announcement filled the air momentarily: “The Jump will take place in exactly one minute.” And then the same voice counted the seconds backwards: “Fifty...forty...thirty...twenty... ten...five...three...two...one...”

            It was as though there had been a momentary discontinuity in existence, a bump which joggled only the deep inside of a man’s bones.

            In that immeasurable fraction of a second, one hundred light-years had passed, and the ship, which had been on the outskirts of the solar system, was now in the depths of interstellar space.

            Someone near Biron said shakily, “Look at the stars!”

            In a moment the whisper had taken life through the large room and hissed itself across the tables: “The stars! See!”

            In that same immeasurable fraction of a second the star view had changed radically. The center of the great Galaxy, which stretched thirty thousand light-years from tip to tip, was closer now, and the stars had thickened in number. They spread across the black velvet vacuum in a fine powder, back-dropping the occasional brightness of the nearby stars.

            Biron, against his will, remembered the beginning of a poem he himself had once written at the sentimental age of nineteen, on the occasion of his first space flight; the one that had first taken him to the Earth he was now leaving. His lips moved silently:

            “The stars, like dust, encircle me

            In living mists of light;

            And all of space I seem to see

            In one vast burst of sight.”

            The lights went on then, and Biron’s thoughts were snapped out of space as suddenly as they had entered it. He was in a space liner’s salon again, with a dinner dragging to an end, and the hum of conversation rising to a prosaic level again.

            He glanced at his wrist watch, half looked away, then, very slowly, brought the wrist watch into focus again. He stared at it for a long minute. It was the wrist watch he had left in his bedroom that night; it had withstood the killing radiation of the bomb, and he had collected it with the rest of his belongings the next morning. How many times had he looked at it since then? How many times had he stared at it, taken mental note of the time and no note at all of the other piece of information it shouted at him?

            For the plastic wristband was white, not blue. It was white!

            Slowly the events of that night, all of them, fell into place. Strange how one fact could shake an the confusion out of them.

            He rose abruptly, murmuring, “Pardon me!” under his breath. It was a breach of etiquette to leave before the captain, but that was a matter of small importance to him then.

            He hastened to his room, striding up the ramps rapidly, rather than waiting for the non-gravity elevators. He locked the door behind him and looked quickly through the bathroom and the built-in closets. He had no real hope of catching anyone. What they had had to do, they must have done hours ago.

            Carefully, he went through his baggage. They had done a thorough job. With scarcely any sign to show that they had come and gone, they had carefully withdrawn his identification papers, a packet of letters from his father, and even his capsular introduction to Hinrik of Rhodia.

            That was why they had moved him. It was neither the old room nor the new that they were interested in; merely the process of moving. For nearly an hour they must have legitimately--legitimately, by Space!--concerned themselves with his baggage, and served their own purposes thereby.

            Biron sank down upon the double bed and thought furiously, but it didn’t help. The trap had been perfect. Everything had been planned. Had it not been for the completely unpredictable chance of his leaving his wrist watch in the bedroom that night, he would not even now have realized how close-meshed the Tyranni’s net through space was.

            There was a soft burr as his door signal sounded.

            “Come in,” he said.

            It was the steward, who said respectfully, “The captain wishes to know if there is anything he can do for you. You seemed ill as you left the table.”

            “I’m all right,” he said.

            How they watched him! And in that moment he knew that there was no escape, and that the ship was carrying him politely, but surely, to his death.

            FOUR:

            Free?

Sander Jonti met the other’s eyes coldly. He said, “Gone, you say?”

            Rizzett passed a hand over his ruddy face. “Something is gone. I don’t know its identity. It might have been the document we’re after, certainly. All we know about it is that it had been dated somewhere in the fifteenth to twenty-first century of Earth’s primitive calendar, and that it is dangerous.”

            “Is there any definite reason to believe that the missing one is the document?”

            “Only circumstantial reasoning. It was guarded closely by the Earth government.”

            “Discount that. An Earthman will treat any document relating to the pre-Galactic past with veneration. It’s their ridiculous worship of tradition.”

            “But this one was stolen and yet they never announced the fact. Why do they guard an empty case?”

            “I can imagine their doing that rather than finding themselves forced to admit that a holy relic has been stolen. Yet I cannot believe that young Farrill obtained it after all. I thought you had him under observation.”

            The other smiled. “He didn’t get it.”

            “How do you know?”

            Jonti’s agent quickly exploded his land mine. “Because the document has been gone twenty years.”

            “What?”

            “It has not been seen for twenty years.”

            “Then it can’t be the right one. It was less than six months ago that the Rancher learned of its existence.”

            “Then somebody else beat him to it by nineteen and a half years.”

            Jonti considered. He said, “It does not matter. It cannot matter.”

            “Why so?”

            “Because I have been here on Earth for months. Before I came, it was easy to believe that there might be information of value on the planet. But consider now. When Earth was the only inhabited planet in the Galaxy, it was a primitive place, militarily speaking. The only weapon they had ever invented worth mentioning was a crude and inefficient nuclear-reaction bomb for which they had not even developed the logical defense.” He flung his arm outward in a delicate gesture to where the blue horizon gleamed its sickly radio. activity beyond the thick concrete of the room.

            He went on. “All this is placed in sharp focus for me as a temporary resident here. It is ridiculous to assume that it is possible to learn anything from a society at that level of military technology. It is always very fashionable to assume that there are lost arts and lost sciences, and there are always these people who make a cult of primitivism and who make all sorts of ridiculous claims for the prehistoric civilizations on Earth.”

            Rizzett said, “Yet the Rancher was a wise man. He told us specifically that it was the most dangerous document he knew. You remember what he said. I can quote it. He said, ‘The matter is death for the Tyranni, and death for us as well; but it would mean final life for the Galaxy.’ “

            “The Rancher, like all human beings, can be wrong.”

            “Consider, sir, that we have no idea as to the nature of the document. It could, for instance, be somebody’s laboratory notes which had never been published. It might be something that could relate to a weapon the Earthmen had never recognized as a weapon; something which on the face of it might not be a weapon--”

            “Nonsense. You are a military man and should know better. If there is one science into which man has probed continuously and successfully, it is that of military technology. No potential weapon would remain unrealized for ten thousand years. I think, Rizzett, we will return to Lingane.”

            Rizzett shrugged. He was not convinced.

            Nor, a thousandfold, was Jonti. It had been stolen, and that was significant. It had been worth stealing! Anyone in the Galaxy might have it now.

            Unwillingly the thought came to him that the Tyranni might have it. The Rancher had been most evasive on the matter. Even Jonti himself had not been trusted sufficiently. The Rancher had said it carried death; it could not be used without having it cut both ways. Jonti’s lips clamped shut. The fool and his idiotic hintings! And now the Tyranni had him.

            What if a man like Aratap were now in the possession of such a secret as this might be? Aratap! The one man, now that the Rancher was gone, who remained unpredictable; the most dangerous Tyrannian of them all.

            Simok Aratap was a small man; a little bandy-legged, narrow-eyed fellow. He had the stumpy, thick-limbed appearance of the average Tyrannian, yet though he faced an exceptionally large and well-muscled specimen of the subject worlds, he was completely self-possessed. He was the confident heir (in the second generation) of those who had left their windy, infertile worlds and sparked across the emptiness to capture and enchain the rich and populous planets of the Nebular Regions.

            His father had headed a squadron of small, flitting ships that had struck and vanished, then struck again, and made scrap of the lumbering titanic ships that had opposed them.

            The worlds of the Nebula had fought in the old fashion, but the Tyranni had learned a new one. Where the huge, glittering vessels of the opposed navies attempted single combat, they found themselves flailing at emptiness and wasting their stores of energy. Instead, the Tyranni, abandoning power alone, stressed speed and co-operation, so that the opposed Kingdoms toppled one after the other, singly; each waiting (half joyfully at the discomfiture of its neighbors), fallaciously secure behind its steel-shipped ramparts, until its own turn came.

            But those wars were fifty years earlier. Now the Nebular Regions were satrapies that required merely the acts of occupation and taxation. Previously there had been worlds to gain, Aratap thought wearily, and now there was little left to do but to contend with single men.

            He looked at the young man who faced him. He was quite a young man. A tall fellow with very good shoulders indeed; an absorbed, intent face with the hair of his head cut ridiculously short in what was undoubtedly a collegiate affectation. In an unofficial sense, Aratap was sorry for him. He was obviously frightened.

            Biron did not recognize the feeling inside him as “fright.” If he had been asked to put a name to the emotion, he would have described it as “tension.” All his life he had known the Tyranni to be the overlords. His father, strong and vital though he was, unquestioned on his own estate, respectfully heard on others, was quiet and almost humble in the presence of the Tyranni.

            They came occasionally to Widemos on polite visits, with questions as to the annual tribute they called taxation. The Rancher of Widemos was responsible for the collection and delivery of these funds on behalf of the planet Nephelos and, perfunctorily, the Tyranni would check his books.

            The Rancher himself would assist them out of their small vessels. They would sit at the head of the table at mealtimes, and they would be served first. When they spoke, all other conversation stopped instantly.

            As a child, he wondered that such small, ugly men should be so carefully handled, but he learned as he grew up that they were to his father what his father was to a cow hand. He even learned to speak softly to them himself, and to address them as “Excellency.”

            He had learned so well that now that he faced one of the overlords, one of the Tyranni, he could feel himself shiver with tension.

            The ship which he had considered his prison became officially one on the day of landing upon Rhodia. They had signaled at his door and two husky crewmen had entered and stood on either side of him. The captain, who followed, had said in a flat voice, “Biron Farrill, I take you into custody by the power vested in me as captain of this vessel, and hold you for questioning by the Commissioner of the Great King.”

            The Commissioner was this small Tyrannian who sat before him now, seemingly abstracted and uninterested. The “Great King” was the Khan of the Tyranni, who still lived in the legendary stone palace on the Tyrannian’s home planet.

            Biron looked furtively about him. He was not physically constrained in any way, but four guards in the slate blue of the Tyrannian Outer Police flanked him, two and two. They were armed. A fifth, with a major’s insignia, sat beside the Commissioner’s desk.

            The Commissioner spoke to him for the first time. “As you may know”--his voice was high--pitched, thin--”the old Rancher of Widemos, your father, has been executed for treason.”

            His faded eyes were fixed on Biron’s. There seemed nothing beyond mildness in them.

            Biron remained stolid. It bothered him that he could do nothing. It would have been so much more satisfying to howl at them, to flail madly at them, but that would not make his father less dead. He thought he knew the reason for this initial statement. It was intended to break him down, to make him give himself away. Well, it wouldn’t.

            He said evenly, “I am Biron Malaine of Earth. If you are questioning my identity, I would like to communicate with the Terrestrial Consul.”

            “Ah yes, but we are at a purely informal stage just now. You are Biron Malaine, you say, of Earth. And yet”--Aratap indicated the papers before him--”there are letters here which were written by Widemos to his son. There is a college registration receipt and tickets to commencement exercises made out to a Biron Farrill. They were found in your baggage.”

            Biron felt desperate but he did not let it show. “My baggage was searched illegally, so that I deny that those can be admitted as evidence.”

            “We are not in a court of law, Mr. Farrill or Malaine. How do you explain them?”

            “If they were found in my baggage, they were placed there by someone else.”

            The Commissioner passed it by, and Biron felt amazed. His statements sounded so thin, so patently foolish. Yet the Commissioner did not remark upon them, but only tapped the black capsule with his forefinger. “And this introduction to the Director of Rhodia? Also not yours?”

            “No, that is mine.” Biron had planned that. The introduction did not mention his name. He said, “There is a plot to assassinate the Director--”

            He stopped, appalled. It sounded so completely unconvincing when he finally put the beginning of his carefully prepared speech into actual sound. Surely the Commissioner was smiling cynically at him?

            But Aratap was not. He merely sighed a little and with quick, practiced gestures removed contact lenses from his eyes and placed them carefully in a glass of saline solution that stood on the desk before him. His naked eyeballs were a little watery.

            He said, “And you know of it? Even back on Earth, five hundred light-years away? Our own police here on Rhodia have not heard of it.”

            “The police are here. The plot is being developed on Earth.”

            “I see. And are you their agent? Or are you going to warn Hinrik against them?”

            “The latter, of course.”

            “Indeed? And why do you intend to warn him?”

            “For the substantial reward which I expect to get.”

            Aratap smiled. “That, at least, rings true and lends a certain truthful gloss to your previous statements. What are the details of the plot you speak of?”

            “That is for the Director only.”

            A momentary hesitation, then a shrug. “Very well. The Tyranni are not interested and do not concern themselves with local politics. We will arrange an interview between yourself and the Director and that will be our contribution to his safety. My men will hold you until your baggage can be collected, and then you will be free to go. Remove him.”

            The last was to the armed men, who left with Biron. Aratap replaced his contact lenses, an action which removed ‘instantly that look of vague incompetence their absence had seemed to induce.

            He said to the major, who had remained, “We will keep an eye, I think, on this young Farrill.”

            The officer nodded shortly. “Good! For a moment I thought you might have been taken in. To me, his story was quite incoherent.”

            “It was. It’s just that which makes him maneuverable for the while. All young fools who get their notions of interstellar intrigue from the video spy thrillers are easily handled. lie is, of course, the son of the ex-Rancher.”

            And now the major hesitated. “Are you sure? It’s a vague and unsatisfactory accusation we have against him.”

            “You mean that it might be arranged evidence after all? For what purpose?”

            “It could mean that he is a decoy, sacrificed to divert our attention from a real Biron Farrill elsewhere.”

            “No. Improbably theatrical, that. Besides, we have a photocube.”

            “What? Of the boy?”

            “Of the Rancher’s son. Would you like to see it?”

            “I certainly would.”

            Aratap lifted the paperweight upon his desk. It was a simple glass cube, three inches on each side, black and opaque. He said, “I meant to confront him with it if it had seemed best. It is a cute process, this one, Major. I don’t know if you’re acquainted with it. It’s been developed recently among the inner worlds. Outwardly, it seems an ordinary photocube, but when it is turned upside down, there’s an automatic molecular re-arrangement which renders it totally opaque. It is a pleasant conceit.”

            He turned the cube right side up. The opacity shimmered for a moment, then cleared slowly like a black fog wisping and feathering before the wind. Aratap watched it calmly, hands folded across his chest.

            And then it was water-clear, and a young face smiled brightly out of it, accurate and alive, trapped and solidified in mid-breath forever.

            “An item,” said Aratap, “in the ex-Rancher’s possessions. What do you think?”

            “It is the young man, without question.”

            “Yes.” The Tyrannian official regarded the photocube thoughtfully. “You know, using this same process, I don’t see why six photographs could not be taken in the same cube. It has six faces, and by resting the cube on each of them in turn, a series of new molecular orientations might be induced. Six connected photographs, flowing one into another as you turned, a static phenomenon turned dynamic and taking on new breadth and vision. Major, it would be a new art form.” A mounting enthusiasm had crept into his voice.

            But the silent major looked faintly scornful, and Aratap left his artistic reflections to say, abruptly, “Then you will watch Farrill?”

            “Certainly.”

            “Watch Hinrik as well.”

            “Hinrik?”

            “Of course. It is the whole purpose of freeing the boy. I want some questions answered. Why is Farrill seeing Hinrik? What is the connection between them? The dead Rancher did not playa lone hand, There was--there must have been--a well-organized conspiracy behind them. And we have not yet located the workings of that conspiracy.”

            “But surely Hinrik could” not be involved. He lacks the intelligence, even if he had the courage.”

            “Granted. But it is just because he is half an idiot that he may serve them as a tool. If so, he represents a weakness in our scheme of things. We obviously cannot afford to neglect the possibility.”

            He gestured absently; the major saluted, turned on his heel, and left.

            Aratap sighed, thoughtfully turned the photocube in his hand, and watched the blackness wash back like a tide of ink.

            Life was simpler in his father’s time. To smash a planet had a cruel grandeur about it; while this careful maneuvering of an ignorant young man was simply cruel.

            And yet necessary.

            FIVE:

            Uneasy Lies the Head

The directorship of Rhodia is not ancient, when compared with Earth, as a habitat for Homo sapiens. It is not ancient even when compared with the Centaurian or Sirian worlds. The planets of Arcturus, for instance, had been settled for two hundred years when the first space ships circled the Horsehead Nebula to find the nest of hundreds of oxygen-water planets behind. They clustered thickly and it was a real find, for although planets infest space, few can satisfy the chemical necessities of the human organism.

            There are between one and two hundred billion radiant stars in the Galaxy. Among them are some five hundred billion planets. Of these, some have gravities more than 120 per cent that of Earth, or less than 60 per cent, and are therefore unbearable in the long run. Some are too hot, some too cold. Some have poisonous atmospheres. Planetary atmospheres consisting largely or entirely of neon, methane, ammonia, chlorine--even silicon tetrafluoride--have been recorded. Some planets lack water, one with oceans of almost pure sulphur dioxide having been described. Others lack carbon.

            Any one of these failings is sufficient, so that not one world in a hundred thousand can be lived on. Yet this still leaves an estimated four million habitable worlds.

            The exact number of these which are actually occupied is disputable. According to the Galactic Almanac, admittedly dependent on imperfect records, Rhodia was the l098th world settled by man.

            Ironically enough, Tyrann, eventually Rhodia’s conqueror, was the 1099th.

            The pattern of history in the Trans-Nebular Region was distressingly similar to that elsewhere during the period of development and expansion. Planet republics were set up in rapid succession, each government confined to its own world. With expanding economy, neighboring planets were colonized and integrated with the home society. Small “empires” were established and these inevitably clashed.

            Hegemony over sizable regions was established by first one, then another of these governments, depending upon the fluctuations of the fortunes of war and of leadership.

            Only Rhodia maintained a lengthy stability, under the able dynasty of the Hinriads. It was perhaps well on the road to establishing finally a universal Trans-Nebular Empire in a stolid century or two, when the Tyranni came and did the job in ten years.

            Ironical that it should be the men of Tyrann. Until then, during the seven hundred years of its existence, Tyrann had done little better than maintain a precarious autonomy, thanks largely to the undesirability of its barren landscape, which, because of a planetary water dearth, was largely desert.

            But even after the Tyranni came, the Directorship of Rhodia continued. It had even grown. The Hinriads were popular with the people, so their existence served as a means of easy control. The Tyranni did not care who got the cheers as long as they themselves received the taxes.

            To be sure, the Directors were no longer the Hinriads of old. The Directorship had always been elective within the family so that the ablest might be chosen. Adoptions into the family had been encouraged for the same purpose.

            But now the Tyranni could influence the elections for other reasons, and twenty years earlier, for instance, Hinrik (fifth of that name) had been chosen Director. To the Tyranni, it had seemed a useful choice.

            Hinrik had been a handsome man at the time of his election, and he still made an impressive appearance when he addressed the Rhodian Council. His hair had grayed smoothly, and his thick mustache remained, startingly enough, as black as his daughter’s eyes.

            At the moment he faced his daughter, and she was furious. She lacked only two inches of his height, and the Director lacked less than an inch of six feet. She was a smoldering girl, dark of hair and of eyes, and, at the moment, loweringly dark of complexion.

            She said again, “I can’t do it! I won’t do it!”

            Hinrik said, “But, Arta, Arta, this is unreasonable. What am I to do? What can I do? In my position, what choice have I?”

            “If Mother were alive, she would find a way out.” And she stamped her foot. Her full name was Artemisia, a royal name that had been borne by at least one female of the Hinriads in every generation.

            “Yes, yes, no doubt. Bless my soul! What a way your mother had with her! There are times when you seem all of her and none of me. But surely, Arta, you haven’t given him a chance. Have you observed his--ah--better points?”

            “Which are those?”

            “The ones which...” He gestured vaguely, thought a while and gave it up. He approached her and would have put a consoling hand upon her shoulder, but she squirmed away from him, her scarlet gown shimmering in the air.

            “I have spent an evening with him,” she said bitterly, “and he tried to kiss me. It was disgusting!”

            “But everyone kisses, dear. It’s not as though this were your grandmother’s time--of respected memory. Kisses are nothing--less than nothing. Young blood, Arta, young blood!”

            “Young blood, my foot. The only time that horrible little man has had young blood in him these fifteen years has been immediately after a transfusion. He’s four inches shorter than I am, Father. How can I be seen in public with a pygmy?”

            “He’s an important man. Very important!”

            “That doesn’t add a single inch to his height. He is bowlegged, as they all are, and his breath smells.”

            “His breath smells?” Artemisia wrinkled her nose at her father. “That’s right; it smells. It has an unpleasant odor. I didn’t like it and I let him know it.”

            Hinrik.dropped his jaw wordlessly for a moment, then said in a hoarse half whisper, “You let him know it? You implied that a high official of the Royal Court of Tyrann could have an unpleasant personal characteristic?”

            “He did! I have a nose, you know! So when he got too close, I just held it and pushed. A figure of man to admire, that one is. He went flat on his back, with his legs sticking up.” She gestured with her fingers in illustration, but it was lost on Hinrik, who, with a moan, hunched his shoulders and put his hands over his face.

            He peered miserably from between two fingers. “What will happen now? How can you act so?”

            “It didn’t do me any good. Do you know what he said? Do you know what he said? It was the last straw. It was absolutely the limit. I made up my mind then that I couldn’t stand that man if he were ten feet taIl.”

            “But--but--what did he say?”

            “He said--straight out of a video, Father--he said, ‘Ha! A spirited wench! I like her all the better for that!’ and two servants helped him stagger to his feet. But he didn’t try to breathe in my face again.”

            Hinrik doubled into a chair, leaned forward and regarded Artemisia earnestly. “You could go through the motions of marrying him, couldn’t you? You needn’t be in earnest. Why not merely, for the sake of political expediency--”

            “How do you mean, not in earnest, Father? Shall I cross the fingers of my left hand while signing the contract with my right?”

            Hinrik looked confused. “No, of course not. What good would that do? How would crossing fingers alter the validity of the contract? Really, Arta, I’m surprised at your stupidity.”

            Artemisia sighed. “What do you mean, then?”

            “Mean by what? You see, you’ve disrupted things. I can’t keep my mind on matters properly when you argue with me. What was I saying?”

            “I was merely to pretend I was getting married, or something. Remember?”

            “Oh yes. I mean, you needn’t take it too seriously, you see.”

            “I can have lovers, I suppose.”

            Hinrik stiffened and frowned. “Arta! I brought you up to be a modest, self-respecting girl. So did your mother. How can you say such things? It’s shameful.”

            “But isn’t that what you mean? “

            “I can say it. I am a man, a mature man. A girl like you ought not to repeat it.”

            “Well, I have repeated it and it’s out in the open. I don’t mind lovers. I’ll probably have to have them if I’m forced to marry for reasons of state, but there are limits.” She placed her hands upon her hips, and the cape-like sleeves of her gown slithered away from her tanned and dimpled shoulders. “What will I do between lovers? He’ll still be my husband and I just can’t bear that particular thought.”

            “But he’s an old man, my dear. Life with him would be short.”

            “Not short enough, thank you. Five minutes ago he had young blood. Remember?”

            Hinrik spread his hands wide and let them drop. “Arta, the man is a Tyrannian, and a powerful one. He is in good odor at the Khan’s court.”

            “The Khan might think it’s a good odor. He probably would. He probably stinks himself.”

            Hinrik’s mouth was an O of horror. Automatically, he looked over his shoulder. Then he said hoarsely, “Don’t ever say anything like that again.”

            “I will if I feel like it. Besides, the man has had three wives already.” She forestalled him. “Not the Khan, the man you want me to marry.”

            “But they’re dead,” Hinrik explained earnestly. “Arta, they’re not alive. Don’t think that. How can you imagine I would let my daughter marry a bigamist? We’ll have him produce documents. He married them consecutively, not simultaneously, and they’re dead now, entirely dead, all of them.”

            “It’s no wonder.”

            “Oh, bless my soul, what shall I do?” He made a last effort at dignity. “Arta, it is the price of being a Hinriad and a Director’s daughter.”

            “I didn’t ask to be a Hinriad and a Director’s daughter.”

            “That has nothing to do with it. It is just that the history of all the Galaxy, Arta, shows that there are occasions when reasons of state, the safety of planets, the best interests of peoples require that, uh--”

            “That some poor girl prostitute herself.”

            “Oh, this vulgarity! Someday, you’ll see--someday you’ll say something of the sort in public.”

            “Well, that’s what it is, and I won’t do it. I’d rather die. I’d rather do anything. And I will.”

            The Director got to his feet and held out his arms to her. His lips trembled and he said nothing. She ran to him in a sudden agony of tears and clung desperately to him. “I can’t, Daddy. I can’t. Don’t make me.”

            He patted her awkwardly. “But if you don’t, what will happen? If the Tyranni are displeased, they will remove me, imprison me, maybe even exec--” He gagged on the word. “These are very unhappy times, Arta--very unhappy. The Rancher of Widemos was condemned last week and I believe he has been executed. You remember him, Arta? He was at court half a year ago. A big man, with a round head and deep-set eyes. You were frightened of him at first. “

            “I remember.”

            “Well, he is probably dead. And who knows? Myself next, perhaps. Your poor, harmless old father next. It is a bad time. He was at our court and that’s very suspicious.”

            She suddenly held herself out at arm’s length. “Why should it be suspicious? You weren’t involved with him, were you?”

            “I? Indeed not. But if we openly insult the Khan of Tyrann by refusing an alliance with one of his favorites, they may choose to think even that.”

            Hinrik’s hand wringing was interrupted by the muted buzz of the extension. He started uneasily.

            “I’ll take it in my own room. You just rest. You’ll feel better after a nap. You’ll see, you’ll see. It’s just that you’re a little on edge now.”

            Artemisia looked after him and frowned. Her’ face was intensely thoughtful, and for minutes only the gentle tide of her breasts betrayed life.

            There was the sound of stumbling feet at the door, and she turned.

            “What is it?” The tone was sharper than she had intended.

            It was Hinrik, his face sallow with fear. “Major Andros was calling.”

            “Of the Outer Police?” Hinrik could only nod.

            Artemisia cried, “Surely, he’s not--” She paused reluctantly at the threshold of putting the horrible thought into words, but waited in vain for enlightenment.

            “There is a young man who wants an audience. I don’t know him. Why should he come here? He’s from Earth.” He was gasping for breath and staggered as he spoke, as though his mind were on a turntable and he had to follow it in its gyrations.

            The girl ran to him and seized his elbow. She said sharply, “Sit down, Father. Tell me what has happened.” She took him and some of the panic drained out of his face.

            “I don’t know exactly,” he whispered. “There’s a young man coming here with details concerning a plot on my life. On my life. And they tell me I ought to listen to him.”

            He smiled foolishly. “I’m loved by the people. No one would want to kill me. Would they? Would they?”

            He was watching her eagerly, and relaxed when she said, “Of course no one would want to kill you.”

            Then he was tense again. “Do you think it might be they?”

            “Who?”

            He leaned over to whisper. “The Tyranni. The Rancher of Widemos was here yesterday, and they killed him.” His voice ascended the scale. “And now they’re sending someone over to kill me.”

            Artemisia gripped his shoulder with such force that his mind turned to the present pain.

            She said, “Father! Sit quietly! Not a word! Listen to me. No one will kill you. Do you hear me? No one will kill you. It was six months ago that the Rancher was here. Do you remember? Wasn’t it six months ago? Think!”

            “So long?” whispered the Director. “Yes, yes, it must have been so.”

            “Now you stay here and rest. You’re overwrought. I’ll see the young man myself and then I’ll bring him to you if it’s safe;”

            “Will you, Arta? Will you? He won’t hurt a woman. Surely he wouldn’t hurt a woman.”

            She bent suddenly and kissed his cheek.

            “Be careful,” he murmured, and closed his eyes wearily.

SIX:

That Wears a Crown

Biron Farrill waited uneasily in one of the outer buildings on the Palace Grounds. For the first time in his life he experienced the deflating sensation of being a provincial.

            Widemos Hall, where he had grown up, had been beautiful in his eyes, and now his memory endowed it with merely barbaric glitter. Its curved lines, its filigree work, its curiously wrought turrets, its elaborate “false windows”--He winced at the thought of them.

            But this--this was different.

            The Palace Grounds of Rhodia were no mere lump of’ ostentation built by the petty lords of a cattle kingdom; nor were they the childlike expression of a fading and dying world. They were the culmination, in stone, of the Hinriad dynasty.

            The buildings were strong and quiet. Their lines were straight and vertical, lengthening toward the center of each structure, yet avoiding anything as effeminate as a spire effect. They held a bluntness about them, yet lifted into a climax that affected the onlooker without revealing their method of doing so at a casual glance. They were reserved, self-contained, proud.

            And as each building was, so was the group as a whole, the huge Palace Central becoming a crescendo. One by one, even the few artificialities remaining in the masculine Rhodian style had dropped away. The very “false windows,” so valued as decoration and so useless in a building of artificial light and ventilation, were done away with. And that, somehow, without loss.

            It was only line and plane, a geometrical abstraction that led the eye upward to the sky.

            The Tyrannian major stopped briefly at his side as he left the inner room.

            “You will be received now,” he said.

            Biron nodded, and after a while a larger man in a uniform of scarlet and tan clicked heels before him. It struck Biron with sudden force that those who had the real power did not need the outward show and could be satisfied with slate blue. He recalled the splendid formality of a Rancher’s life and bit his lip at the thought of its futility.

            “Biron Malaine?” asked the Rhodian guard, and Biron rose to follow.

            There was a little gleaming monorail carriage that was suspended delicately by diamagnetic forces upon a single ruddy shaft of metal. Biron had never seen one before. He paused before entering.

            The little carriage, big enough for five or six at the most, swayed with the wind, a graceful teardrop returning the gleam of Rhodia’s splendid sun. The single rail was slender, scarcely more than a cable, and ran the length of the carriage’s underside without touching. Biron bent and saw blue sky all the length between them. For a moment, as he watched, a lifting gust of wind raised it, so that it hovered a full inch above the rail, as though impatient for flight and tearing at the invisible force field that held it. Then it fluttered back to the rail, closer and still closer, but never touching.

            “Get in,” said the guard behind him impatiently, and Biron climbed two steps into the carriage.

            The steps remained long enough for the guard to follow, then lifted quietly and smoothly into place, forming no break in the carriage’s even exterior.

            Biron became aware that the outer opacity of the carriage was an illusion. Once within, he found himself sitting in a transparent bubble. At the motion of a small control, the carriage lifted upward. It climbed the heights easily, buffeting the atmosphere which whistled past. For one moment, Biron caught the panorama of the Palace Grounds from the apex of the arc.

            The structures became a gorgeous whole (could they --have been originally conceived other than as an air view?), laced by the shining copper threads, along one or two of which the graceful carriage bubbles skimmed.

            He felt himself pressed forward, and the carriage came to a dancing halt. The entire run had lasted less than two minutes.

            A door stood open before him. He entered and it closed behind him. There was no one in the room, which was small and bare. For the moment, no one was pushing him, but he felt no comfort because of it. He was under no illusions. Ever since that damned night, others had forced his moves.

            Jonti had placed him on the ship. The Tyrannian Commissioner had placed him here. And each move had increased the measure of his desperation.

            It was obvious to Biron that the Tyrannian had not been fooled. It had been too easy to get away from him. The Commissioner might have called the Terrestrial Consul. He might have hyper-waved Earth, or taken his retinal patterns. These things were routine; they could not have been omitted accidentally.

            He remembered Jonti’s analysis of affairs. Some of it might still be valid. The Tyranni would not kill him outright to create another martyr. But Hinrik was their puppet, and he was as capable as they of ordering an execution. And then he would have been killed by one of his own, and the Tyranni would merely be disdainful onlookers.

            Biron clenched his fists tightly. He was tall and strong, but he was unarmed. The men who would come for him would have blasters and neuronic whips. He found himself backing against the wall.

            He whirled quickly at the small sound of the opening door to his left. The man who entered was armed and uniformed but there was a girl with him. He relaxed a bit. It was only a girl with him. At another time he might have observed the girl closely, since she was worth observation and approval, but at the moment she was only a girl.

            They approached together, stopping some six feet away. He kept his eye on the guard’s blaster.

            The girl said to the guard, “I’ll speak to him first, Lieutenant.”

            There was a little vertical line between her eyes as she turned to him. She said, “Are you the man who has this story of an assassination plot against the Director?”

            Biron said, “I was told I would see the Director.”

            “That is impossible. If you have anything to say, say it to me. If your information is truthful and useful, you will be well treated.”

            “May I ask you who you are? How do I know you are authorized to speak for the Director?”

            The girl seemed annoyed. “I am his daughter. Please answer my questions. Are you from outside the System?”

            “I am from Earth.” Biron paused, then added, “Your Grace.”

            The addition pleased her. “Where is that?”

            “It is a small planet of the Sirian Sector, Your Grace.”

            “And what is your name?”

            “Biron Malaine, Your Grace.”

            She stared at him thoughtfully. “From Earth? Can you pilot a space ship?”

            Biron almost smiled. She was testing him. She knew very well that space navigation was one of the forbidden sciences in the Tyranni-controlled worlds.

            He said, “Yes, Your Grace.” He could prove that when the performance test came, if they let him live that long. Space navigation was not a forbidden science en Earth, and in four years one could learn much.

            She said, “Very well. And your story?”

            He made his decision suddenly. To the guard alone, he would not have dared. But this was a girl, and if she were not lying, if she really were the Director’s daughter, she might be a persuasive factor on his behalf.

            He said, “There is no assassination plot, Your Grace.”

            The girl was startled. She turned impatiently to her companion. “Would you take over, Lieutenant? Get the truth out of him.”

            Biron took a step forward and met the cold thrust of the guard’s blaster. He said urgently, “Wait, Your Grace. Listen to me! It was the only way to see the Director. Don’t you understand?”

            He raised his voice and sent it after her retreating form. “Will you tell His Excellency, at least, that I am Biron Farrill and claim my sanctuary right?”

            It was a feeble straw at which to clutch. The old feudal customs had been losing their force with the generations even before the Tyranni came. Now they were archaisms. But there was nothing else. Nothing.

            She turned, and her eyebrows were arched. “Are you claiming now to be of the aristocratic order? A moment ago your name was Malaine.”

            A new voice sounded unexpectedly. “So it was, but it is the second name which is correct. You are Biron Farrill indeed, my good sir. Of course you are. The resemblance is unmistakable.”.

            A small, smiling man stood in the doorway. His eyes, widely spaced and brilliant, were taking in all of Biron with an amused sharpness. He cocked his narrow face upward at Biron’s height and said to the girl, “Don’t you recognize him, too, Artemisia?”

            Artemisia hurried to him, her voice troubled. “Uncle Oil, What are you doing here?”

            “Taking care of my interests, Artemisia. Remember that if there were an assassination, I would be the closest of the Hinriads to the possible succession.” Gillbret oth Hinriad winked elaborately, then added, “Oh, get the lieutenant out of here. There isn’t any danger.”

            She ignored that and said, “Have you been sounding the communicator again?”

            “But yes. Would you deprive me of an amusement? It is pleasant to eavesdrop on them.”

            “Not if they catch you.”

            “The danger is part of the game, my dear. The amusing part. After all, the Tyranni do not hesitate to sound the .Palace. We can’t do much without their knowing. Well, turnabout, you know. Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

            “No, I’m not,” she said shortly. “This is none of your business.”

            “Then I’ll introduce you. When I heard his name, I stopped listening and came in.” He moved past Artemisia, stepped up to Biron, inspected him with an impersonal smile, and said, “This, is Biron Farrill.”

            “I have said so myself,” said Biron. More than half his attention was upon the lieutenant, who still held his blaster in firing position.

            “But you have not added that you are the son of the Rancher of Widemos.”

            “I would have but for your interruption. In any case, you’ve got the story now. Obviously, I had to get away from the Tyranni, and that without giving them my real name.” Biron waited. This was it, he felt. If the next move was not an immediate arrest, there was still a trifling chance.

            Artemisia said, “I see. This is a matter for the Director. You are sure there is no plot of any sort, then.”

            “None, Your Grace.”

            “Good. Uncle Gil, will you remain with Mr. Farrill? Lieutenant, will you come with me?”

            Biron felt weak. He would have liked to sit down, but no suggestion to that effect was made by Gillbret, who still inspected him with an almost clinical interest.

            “The Rancher’s son! Amusing!”

            Biron brought his attention downward. He was tired of cautious monosyllables and careful phrases. He said abruptly, “Yes, the Rancher’s son. It is a congenital situation. Can I help you in any other way?”

            Gillbret showed no offense. His thin face merely creased further as his smile widened. He said, “You might satisfy my curiosity. You really came for Sanctuary? Here?”

            “I’d rather discuss that with the Director, sir.”

            “Oh, get off it, young man. You’ll find that very little business can be done with the Director. Why do you suppose you had to deal with his daughter just now? That’s an amusing thought, if you’ll consider it.”

            “Do you find everything amusing?”

            “Why not? As an attitude toward life, it’s an amusing one. It’s the only adjective that will fit. Observe the universe, young man. If you can’t force amusement out of it, you might as well cut your throat, since there’s damned little good in it. I haven’t introduced myself, by the way. I’m the Director’s cousin.”

            Biron said coldly, “Congratulations!”

            Gillbret shrugged. “You’re right. It’s not impressive. And I’m likely to remain just that indefinitely since there is no assassination to be expected after all.”

            “Unless you whip one up for yourself.”

            “My dear sir, your sense of humor! You’ll have to get used to the fact that nobody takes me seriously. My remark was only an expression of cynicism. You don’t suppose the Directorship is worth anything these days, do you? Surely you cannot believe that Hinrik was always like this? He was never a great brain, but with every year he becomes more impossible. I forget! You haven’t seen him yet. But you will! I hear him coming. When he speaks to you, remember that he is the ruler of the largest of the Trans-Nebular Kingdoms. It will be an amusing thought.”

            Hinrik bore his dignity with the ease of experience. He acknowledged Biron’s painstakingly ceremonious bow with the proper degree of condescension. He said, with a trace of abruptness, “And your business with us, sir?”

            Artemisia was standing at her father’s side, and Biron noticed, with some surprise, that she was quite pretty. He said, “Your Excellency, I have come on behalf of my father’s good name. You must know his execution was unjust.”

            Hinrik looked away. “I knew your father slightly. He was in Rhodia once or twice.” He paused, and his voice quavered a bit. “You are very like him. Very. But he was tried, you know. At least I imagine he was. And according to law. Really, I don’t know the details.”

            “Exactly, Your Excellency. But I would like to learn those details. I am sure that my father was no traitor.”

            Hinrik broke in hurriedly. “As his son, of course, it is understandable that you should defend your father, but, really, it is difficult to discuss such matters of state now. Highly irregular, in fact. Why don’t you see Aratap?”

            “I do not know him, Excellency.”

            “Aratap! The Commissioner! The Tyrannian Commissioner”‘

            “I have seen him and he sent me here. Surely, you understand that I dare not let the Tyranni--”

            But Hinrik had grown stiff. His hand had wandered to his lips, as though to keep them from trembling, and his words were consequently muffled. “Aratap sent you here, you say?”

            “I found it necessary to tell him--”

            “Don’t repeat what you told him. I know,” said Hinrik. “I can do nothing for you, Rancher--uh--Mr. Farrill. It is not in my jurisdiction alone. The Executive Council--stop pulling at me, Arta. How can I pay attention to matters when you distract me?--must be consulted. Gillbret! Will you see that Mr. Farrill is taken care of? I will see what can be done. Yes, I will consult the Executive Council. The forms of law, you know. Very important. Very important.”

            He turned on his heel, mumbling.

            Artemisia lingered for a moment and touched Biron’s sleeve. “A moment. Was it true, your statement that you could pilot a spaceship?”

            “Quite true,” said Biron. He smiled at her, and after a moment’s hesitation, she dimpled briefly in return.

            “Gillbret,” she said, “I want to speak to you later.”

            She hurried off. Biron looked after her till Gillbret tweaked at his sleeve.

            “I presume you are hungry, perhaps thirsty, would like a wash?” asked Gillbret. “The ordinary amenities of life continue, I take it?”

            “Thank you, yes,” said Biron. The tension had almost entirely washed out of him. For a moment he was relaxed and felt wonderful. She was pretty. Very pretty.

            But Hinrik was not relaxed; In his own chambers his thoughts whirled at a feverish pace. Try as he might, he could not wriggle out of the inevitable conclusion. It was a trap! Aratap had sent him and it was a trap!

            He buried his head in his hands to quiet and deaden the pounding, and then he knew what he had to do.

SEVEN:

Musician of the Mind