Night settles in time on all habitable planets. Not always, perhaps, at respectable intervals, since recorded periods of rotation vary from fifteen to fifty-two hours. That fact requires the most strenuous psychological adjustment from those traveling from planet to planet.

            On many planets such adjustments are made, and the waking-sleeping periods are tailored to fit. On many more the almost universal use of conditioned atmospheres and artificial lighting make the day-night question secondary except in so far as it modifies agriculture. On a few planets (those of the extremes) arbitrary divisions are made which ignore the trivial facts of light and dark.

            But always, whatever the social conventions, the coming of night has a deep and abiding psychological significance, dating back to man’s pre-human arboreal existence. Night will always be a time of fear and insecurity, and the heart will sink with the sun.

            Inside Palace Central there was no sensory mechanism by which one could tell the coming of night, yet Biron felt that coming through some indefinite instinct hidden in the unknown corridors of the human brain. He knew that outdoors the night’s blackness was scarcely relieved by the futile sparks of the stars. He knew that, if it were the right time of year, the jagged “hole in space” known as the Horsehead Nebula (so familiar to all the Trans-Nebular Kingdoms) inked out half the stars that might otherwise have been visible.

            And he was depressed again. He had not seen Artemisia since the little talk with the Director, and he found himself resenting that. He had looked forward to dinner; he might have spoken to her. Instead, he had eaten alone, with two guards lounging discontentedly just outside the door. Even Gillbret had left him, presumably to eat a less lonely meal in the company one would expect in a palace of the Hinriads.

            So that when Gillbret returned and said, “Artemisia and I have been discussing you,” he obtained a prompt and interested reaction.

            It merely amused him and he said so. “First I want to show you my laboratory,” he had said then. He gestured and the two guards moved off.

            “What kind of a laboratory?” asked Biron with a definite loss of interest.

            “I build gadgets,” was the vague response.

            It was not a laboratory to the eye. It was more nearly a library, with an ornate desk in the corner.

            Biron looked it over slowly. “And you build gadgets here? What kind of gadgets?”

            “Well, special sounding devices to spy out the Tyrannian spy beams in a brand-new way. Nothing they can detect. That’s how I found out about you, when the first word came through from Aratap. And I have other amusing trinkets. My visisonor, for instance. Do you like music?”

            “Some kinds.”

            “Good. I invented an instrument, only I don’t know if you can properly call it music.” A shelf of book films slid out and aside at a touch. “This is not really much of a hiding place, but nobody takes me seriously, so they don’t look. Amusing, don’t you think? But I forget, you’re the unamused one.”

            It was a clumsy, boxlike affair, with that singular lack of gloss and polish that marks the homemade object. One side of it was studded with little gleaming knobs. He put it down with that side upward.

            “It isn’t pretty,” Gillbret said, “but who in Time cares? Put the lights out. No, no! No switches or contacts. Just wish the lights were out. Wish hard! Decide you want them out.”

            And the lights dimmed, with the exception of the faint pearly luster of the ceiling that made them two ghostly faces in the dark. Gillbret laughed lightly at Biron’s exclamation.

            “Just one of the tricks of my visisonor. It’s keyed to the mind like personal capsules are. Do you know what I mean?”

            “No, I don’t, if you want a plain answer.”

            “Well,” he said, “look at it this way. The electric field of your brain cells sets up an induced one in the instrument. Mathematically, it’s fairly simple, but as far as I know, no one has ever jammed all the necessary circuits into a box this size before. Usually, it takes a five-story generating plant to do it. It works the other way too. I can close circuits here and impress them directly upon your brain, so that you’ll see and hear without any intervention of eyes and ears. Watch!”

            There was nothing to watch, at first. And then something fuzzy scratched faintly at the corner of Biron’s eyes. It became a faint blue-violet ball hovering in mid-air. It followed him as he turned away, remained unchanged when he closed his eyes. And a clear, musical tone accompanied it, was part of it, was it.

            It was growing and expanding and Biron became disturbingly aware that it existed inside his skull. It wasn’t really a color, but rather a colored sound, though without noise. It was tactile, yet without feeling.

            It spun and took on an iridescence while the musical tone rose in pitch till it hovered above him like falling silk. Then it exploded so that gouts of color splattered at him in touches that burned momentarily and left no pain.

            Bubbles of rain-drenched green rose again with a quiet, soft moaning. Biron thrust at them in confusion and became aware that he could not see his hands nor feel them move. There was nothing, only the little bubbles filling his mind to the exclusion of all else.

            He cried out soundlessly and the fantasy ceased. Gillbret was standing before him once again in a lighted room, laughing. Biron felt an acute dizziness and wiped shakily at a chilled, moist forehead. He sat down abruptly.

            “What happened?” he demanded, in as stiff a tone as he could manage.

            Gillbret said, “I don’t know. I stayed out of it. You don’t understand? It was something your brain had lacked previous experience with. Your brain was sensing directly and it had no method of interpretation for such a phenomenon. So as long as you concentrated Qn the sensation, your brain could only attempt, futilely, to force the effect into the old, familiar pathways. It attempts separately and simultaneously to interpret it as sight and sound and touch. Were you conscious of an odor, by the way? Sometimes it seemed to me that I smelled the stuff. With dogs I imagine the sensation would be forced almost entirely into odor. I’d like to try it on animals someday.

            “On the other hand, if you ignore it, make no attack upon it, it fades away. It’s what I do, when I want to observe its effects on others, and it isn’t difficult.”

            He placed a little veined hand upon the instrument, fingering the knobs aimlessly. “Sometimes I think that if one could really study this thing, one could compose symphonies in a new medium; do things one could never do with simple sound or sight. I lack the capacit,y for it, I’m afraid.”

            Biron said abruptly, “I’d like to ask you a question.”

            “By all means.”

            “Why don’t you put your scientific ability to worth-while use instead of--”

            “Wasting it on useless toys? I don’t know. It may not be entirely useless. This is against the law, you know.”

            “What is?”

            “The visisonor. Also my spy devices. If the Tyranni knew, it could easily mean a death sentence.”

            “Surely, you’re joking.”

            “Not at all. It is obvious that you were brought up on a cattle ranch. The young people cannot remember what it was like in the old days, I see.” Suddenly his head was to one side and his eyes were narrowed to slits. He asked, “Are you opposed to Tyrannian rule? Speak freely. I tell you frankly that I am. I tell you also that your father was.”

            Biron said calmly, “Yes, I am.”

            “Why?”

            “They are strangers, outlanders. What right have they to rule in Nephelos or in Rhodia?”

            “Have you always thought that?” Biron did not answer.

            Gillbret sniffed. “In other words, you decided they were strangers and outlanders only after they executed your father, which, after all, was their simple right. Oh, look, don’t fire up. Consider it reasonably. Believe me, I’m on your side. But think! Your father was Rancher. What rights did his herdsmen have? If one of them had stolen cattle for his own use or to sell to others, what would have been his punishment? Imprisonment as a thief. If he had plotted the death of your father, for whatever reason, for perhaps a worthy reason in his own eyes, what would have been the result? Execution, undoubtedly. And what right has your father to make laws and visit punishment upon his fellow human beings? H e was their Tyranni.

            “Your father, in his own eyes and in mine, was a patriot. But what of that? To the Tyranni, he was a traitor, and they removed him. Can you ignore the necessity of self-defense? The Hinriads have been a bloody lot in their time. Read your history, young man. All governments kill as part of the nature of things.,

            “So find a better reason to hate the Tyranni. Don’t think it is enough to replace one set of rulers by another; that the simple change brings freedom.”

            Biron pounded a fist into his cupped palm. “All this objective philosophy is fine. It is very soothing to the man who lives apart. But what if it had been your father who was murdered?”

            “Well, wasn’t it? My father was Director before Hinrik, and he was killed. Oh, not outright, but subtly. They broke his spirit, as they are breaking Hinrik’s now. They wouldn’t have me as Director when my father died; I was just a little too unpredictable. Hinrik was tall, handsome, and, above all, pliant. Yet not pliant enough, apparently. They hound him continuously, grind him into a pitiful puppet, make sure he cannot even itch without permission. You’ve seen him. He’s deteriorating by the month now. His continual state of fear is pathetically psychopathic. But that--all that--is not why I want to destroy Tyrannian rule.”

            “No?” said Biron. “You have invented an entirely new reason?”

            “An entirely old one, rather. The Tyranni are destroying the right of twenty billion human beings to take part in the development of the race. You’ve been to school. You’ve learned the economic cycle. A new planet is settled”--he was ticking the points off on his fingers--”and its first care is to feed itself. It becomes an agricultural world, a herding world. It begins to dig in the ground for crude ore to export, and sends its agricultural surplus abroad to buy luxuries and machinery. That is the second step. Then, as population increases and foreign investments grow, an industrial civilization begins to bud, which is the third step. Eventually, the world becomes mechanized, importing food, exporting machinery, investing in the development of more primitive worlds, and so on. The fourth step.

            “Always the mechanized worlds are the most thickly populated, the most powerful, militarily--since war is a function of machines--and they are usually surrounded by a fringe of agricultural, dependent worlds.

            “But what has happened to us? We were at the third step, with a growing industry. And now? That growth has been stopped, frozen, forced to recede. It would interfere with Tyrannian control of our industrial necessities. It is a short-term investment on their part, because eventually we’ll become unprofitable as we become impoverished. But meanwhile, they skim the cream.

            “Besides, if we industrialized ourselves, we might develop weapons of war. So industrialization is stopped; scientific research is forbidden. And eventually the people become so used to that, they lack the realization even that anything is missing. So that you are surprised when 1 tell you that I could be executed for building a visisonor.

            “Of course, someday we will beat the Tyranni. It is fairly inevitable. They can’t rule forever. No one can. They’ll grow soft and lazy. They will intermarry and lose much of their separate traditions. They will become corrupt. But it may take centuries, because history doesn’t hurry. And when those centuries have passed, we will still all be agricultural worlds with no industrial or scientific heritage to speak of, while our neighbors on all sides, those not under Tyrannian control, will be strong and urbanized. The Kingdoms will be semicolonial areas forever. They will never catch up, and we will be merely observers in the great drama of human advance.”

            Biron said, “What you say is not completely unfamiliar.”

            “Naturally, if you were educated on Earth. Earth occupies a very peculiar position in social development.”

            “Indeed?”

            “Consider! All the Galaxy has been in a continuous state of expansion since the first discovery of interstellar travel. We have always been a growing society, therefore, an immature society. It is obvious that human society reached maturity in only one place and at only one time and that this was on Earth immediately prior to its catastrophe. There we had a society which had temporarily lost all possibility for geographical expansion and was therefore faced with such problems as over-population, depletion of resources, and so on; problems that have never faced any other portion of the Galaxy.

            “They were forced to study the social sciences intensively. We have lost much or all of that and it is a pity. Now here’s an amusing thing. When Hinrik was a young man, he was a great Primitivist. He had a library on things Earthly that was unparalleled in the Galaxy. Since he became Director, that’s gone by the board along with everything else. But in a way, I’ve inherited it. Their literature, such scraps as survive, is fascinating. It has a peculiarly introspective flavor to it that we don’t have in our extraverted Galactic civilization. It is most amusing.”

            Biron said, “You relieve me. You have been serious for so long that I began to wonder if you had lost your sense of humor.”

            Gillbret shrugged. “I am relaxing and it is wonderful. First time in months, I think. Do you know what it is to playa part? To split your personality deliberately for twenty-four hours a day? Even when with friends? Even when alone, so that you will never forget inadvertently? To be a dilettante? To be eternally amused? To be of no account? To be so effete and faintly ridiculous that you have convinced all who know you of your own worthlessness? An so that your life may be safe even though it means it has become barely worth living. But, even so, once in a while I can fight them.”

            He looked up, and his voice was earnest, almost pleading. “You can pilot a ship. I cannot. Isn’t that strange? You talk about my scientific ability, yet I cannot pilot a simple one-man space gig. But you can, and it follows then that you must leave Rhodia.”

            There was no mistaking the pleading, but Biron frowned coldly. “Why?”

            Gillbret continued, speaking rapidly: “As I said, Artemisia and I have discussed you and arranged this. When you leave here, proceed directly to her room, where she is waiting for you. I have drawn a diagram for you, so that you won’t have to ask your way through the corridors.” He was forcing a small sheet of metallene upon Biron. “If anyone does stop you, say that you have been summoned by the Director, and proceed. There will be no trouble if you show no uncertainty--”

            “Hold on!” said Biron. He was not going to do it again. Jonti had chevied him to Rhodia and, consequently, succeeded in bringing him before the Tyranni. The Tyrannian Commissioner had then chevied him to Palace Central before he could feel his own secret way there and, consequently, subjected him, nakedly unprepared, to the whims of an unsteady puppet. But that was all! His moves, henceforward, might be severely limited, but, by Space and Time, they would be his own. He felt very stubborn about it.

            He said, “I’m here on what is important business to me, sir. I’m not leaving.”

            “What! Don’t be a young idiot.” For a moment the old Gillbret was showing through. “Do you think you will accomplish anything here? Do you think you will get out of the Palace alive if you let the morning sun rise? Why, Hinrik will call in the Tyranni and you will be imprisoned within twenty-four hours. He is only waiting this while because it takes him so long to make up his mind to do anything. He is my cousin. I know him, I tell you.”

            Biron said, “And if so, what is that to you? Why should you be so concerned about me?” He was not going to be chevied. He would never again be another man’s fleeing marionette.

            But Gillbret was standing, staring at him. “I want you to take me with you. I’m concerned about myself. I cannot endure life under the Tyranni any longer. It is only that neither Artemisia nor I can handle a ship or we would have left long ago. It’s our lives too.”

            Biron felt a certain weakening of his resolve. “The Director’s daughter? What has she to do with this?”

            “I believe that she is the most desperate of us. There is a special death for women. What should be ahead of a Director’s daughter who is young, personable, and unmarried, but to become young, personable, and married? And who, in these days, should be the delightful groom? Why, an old, lecherous Tyrannian court functionary who has buried three wives and wishes to revive the fires of his youth in the arms of a girl.”

            “Surely the Director would never allow such a thing!”

            “The Director will allow anything. Nobody waits upon his permission.”

            Biron thought of Artemisia as he had last seen her. Her hair had been combed back from her forehead and allowed to fall in simple straightness, with a single inward wave at shoulder level. Clear, fair skin, black eyes, red lips! Tall, young, smiling! Probably the description of a hundred million girls throughout the Galaxy. It would be ridiculous to let that sway him.

            Yet he said, “Is there a ship ready?”

            Gillbret’s face wrinkled under the impact of a sudden smile. But, before he could say a word, there came a pounding at the door. It was no gentle interruption of the photo.. beam, no tender of the weapon of authority.

            It was repeated, and Gillbret said, “You’d better open the door.”

            Biron did so, and two uniforms were in the room. The foremost saluted Gillbret with abrupt efficiency, then turned to Biron. “Biron Farrill, in the name of the Resident Commissioner of Tyrann and of the Director of Rhodia, I place you under arrest.”

            “On what charge?” demanded Biron.

            “On that of high treason.”

            A look of infinite loss twisted Gillbret’s face momentarily. He looked away. “Hinrik was quick this once; quicker than I had ever expected. An amusing thought!”

            He was the old Gillbret, smiling and indifferent, eyebrows a little raised, as though inspecting a distasteful fact with a faint tinge of regret.

            “Please follow me,” said the guard, and Biron was aware of the neuronic whip resting easily in the other’s hand.

EIGHT:

A Lady’s Skirts

Biron’s throat was growing dry. He could have beaten either of the guards in fair fight. He knew that, and he itched for the chance. He might even have made a satisfactory showing against both together. But they had the whips, and he couldn’t have lifted an arm without having them demonstrate the fact. Inside his mind he surrendered. There was no other way.

            But Gillbret said, “Let him take his cloak, men.”

            Biron, startled, looked quickly toward the little man and retracted that same surrender. He knew he had no cloak.

            The guard whose weapon was out clicked his heels as a gesture of respect. He motioned his whip at Biron. “You heard milord. Get your cloak and snap it up!”

            Biron stepped back as slowly as he dared. He retreated to the bookcase and squatted, groping behind the chair for his nonexistent cloak. And as his fingers clawed at the empty space behind the chair, he waited tensely for Gillbret.

            The visisonor was just a queer knobbed object to the guards. It would mean nothing to them that Gillbret fingered and stroked the knobs gently. Biron watched the muzzle of the whip intensely and allowed it to fill his mind. Certainly nothing else he saw or heard (thought he saw or heard) must enter.

            But how much longer?

            The armed guard said, “Is your cloak behind that chair? Stand up!” He took an impatient step forward, and then stopped. His eyes narrowed in deep amazement and he looked sharply to his left.

            That was it! Biron straightened and threw himself forward and down. He clasped the guard’s knees and jerked. The guard was down with a jarring thud, and Biron’s large fist closed over the other’s hand, grasping for the neuronic whip it contained.

            The other guard had his weapon out, but for the moment it was useless. With his free hand, he was brushing wildly at the space before his eyes.

            Gillbret’s high-pitched laugh sounded. “Anything bothering you, Farrill?”

            “Don’t see a thing,” he grunted, and then, “except this whip I’ve got now.”

            “All right, then leave. They can’t do anything to stop you. Their minds are full of sights and sounds that don’t exist.” Gillbret skipped out of the way of the writhing tangle of bodies.

            Biron wrenched his arms free and heaved upward. He brought his arm down solidly just below the other’s ribs. The guard’s face twisted in agony and his body doubled convulsively. Biron rose, whip in hand.

            “Careful,” cried Gillbret.

            But Biron did not turn quickly enough. The second guard was upon him, bearing him down again. It was a blind attack. What it was that the guard thought he was grasping, it was impossible to tell. That he knew nothing of Biron at the moment was certain. His breath rasped in Biron’s ear and there was a continuous incoherent gurgle bubbling in his throat.

            Biron twisted in an attempt to bring his captured weapon into play and was frighteningly aware of the blank and empty eyes that must be aware of some horror invisible to anyone else.

            Biron braced his legs and shifted weight in an effort to break loose, quite uselessly. Three times he felt the guard’s whip flung hard against his hip, and flinched at the contact.

            And then the guard’s gurgle dissolved into words. He yelled, “I’ll get you all!” and the very pale, almost invisible shimmer of the ionized air in the path of the whip’s energy beam made its appearance. It swept wide through the air, and the path of the beam intersected Biron’s foot.

            It was as though he had stepped into a bath of boiling lead. Or as if a granite block had toppled upon it. Or as if it had been crunched off by a shark. Actually, nothing had happened to it physically. It was only that the nerve endings that governed the sensation of pain had been universally and maximally stimulated, Boiling lead could have done no more.

            Biron’s yell tore his throat raw, and he collapsed. It did not even occur to him that the fight was over. Nothing mattered but the ballooning pain.

            Yet, though Biron did not know it, the guard’s grip had relaxed, and minutes later, when the young man could force his eyes open and blink away the tears, he found the guard backed against the wall, pushing feebly at nothing with both hands and giggling to himself. The first guard was still on his back, arms and legs spread-eagled now. He was conscious, but silent. His eyes were following something in an erratic path, and his body quivered a little. There was froth on his lips.

            Biron forced himself to his feet. He limped badly as he made his way to the wall. He used the butt of the whip and the guard slumped. Then back to the first, who made no defense either, his eyes moving silently to the very moment of unconsciousness.

            Biron sat down again, nursing his foot. He stripped shoe and stocking from it, and stared in surprise at the unbroken skin. He chafed it and grunted at the burning sensation. He looked up at Gillbret, who had put down his visisonor and was now rubbing one lean cheek with the back of his hand.

            “Thank you,” said Biron, “for the help of your instrument.”

            Gillbret shrugged. He said, “There’ll be more here soon. Get to Artemisia’s room. Please! Quickly!”

            Biron realized the sense of that. His foot had subsided to a quiet quiver of pain, but it felt swollen and puffy. He put on a stocking and tucked the shoe under his elbow. He already had one whip, and he relieved the second guard of the other. He stuffed it precariously within his belt.

            He turned at the door and asked, with a sense of crawling revulsion, “What did you make them see, sir?”

            “I don’t know. I can’t control it. I just gave them all the power I could and the rest depended on their own complexes. Please don’t stand there talking. Do you have the map to Artemisia’s room?”

            Biron nodded and set off down the corridor. It was quite empty. He could not walk quickly, since trying to do so made his walk a hobble.

            He looked at his watch, then remembered that he had somehow never had the time to adjust it to Rhodian local chronometry. It still ran on Standard Interstellar Time as used aboard ship, where one hundred minutes made an hour and a thousand a day. So the figure 876 which gleamed pinkly on the cool metal face of the watch meant nothing now.

            Still, it had to be well into the night, or into the planetary sleeping period, at any rate (supposing that the two did not coincide), as otherwise the halls would not be so empty and the bas-reliefs on the wall would not phosphoresce unwatched. He touched one idly as he passed, a coronation scene, and found it to be two-dimensional. Yet it gave the perfect illusion of standing out from the wall.

            It was sufficiently unusual for him to stop momentarily in order to examine the effect. Then he remembered and hurried on.

            The emptiness of the corridor struck him as another sign of the decadence of Rhodia. He had grown very conscious of all these symbols of decline now that he had become a rebel. As the center of an independent power, the Palace would always have had its sentries and its quiet wardens of the night.

            He consulted Gillbret’s crude map and turned to the right, moving up a wide, curving ramp. There might have been processions here once, but nothing of that would be left now.

            He leaned against the proper door and touched the photo-signal. The door moved ajar a bit, then opened wide.

            “Come in, young man.”

            It was Artemisia. Biron slipped inside, and the door closed swiftly and silently. He looked at the girl and said nothing. He was gloomily conscious of the fact that his shirt was torn at the shoulder so that one sleeve flapped loosely, that his clothes were grimy and his face welted. He remembered the shoe he was still carrying, dropped it and wriggled his foot into it.

            Then he said, “Mind if. I sit down?”

            She followed him to the chair, and stood before him, a little annoyed. “What happened? What’s wrong with your foot?”

            “I hurt it,” he said shortly. “Are you ready to leave?”

            She brightened. “You’ll take us, then?”

            But Biron was in no mood to be sweet about it. His foot still twinged and he cradled it. He said, “Look, get me out to a ship. I’m leaving this damn planet. If you want to come along, I’ll take you.”

            She frowned. “You might be more pleasant about it. Were you in a fight?”

            “Yes, I was. With your father’s guards, who wanted to arrest me for treason. So much for my Sanctuary Right.”

            “Oh! I’m sorry.”

            “I’m sorry too. It’s no wonder the Tyranni can lord it over fifty worlds with a handful of men. We help them. Men like your father would do anything to keep in power; they would forget the basic duties of a simple gentleman--Oh, never mind!”

            “I said I was sorry, Lord Rancher.” She used the title with a cold pride. “Please don’t set yourself up as judge of my father. You don’t know all the facts.”

            “I’m not interested in discussing it. We’ll have to leave in a hurry, before more of your father’s precious guards come. Well, I don’t mean to hurt your feelings. It’s all right.” Biron’s surliness canceled out any meaning to his apology, but, damn it, he had never been hit by a neuronic whip before and it wasn’t fun. And, by Space, they had owed him Sanctuary. At least that much.

            Artemisia felt angry. Not at her father, of course, but at the stupid young man. He was so young. Practically a child, she decided, scarcely older than herself, if that.

            The communicator sounded and she said sharply, “Please wait a minute and we’ll go.”

            It was Gillbret’s voice, sounding faintly. “Arta? All right at your end?”

            “He’s here,” she whispered back.

            “All right. Don’t say anything. Just listen. Don’t leave your room. Keep him there. There’s going to be a search of the Palace, which there’s no way of stopping. I’ll try to think of something, but, meanwhile, don’t move.” He waited for no reply. Contact was broken.

            “So that’s that,” said Biron. He had heard also. “Shall I stay and get you into trouble, or shall I go out and give myself up? There’s no reason to expect Sanctuary anywhere On Rhodia, I suppose.”

            She faced him in a rage, crying in a choked whisper, “Oh, shut up, you big, ugly fool.”

            They glared at each other. Biron’s feelings were hurt. In a way, he was trying to help her too. There was no reason for her to be insulting.

            She said, “I’m sorry,” and looked away.

            “That’s all right,” he said coldly, without meaning it. “You’re entitled to your opinion.”

            “You don’t have to say the things you do about my father. You don’t know what being Director is like. He’s working for his people, whatever you may think.”

            “Oh, sure. He has to sell me to the Tyranni for the sake of the people. That makes sense.”

            “In a way, it does. He has to show them he’s loyal. Otherwise, they might depose him and take over the direct rule of Rhodia. Would that be better?”

            “If a nobleman can’t find Sanctuary--”

            “Oh, you think only of yourself. That’s what’s wrong with you.”

            “I don’t think it’s particularly selfish not to want to die. At least for nothing. I’ve got some fighting to do before I go. My father fought them.” He knew he was beginning to sound melodramatic, but she affected him that way.

            She said, “And what good did it do your father?”

            “None, I suppose. He was killed.”

            Artemisia felt unhappy. “I keep saying I’m sorry, and this time I really mean it. I’m all upset.” Then, in defense, “I’m in trouble, too, you know.”

            Biron remembered. “I know. All right, let’s start all over.” He tried to smile. His foot was feeling better anyway.

            She said, in an attempt at lightness, “You’re not really ugly.”

            Biron felt foolish. “Oh well--”

            Then he stopped, and Artemisia’s hand flew to her mouth. Abruptly, their heads turned to the door.

            There was the sudden, soft sound of many ordered feet on the semi-elastic plastic mosaic that floored the corridor outside. Most passed by, but there was a faint, disciplined heel-clicking just outside the door, and the night signal purred.

            Gillbret had to work quickly. First, he had to hide his visisonor. For the first time he wished he had a better hiding place. Damn Hinrik for making up his mind so quickly this once, for not waiting till morning. He had to get away; he might never have another chance.

            Then he called the captain of the guard. He couldn’t very well neglect a little matter of two unconscious guards and an escaped prisoner.

            The captain of the guard was grim about it. He had the two unconscious men cleared out, and then faced Gillbret.

            “My lord, I am not quite clear from your message exactly what happened,” he said.

            “Just what you see,” said Gillbret. ‘They came to make their arrest, and the young man did not submit. He is gone, Space knows where.”

            “That is of little moment, my lord,” said the captain. “The Palace is honored tonight with the presence of a personage, so it is well guarded despite the hour. He cannot get out and we will draw the net through the interior. But how did he escape? My men were armed. He was not.”

            “He fought like a tiger. From that chair, behind which I hid--”

            “I am sorry, my lord, that you did not think to aid my men against an accused traitor.”

            Gillbret looked scornful. “What an amusing thought, Captain. When your men, wit{l doubled advantage in numbers and weapons, need help from myself, it is time you recruited yourself other men.”

            “Very well! We will search the Palace, find him, and see if he can repeat the performance.”

            “I shall accompany you, Captain.”

            It was the captain ‘s turn to raise his eyebrows. He said, “I would not advise it, my lord. There would be some danger.”

            It was the kind of remark that one did not make to a Hinriad. Gillbret knew that, but he only smiled and let the wrinkles fill his lean face. “I know that,” he said, “but occasionally I find even danger amusing.”

            It took five minutes for the company of guards to assemble. Gillbret, alone in his room during that time, called Artemisia.

            Biron and Artemisia had frozen at the purring of the little signal. It sounded a second time and then there was the cautious rap upon the door, and Gillbret’s voice was heard.

            “Do let me try, Captain,” it said. Then, more loudly, “Artemisia!”

            Biron grinned his relief and took a step forward, but the girl put a sudden hand upon his mouth. She called out, “One moment, Uncle Oil,” and pointed desperately toward the wall.

            Biron could only stare stupidly. The wall was quite blank. Artemisia made a face and stepped quickly past him. Her hand on the wall caused a portion of it to slide noiselessly aside, revealing a dressing room. Her lips motioned a “Get inside!” and her hands were fumbling at the ornamental pin at her right shoulder. The unclasping of that pin broke the tiny force field that held an invisible seam tightly closed down the length of the dress. She stepped out of it.

            Biron turned around after stepping across what had been the wall, and its closing endured just long enough for him to see her throwing a white-furred dressing gown across her shoulders. The scarlet dress lay crumpled upon the chair.

            He looked about him and wondered if they would search Artemisia’s room. He would be quite helpless if a search took place. There was no way out of the dressing room but the way he had entered, and there was nothing in it that could serve as a still more confined hiding place.

            Along one wall there hung a row of gowns, and the air shimmered very faintly before it. His hand passed easily through the shimmer, with only a faint tingling where it crossed his wrist, but then it was meant to repel only dust so that the space behind it could be kept aseptically clean.

            He might hide behind the skirts. It was what he was doing, really. He had manhandled two guards, with Gillbret’s help, to get here, but, now that he was here, he was hiding behind a lady’s skirts. A lady’s skirts, in fact.

            Incongruously, he found himself wishing he had turned a bit sooner before the wall had closed behind him. She had quite a remarkable figure. It was ridiculous of him to have been so childishly nasty awhile back. Of course she was not to blame for the faults of her father.

            And now he could only wait, staring at the blank wall; waiting for the sound of feet within the room, for the wall to pull back once more, for the muzzles facing him again, this time without a visisonor to help him.

            He waited, holding a neuronic whip in each hand.

NINE:

And an Overlord’s Trousers

“What’s the matter?” Artemisia did not have to feign uneasiness. She spoke to Gillbret, who, with the captain of the guard, was at the door. Half a dozen uniformed men hovered discreetly in the background. Then, quickly, “Has anything happened to Father?”

            “No, no,” Gillbret reassured her, “nothing has happened that need concern you at all. Were you asleep?”

            “Just about,” she replied, “and my girls have been about their own affairs for hours. There was no one to answer but myself and you nearly frightened me to death.”

            She turned to the captain suddenly, with a stiffening attitude. “What is wanted of me, Captain? Quickly, please. This is not the time of day for a proper audience.”

            Gillbret broke in before the other could more than open his mouth. “A most amusing thing, Arta. The young man, whatsisname--you know--has dashed off, breaking two heads on his way. We’re hunting him on even terms now. One platoon of soldiers to one fugitive. And here I am myself, hot on the trail, delighting our good captain with my zeal and courage.”

            Artemisia managed to look completely bewildered.

            Under his breath the captain muttered a monosyllabic imprecation. His lips scarcely moved. He said then, “If you please, my lord, you are not quite plain, and we are delaying matters insufferably. My Lady, the man who calls himself the son of the ex-Rancher of Widemos has been arrested for treason. He has managed to escape and is now at large. We must search the Palace for him, room by room.”

            Artemisia stepped back, frowning. “Including my room?”

            “If Your Ladyship permits.”

            “Ah, but I do not. I would certainly know if there was a strange man in my room. And the suggestion that I might be having dealings with such a man, or any strange man, at this time of night is highly improper. Please observe due respect for my position, Captain.”

            It worked quite well. The captain could only bow and say, “No such implication was intended, my lady. Your pardon for annoying you at this time of night. Your statement that you have not seen the fugitive is, of course, sufficient. Under the circumstances, it was necessary to assure ourselves of your safety. He is a dangerous man.”

            “Surely not so. dangerous that he cannot be handled by you and your company.”

            Gillbret’s high-pitched voice interposed again. “Captain, come--come. While you exchange courtly sentiments with my niece, our man has had time to rifle the armory. I would suggest that you leave a guard at the Lady Artemisia’s door, so that what remains of her sleep will not be further disturbed. Unless, my dear”--and he twinkled his fingers at Artemisia--”you would care to join us.”

            “I shall satisfy myself,” said Artemisia coldly, “in locking my door and retiring, thank you.”

            “Pick a large one,” cried Gillbret. “Take that one. A fine uniform our guards have, Artemisia. You can recognize a guard as far as you can see him by his uniform alone.”

            “My lord,” said the captain impatiently, “there is no time. You delay matters.”

            At a gesture from him, a guard fell out of the platoon, saluted Artemisia through the closing door, then the captain. The sound of ordered footsteps fell away in both directions.

            Artemisia waited, then slid the door quietly open an inch or two. The guard was there, legs apart, back rigid, right hand armed, left hand at his alarm button. He was the guard suggested by Gillbret, a tall one. As tall as Biron of Widemos, though without his breadth of shoulders.

            It occurred to her, at that moment, that Biron, though young and, therefore, rather unreasonable in some of his viewpoints, was at least large and well muscled, which was convenient. It had been foolish of her to snap at him. Quite pleasant looking too.

            She closed the door, and stepped toward the dressing room.

            Biron tensed as the door slid away again. He held his breath and his fingers stiffened.

            Artemisia stared at his whips. “Be careful!”

            He puffed out his breath in relief and stuffed each into a pocket. They were very uncomfortable there, but he had no proper holsters. He said, “That was just in” case it was somebody looking for me.”

            “Come out. And speak in a whisper.”

            She was still in her night robe, woven out of a smooth fabric with which Biron was unfamiliar, adorned with little tufts of silvery fur, and clinging to the body through some faint static attraction inherent in the material, so that neither buttons, clasps, loops, or seam fields were necessary. Nor, as a consequence, did it do more than merely faintly dim the outlines of Artemisia’s figure.

            Biron felt his ears reddening, and liked the sensation very much.

            Artemisia waited, then made a little whirling gesture with her forefinger and said, “Do you mind?”

            Biron looked up at her face. “What? Oh, I’m sorry.”

            He turned his back to her and remained stiffly attentive to the faint rustling of the change of outer garments. It did not occur to him to wonder why she did not use the dressing room, or why, better still, she had not changed before opening the door. There are depths in feminine psychology, which, without experience, defy analysis.

            She was in black when he turned, a two-piece suit which did not reach below the knee. It had that more substantial appearance that went with clothing meant for the outdoors rather than for the ballroom.

            Biron said, automatically, “Are we leaving, then?”

            She shook her head. “You’ll have to do your part first. You’ll need other clothes yourself. Get to one side of the door, and I’ll have the guard in.”

            “What guard?”

            She smiled briefly. “They left a guard at the door, at Uncle Oil’s suggestion.”

            The door to the corridor ran smoothly along its runners an inch or two. The guard was still there, stiffly immobile.

            “Guard,” she whispered. “In here, quickly.”

            There was no reason for a common soldier to hesitate in his obedience to the Director’s daughter. He entered the widening door, with a respectful, “At your service, my 1--” and then his knees buckled under the weight which came down upon his shoulders, while his words were cut off, without even an interrupting squawk, by the forearm which slammed against his larynx.

            Artemisia closed the door hurriedly and watched with sensations that amounted almost to nausea. The life in the Palace of the Hinriads was mild almost to decadence, and she had never before seen a man’s face congest with blood and his mouth yawn and puff futilely under the influence of asphyxia. She looked away.

            Biron bared his teeth with effort as he tightened the circle of bone and muscle about the other’s throat. For a minute the guard’s weakening hands ripped futilely at Biron’s arm, while his feet groped in aimless kicks. Biron heaved him clear of the floor without relaxing his grip.

            And then the guard’s hands fell to his sides, his legs hung loosely, and the convulsive and useless heavings of the chest began to subside. Biron lowered him gently to the floor. The guard sprawled out limply, as though he were a sack which had been emptied.

            “Is he dead?” asked Artemisia, in a horrified whisper.

            “I doubt it,” said Biron. “It takes four or five minutes of it to kill a man. But he’ll be out of things for a while. Do you have anything to tie him up with?”

            She shook her head. For the moment, she felt quite helpless.

            Biron said, “You must have some Cellite stockings. They would do fine.” He had already stripped the guard of weapons and outer clothing. “And I’d like to wash up too. In fact, I have to.”

            It was pleasant to step through the detergent mist in Artemisia’s bathroom. It left him perhaps a trifle over-scented, but the open air would take care of the fragrance, he hoped. At least he was clean, and it had required merely the momentary passage through the fine, suspended droplets that shot past him forcefully in a warm air stream. No special drying chamber was required, since he stepped out dry as well as clean. They didn’t have this on Widemos, or on Earth.

            The guard’s uniform was a bit tight, and Biron did not like the way the somewhat ugly, conical military cap fit over his brachycephalic head. He stared at his reflection with some dissatisfaction. “How do I look?”

            “Quite like a soldier,” she said.

            He said, “You’ll have to carry one of these whips. I can’t handle three.”

            She took it between two fingers and dropped it into her bag, which was then suspended from her wide belt by another microforce, so that her hands remained free.

            “We had better go now. Don’t say a word if we meet anyone, but let me do the talking. Your accent isn’t right, and it would be impolite to talk in my presence unless you wore directly addressed, anyway. Remember! You’re a common soldier.”

            The guard on the floor was beginning to wriggle a bit and roll his eyes. His wrists and ankles were securely tied in a clump at the small of his back with stockings that had the tensile strength of more than an equal amount of steel. His tongue worked futilely at his gag.

            He had been shoved out of the way, so that it was not necessary to step over him to get to the door.

            “This way,” breathed Artemisia.

            At the first turning there was a footstep behind them, and a light hand came down on Biron’s shoulder.

            Biron stepped to one side quickly and turned, one hand catching the other’s arm, while his other snatched at his whip.

            But it was Gillbret who said, “Easy, man!”

            Biron loosened his grip.

            Gillbret rubbed his arm. “I’ve been waiting for you, but that’s no reason to break my bones. Let me stare admiringly at you, Farrill. Your clothes seem to have shrunk on you, but not bad--not bad at all. Nobody would look twice at you in that getup. It’s the advantage of a uniform. It’s taken for granted that a soldier’s uniform holds a soldier and nothing else.”

            “Uncle Gil,” whispered Artemisia urgently, “don’t talk so much. Where are the other guards?”

            “Everyone objects to a few words,” he said pettishly. “The other guards are working their way up the tower. They’ve decided that our friend is on none of the lower levels, so they’ve just left some men at the main exits and at the ramps, with the general alarm system in operation as well. We can get past it.”

            “Won’t they miss you, sir?” asked Biron.

            “Me? Hah. The captain was glad to see me go, for all his toe scraping. They won’t look for me, I assure you.”

            They were speaking in whispers, but now even those died away. A guard stood at the bottom of the ramp, while two others flanked the large, carved double door that led to the open air.

            Gillbret called out, “Any word of the escaped prisoner, men?”

            “No, my lord,” said the nearest. He clicked his heels together and saluted.

            “Well, keep your eyes open,” and they walked past them and out, one of the guards at the door carefully neutralizing that section of the alarm as they left.

            It was nighttime outside. The sky was clear and starry, the ragged mass of the Dark Nebula blotting out the specks of light near the horizon. Palace Central was a dark mass behind them, and the Palace Field was less than half a mile away.

            But after five minutes of walking along the quiet path, Gillbret grew restless.

            “There’s something wrong,” he said.

            Artemisia said, “Uncle Oil, you haven’t forgotten to arrange to have the ship ready?”

            “Of course not,” he snapped at her, as nearly as one could snap in a whisper, “but why is the Field Tower lit up? It should be dark.”

            He pointed up through the trees, to where the tower was a honeycomb of white light. Ordinarily, that would indicate business at the field: ships leaving for space or arriving from it.

            Gillbret muttered, “Nothing was scheduled for tonight. That was definite.”

            They saw the answer at a distance, or Gillbret did. He stopped suddenly and spread his arms wide to hold back the others.

            “That’s all,” he said, and giggled almost hysterically. “This time Hinrik has really messed things properly, the idiot. They’re here! The Tyranni! Don’t you understand? That’s Aratap’s private armored cruiser.”

            Biron saw it, gleaming faintly under the lights, standing out among the other undistinguished ships. It was smoother, thinner, more feline than the Rhodian vessels.

            Gillbret said, “The captain said a ‘personage’ was being entertained today, and I paid no attention. There’s nothing to do now. We can’t fight Tyranni.”

            Biron felt something suddenly snap. “Why not?” he said savagely. “Why can’t we fight them? They have no reason to suspect trouble, and we’re armed. Let’s take the Commissioner’s own ship. Let’s leave him with his trousers down.”

            He stepped forward, out of the relative obscurity of the trees and onto the bare field. The others followed. There was no reason to hide. They were two members of the royal family and an escorting soldier.

            But it was the Tyranni they were fighting now.

            Simok Aratap of Tyrann had been impressed the first time he had ever seen the Palace Grounds at Rhodia years earlier, but it had turned out to be only a shell that had impressed him. The interior was nothing but a musty relic. Two generations earlier Rhodia’s legislative chambers had met on these grounds and most of the administrative offices had been quartered there. Palace Central had been the heartbeat of a dozen worlds.

            But now the legislative chambers (still existing, for the Khan never interfered with local legalisms) met once a year to ratify the executive orders of the past twelve months. It was quite a formality. The Executive Council was still, nominally, in continuous session, but it consisted of a dozen men who remained on their estates nine weeks in ten. The various executive bureaus were still active, since one could not govern without them, whether the Director or the Khan ruled, but they were now scattered over the planet; made less dependent upon the Director, more conscious of their new masters, the Tyranni.

            Which left the Palace as majestic as it had always been in stone and metal, and that only. It housed the Directorial family, a scarcely adequate corps of servants, and an entirely inadequate corps of native guards.

            Aratap felt uncomfortable in the shell and was unhappy. It was late, he was tired, his eyes burned so that he longed to remove his contact lenses, and, most of all, he was disappointed.

            There was no pattern! He glanced occasionally at his military aide, but the major was listening to the Director with expressionless stolidity. As for Aratap himself, he paid little attention.

            “Widemos’s son! Indeed?” he would say, in abstraction. Then, later, “And so you arrested him? Quite right!”

            But it meant little to him, since events lacked a design. Aratap had a neat and tidy mind which could not bear the thought of individual facts loosely clumped together with no decent arrangement.

            Widemos had been a traitor, and Widemos’s son had attempted a meeting with the Director of Rhodia. He had attempted it first in secret, and when that had failed, such was the urgency, he had attempted it openly with his ridiculous story of an assassination plot. Surely that must have been the beginning of a pattern.

            And now it fell apart. Hinrik was giving up the boy with indecent haste. He could not even wait the night, it seemed. And that did not fit at all. Or else Aratap had not yet learned all the facts.

            He focused his attention on the Director again. Hinrik was beginning to repeat himself. Aratap felt a twinge of compassion. The man had been made into such a coward that even the Tyranni themselves grew impatient with him. And yet it was the only way. Only fear could insure absolute loyalty. That and nothing else.

            Widemos had not been afraid, and despite the fact that his self-interest had been bound at every point with the maintenance of Tyrannian rule, he had rebelled. Hinrik was afraid and that made the difference,

            And because Hinrik was afraid, he sat there, lapsing into incoherence as he struggled to obtain some gesture of approval. The major would give none, of course, Aratap knew. The man had no imagination. He sighed and wished he had none either. Politics was a filthy business.

            So he said, with some air of animation, “Quite so. I commend your, quick decision and your zeal in the service of the Khan. You may be sure he will hear of it.”

            Hinrik brightened visibly, his relief obvious.

            Aratap said, “Have him brought in, then, and let us hear what our cockerel has to say.” He suppressed a desire to yawn. He had absolutely no interest in what the “cockerel” had to say.

            It was Hinrik’s intention at this point to signal for the captain of the guard, but there was no necessity for that, as the captain stood in the doorway, unannounced.

            “Excellency,” he cried and strode in without waiting for permission.

            Hinrik stared hard at his hand, still inches from the signal, as though wondering whether his intention had somehow developed sufficient force to substitute for the act.

            He said uncertainly, “What is it, Captain?”

            The captain said, “Excellency, the prisoner has escaped.”

            Aratap felt some of the weariness disappear. What was this? “The details, Captain!” he ordered, and straightened in his chair.

            The captain gave them with a blunt economy of words.

            He concluded, “I ask your permission, Excellency, to proclaim a general alarm. They are yet but minutes away.”

            “Yes, by all means,” stuttered Hinrik, “by all means. A general alarm, indeed. Just the thing. Quickly! Quickly! Commissioner, I cannot understand how it could have happened. Captain, put every man to work. There will be an investigation, Commissioner. If necessary, every man on the guards will be broken. Broken! Broken!”

            He repeated the word in near hysteria but the captain remained standing. It was obvious that he had more to say.

            Aratap said, “Why do you wait?”

            “May I speak to Your Excellency in private?” said the captain abruptly.

            Hinrik cast a quick, frightened look at the bland, unperturbed Commissioner. He mustered a feeble indignation. “There are no secrets from the soldiers of the Khan, our friends, our--”

            “Say your say, Captain,” interposed Aratap gently.

            The captain brought his heels together sharply and said, “Since I am ordered to speak, Your Excellency, I regret to inform you that my Lady Artemisia and my Lord Gillbret accompanied the prisoner in his escape.”

            “He dared to kidnap them?” Hinrik was on his feet. “And my guards allowed it?”

            “They were not kidnapped, Excellency. They accompanied him voluntarily.”

            “How do you know?” Aratap was delighted, and thoroughly awake. It formed a pattern now, after all. A better pattern than he could have anticipated.

            The captain said, “We have the testimony of the guard they overpowered, and the guards who, unwittingly, allowed them to leave the building.” He hesitated, then added grimly, “When I interviewed my Lady Artemisia at the door of her private chambers, she told me she had been on the point of sleep. It was only later that I realized that when she told me that, her face was elaborately made-up. When I returned, it was too late. I accept the blame for the mismanagement of this affair. After tonight I will request Your Excellency to accept my resignation, but first have I still your permission to sound the general alarm? Without your authority I could not interfere with members of the royal family.”

            But Hinrik was swaying on his feet and could only stare at him vacantly.

            Aratap said, “Captain, you would do better to look to the health of your Director. I would suggest you call his physician.”

            “The general alarm!” repeated the captain.

            “There will be no general alarm,” said Aratap. “Do you understand me? No general alarm! No recapture of the prisoner! The incident is closed! Return your men to their quarters and ordinary duties and look to your Director. Come, Major.”

            The Tyrannian major spoke tensely once they had left the mass of Palace Central behind them.

            “Aratap,” he said, “I presume you know what you’re doing. I kept my mouth shut in there on the basis of that presumption.”

            “Thank you, Major.” Aratap liked the night air of a planet full of green and growing things. Tyrann was more beautiful in its way, but it was a terrible beauty of rocks and mountains. It was dry, dry!

            He went on: “You cannot handle Hinrik, Major Andros. In your hands he would wilt and break. He is useful, but requires gentle treatment if he is to remain so.”

            The major brushed that aside. “I’m not referring to that. Why not the general alarm? Don’t you want them?”

            “Do you?” Aratap stopped. “Let us sit here for a moment, Andros. A bench on a pathway along a lawn. What more beautiful, and what place is safer from spy beams? Why do you want the young man, Major?”

            “Why do I want any traitor and conspirator?”

            “Why do you, indeed, if you only catch a few tools while leaving the source of the poison untouched? Whom would you have? A cub, a silly girl, a senile idiot?”

            There was a faint splashing of an artificial waterfall nearby. A small one, but decorative. Now that was a real wonder to Aratap. Imagine water, spilling out, running to waste, pouring 1ndefinitely down the rocks and along the ground. He had never educated himself out of a certain indignation over it.

            “As it is,” said the major, “we have nothing.”

            “We have a pattern. When the young man first arrived, we connected him with Hinrik, and that bothered us, because Hinrik is--what he is. But it was the best we could do. Now we see it was not Hinrik at all; that Hinrik was a misdirection. It was Hinrik’s daughter and cousin he was after, and that makes more sense.”

            “Why didn’t he call us sooner? He waited for the middle of the night.”

            “Because he is the tool of whoever is the first to reach him, and Gillbret, I am sure, suggested this night meeting as a sign of great zeal on his part.”

            “You mean we were called here on purpose? To witness their escape?”.

            “No, not for that reason. Ask yourself. Where do these people intend on going?”

            The major shrugged.--”Rhodia is big.”

            “Yes, if it were the young Farrill alone who was concerned. But where on Rhodia would two members of the royal family go unrecognized? Particularly the girl.”

            “They would have to leave the planet, then? Yes, I agree.”

            “And from where? They can reach the Palace Field in a fifteen-minute walk. Now do you see the purpose of our being here?”

            The major said, “Our ship?”

            “Of course. A Tyrannian ship would seem ideal to them. Otherwise, they would have to choose among freighters. Farrill has been educated on Earth, and, I’m sure, can fly a cruiser.”

            “Now there’s a point. Why do we allow the nobility to send out their sons in all directions? What business has a subject to know more about travel than will suffice him for local trade? We bring up soldiers against us.”

            “Nevertheless,” said Aratap, with polite indifference, “at the moment Farrill has a foreign education, and let us take that into account objectively, without growing angry about it. The fact remains that I am certain they have taken our cruiser.”

            “I can’t believe it.”

            “You have your wrist caller. Make contact with the ship, if you can.”

            The major tried, futilely.

            Aratap said, “Try the Field Tower.”

            The major did so, and the small voice came out of the tiny receiver, in minute agitation: “But, Excellency, I don’t understand--There is some mistake. Your pilot took off ten minutes ago.”

            Aratap was smiling. “You see? Work out the pattern and each little event becomes inevitable. And now do you see the consequences?”

            The major did. He slapped his thigh, and laughed briefly. “Of course!” he said.

            “Well,” said Aratap, “they couldn’t know, of course, but they have ruined themselves. Had they been satisfied with the clumsiest Rhodian freighter on the field, they would surely have escaped and--what’s the expression?--I would have been caught with my trousers down this night. As it is, my trousers are firmly belted, and nothing can save them. And when I pluck them back, in my own good time”--he emphasized the words with satisfaction--”I will have the rest of the conspiracy in my hands as well.”

            He sighed and found himself beginning to feel sleepy once more. “Well, we have been lucky, and now there is no hurry. Call Central Base, and have them send another ship after us.”

TEN:

Maybe!

Biron Farrill’s training in spationautics back on Earth had been largely academic. There had been the university courses in the various phases of spatial engineering, which, though half a semester was spent on the theory of the hyperatornic motor, offered little when it came to the actual manipulation of ships in space. The best and most skilled pilots learned their art in space and not in schoolrooms.

            He had managed to take off without actual accident, though that was more luck than design. The Remorseless answered the controls far more quickly than Biron had anticipated. He had manipulated several ships on Earth out into space and back to the planet, but those had been aged and sedate models, maintained for the use of students. They had been gentle, and very, very tired, and had lifted with an effort and spiraled slowly upward through the atmosphere and into space.

            The Remorseless, on the other hand, had lifted effortlessly, springing upward and whistling through the air, so that Biron had fallen backward out of his chair and all but dislocated his shoulder. Artemisia and Gillbret, who, with the greater caution of the inexperienced, had strapped themselves in, weFe bruised against the padded webbing. The Tyrannian prisoner had lain pressed against the wall, tearing heavily at his bonds and cursing in a monotone.

            Biron had risen shakily to his feet, kicked the Tyrannian into a brooding silence, and made his way along the wall rail, hand over hand against the acceleration, back to his seat. Forward blasts of power quivered the ship and reduced the rate of increasing velocity to a bearable quantity.

            They were in the upper reaches of the Rhodian atmosphere by then. The sky was a deep violet and the hull of the ship was hot with air friction, so that warmth could be felt within.

            It took hours thereafter to set the ship into an orbit about Rhodia. Biron could find no way of readily calculating the velocity necessary to overcome Rhodia’s gravity. He had to work it by hit and miss, varying the velocity with puffs of power forward and backward, watching the massometer, which indicated their distance from the planet’s surface by measuring the intensity of the gravitational field. Fortunately, the massometer was already calibrated for Rhodia’s mass and radius. Without considerable experimentation, Biron could not have adjusted the calibration himself.

            Eventually, the massometer held steady and over a period of two hours showed no appreciable drift. Biron allowed himself to relax, and the others climbed out of their belts.

            Artemisia said, “You don’t have a very light touch, my Lord Rancher.”

            “I’m flying, my lady,” Biron replied curtly. “If you can do better, you’re welcome to try, but only after I myself disembark.”

            “Quiet, quiet, quiet,” said Gillbret. “The ship is too cramped for pettishness, and, in addition, since we are to be crushed into an inconvenient familiarity in this leaping prison pen, I suggest we discard the many ‘lords’ and ‘ladies’ which will otherwise encrust our conversation to an unbearable degree. I am Gillbret, you are Biron, she is Artemisia. I suggest we memorize those terms of address, or any variation we care to use. And as for piloting the ship, why not use the help of our Tyrannian friend here?”

            The Tyrannian glared, and Biron said, “No. There is no way we could trust him. And my own piloting will improve as I get the hang of this ship. I haven’t cracked you up yet, have I?”

            His shoulder still hurt as a result of the first lurch and, as usual, pain made him peevish.

            “Well,” said Gillbret, “what do we do with him?”

            “I don’t like to kill him in cold blood,” said Biron, “and that won’t help us. It would just make the Tyranni doubly excited. Killing one of the master race is really the unforgivable sin.”

            “But what is the alternative?”

            “We’ll land him.”

            “All right. But where?”

            “On Rhodia.”

            “What!”

            “It’s the one place they won’t be looking for us. Besides which, we’ve got to go down pretty soon, anyway.”

            “Why?”

            “Look, this is the Commissioner’s ship, and he’s been using it for hopping about the surface of the planet. It isn’t provisioned for space voyages. Before we go anywhere, we’ll have to take complete inventory aboard ship, and at least make sure that we have enough food and water.”

            Artemisia was nodding vigorously. “That’s right. Good! I wouldn’t have thought of that myself. That’s very clever, Biron.”

            Biron made a deprecating gesture, but warmed with pleasure, nevertheless. It was the first time she had used his first name. She could be quite pleasant, when she tried.

            Gillbret said, “But he’ll radio our whereabouts instantly.”

            “I don’t think so,” said Biron. “In the first place, Rhodia has its desolate areas, I imagine. We don’t have to drop him into the business section of a city, or into the middle of one of the Tyrannian garrisons. Besides, he may not be so anxious to contact his superiors as you might think.... Say, Private, what would happen to a soldier who allowed the Commissioner of the Khan to have his private cruiser stolen from him?”

            The prisoner did not answer, but his lip line became, pale and thin.

            Biron would not have wanted to be in the soldier’s place. To be sure, he could scarcely be blamed. There was no reason why he should have suspected trouble resulting from mere politeness to members of the Rhodian royal family. Sticking to the letter of the Tyrannian military code, he had refused to allow them aboard ship without the permission of his commanding officer. If the Director himself had demanded permission to enter, he insisted, he would have to deny it. But, in the meantime, they had closed in upon him, and by the time he realized he should have followed the military code still more closely and had his weapon ready, it was too late. A neuronic whip was practically touching his chest.

            Nor had he given in tamely, even then. It had taken a whip blast at his chest to stop him. And, even so, he could face only court-martial and conviction. No one doubted that, least of all the soldier.

            They had landed two days later at the outskirts of the city of Southwark. It had been chosen deliberately because it lay far from the main centers of Rhodian population. The Tyrannian soldier had been strapped into a repulsion unit and allowed to flutter downward some fifty miles from the nearest sizable town.

            The landing, on an empty beach, was only mildly jerky, and Biron, as the one least likely to be recognized, made the necessary purchases. Such Rhodian currency as Gillbret had had the presence of mind to bring with him had scarcely sufficed for elementary needs, since much of it went for a little biwheel and tow cart, on which he could carry the supplies away piecemeal.

            “You might have stretched the money farther,” said Artemisia, “if you hadn’t wasted so much of it on the Tyrannian mush you bought.”

            “I think there was nothing else to do,” said Biron hotly. “It may be Tyrannian mush to you, but it’s a well-balanced food, and will see us through better than anything else I could have gotten.”

            He was annoyed. It had been stevedore’s work, getting all that out of the city and then aboard ship. And it had meant a considerable risk, buying it at one of the Tyrannian-run commissaries in the city. He had expected appreciation.

            And there was no alternative anyway. The Tyrannian forces had evolved an entire technique of supply adapted strictly to the fact that they used tiny ships. They couldn’t afford the huge storage spaces of other fleets which were stacked with the carcasses of whole animals, neatly hung in rows. They had had to develop a standard food concentrate containing what was necessary in the way of calories and food factors and let it go at that. It took up only one twentieth of the space that an equivalent supply of natural animal food would take, and it could be piled up in the low-temperature storeroom like packaged bricks.

            “Well, it tastes awful,” said Artemisia.

            “Well, you’ll get used to it,” retorted Biron, mimicking her petulance, so that she flushed and turned away angrily.

            What was bothering her, Biron knew, was simply the lack of space and all that accompanied the lack. It wasn’t just a question of using a monotonous food stock because in that way more calories could be packed to the cubic inch. It was that there were no separate sleeping rooms, for instance. There were the engine rooms and the control room, which took up most of the ship’s space. (After all, Biron thought, this is a warship, not a pleasure yacht.) Then there was the storeroom, and. one small cabin, with two tiers of three bunks on either side. The plumbing was located in a little niche just outside the cabin.

            It meant crowding; it meant a complete absence of privacy; and it meant that Artemisia would have to adjust herself to the fact that there were no women’s clothes aboard, no mirrors, no washing facilities.

            Well, she would have to get used to it. Biron felt that he had done enough for her, gone sufficiently out of his way. Why couldn’t she be pleasant about it and smile once in a while? She had a nice smile, and he had to admit that she wasn’t bad, except for her temper. But oh, that temper!

            Well, why waste his time thinking about her?

            The water situation was the worst. Tyrann was a desert planet, in the first place, where water was at a premium and men knew its value, so none was included on board ship for washing purposes. Soldiers could wash themselves and their personal effects once they had landed on a planet. During trips a little grime and sweat would not hurt them. Even for drinking purposes, water was barely sufficient for the longer trips. After all, water could be neither concentrated nor dehydrated, but had to be carried in bulk; and the problem was aggravated by the fact that the water content of the food concentrates was quite low.

            There were distilling devices to re-use water lost by the body, but Biron, when he realized their function, felt sick and arranged for the disposal of waste products without attempt at water recovery. Chemically, it was a sensible procedure, but one has to be educated into that sort of thing.

            The second take-off was, comparatively, a: model of smoothness, and Biron spent time playing with the controls afterward. The control board resembled only in the dimmest fashion those of the ships he had handled on Earth. It had been compressed and compacted frightfully. As Biron puzzled out the action of a contact or the purpose of a dial, he wrote out minute directions on paper and pasted them appropriately on the board.

            Gillbret entered the pilot room.

            Biron looked over his shoulder. “Artemisia’s in the cabin, I suppose?”

            “There isn’t anyplace else she could be and stay inside the ship.”

            Biron said, “When you see her, tell her I’ll make up a bunk here in the pilot room. I’d advise you to do the same, and let her have the cabin to herself.” He muttered the addition, “Now there’s one childish girl.”

            “You have your moments, too, Biron,” said Gillbret. “You’ll have to remember the sort of life she’s used to.”

            “All right. I do remember it, and so what? What sort of life do you think I’m used to? I wasn’t born in the mine fields of some asteroidal belt, you know. I was born on the biggest Ranch of Nephelos. But if you’re caught in a situation, you’ve got to make the best of it. Damn it, I can’t stretch the hull of the ship. It will hold just so much food and water, and I can’t do anything about the fact that there isn’t any shower bath. She picks on me as if I personally manufactured this ship.” It was a relief to shout at Gillbret. It was a relief to shout at anybody.

            But the door opened again, and Artemisia stood there. She said, freezingly, “I would refrain, Mr. Farrill, from shouting, if I were you. You can be distinctly heard all over the ship.”

            “That,” said Biron, “does not bother me. And if the ship bothers you, just remember that if your father hadn’t tried to kill me off and marry you off, neither one of us would be here.” c

            “Don’t talk about my father.”

            “I’ll talk about anyone I please.”

            Gillbret put his hands over his ears. “Please!”

            It brought the argument to a momentary halt. Gillbret said, “Shall we discuss the matter of our destination now? It’s obvious at this point that the sooner we’re somewhere else and out of this ship, the more comfortable we’ll be.”

            “I agree with you there, Oil,” said Biron. “Just let’s go somewhere where I don’t have to listen to her clacking. Talk about women on space ships!”

            Artemisia ignored him and addressed Gillbret exclusively. “Why don’t we get out of the Nebular area altogether?”

            “I don’t know about you,” said Biron at once, “but I’ve got to get my Ranch back and do a little something about my father’s murder. I’ll stay in the Kingdoms.”

            “I did not mean,” said Artemisia, “that we were to leave forever; only till the worst of the search was over. I don’t see what you intend doing about your Ranch, anyway. You can’t get it back unless the Tyrannian Empire is broken to pieces, and I don’t see you doing that.”

            “You never mind what I intend doing. It’s my business.”

            “Might I make a suggestion?” asked Gillbret mildly.

            He took silence for consent, and went on, “Then suppose I tell you where we ought to go, and exactly what we ought to do to help break the Empire to pieces, just as Arta said.”

            “Oh? How do you propose doing that?” said Biron.

            Gillbret smiled. “My dear boy, you’re taking a very amusing attitude. Don’t you trust me? You look at me as though you think that any enterprise I might be interested in was bound to be a foolish one. I got you out of the Palace.”

            “I know that. I’m perfectly willing to listen to you.”

            “Do so, then. I’ve been waiting for over twenty years for my chance to get away from them. If I had been a private citizen, I could have done it long since; but through the curse of birth, I’ve been in the public eye. And yet. if it hadn’t been for the fact that I was born a Hinriad, I would not have attended the coronation of the present Khan of Tyrann, and in that case I would never have stumbled on the secret which will someday destroy that same Khan.”

            “Go on,” said Biron.

            “The trip from Rhodia to Tyrann was by Tyrannian warship, of course, as was the trip back. A ship like this, I might say, but rather larger. The trip there was uneventful. The stay on Tyrann had its points of amusements, but, for our purposes now, was likewise uneventful. On the trip back, however, a meteor hit us.”

            “What?”

            Gillbret held up a hand. “I know quite well it’s an unlikely accident. The incidence of meteors in space--especially in interstellar space--is low enough to make the chances of collision with a ship completely insignificant, but it does happen, as you know. And it did happen in this case. Of course any meteor that does hit, even when it is the size of a pinhead, as most of them are, can penetrate the hull of any but the most heavily armored ship.”

            “I know,” said Biron. “It’s a question of their momentum, which is a product of their mass and velocity. The velocity more than makes up for their lack of mass.” He recited it glumly, like a school lesson, and caught himself watching Artemisia furtively.

            She had seated herself to listen to Gillbret, and she was so close to him that they were almost touching. It occurred to Biron that her profile was beautiful as she sat there, even if her hair was becoming a little bedraggled. She wasn’t wearing her little jacket, and the fluffy whiteness of her blouse was still smooth and unwrinkled after forty-eight hours. He wondered how she managed that.

            The trip, he decided, could be quite wonderful if she would only learn to behave herself. The trouble was that no one had ever controlled her properly, that was all. Certainly not her father. She’d become too used to having her own way. If she’d been born a commoner, she would be a very lovely creature.

            He was just beginning to slip into a tiny daydream in which he controlled her properly and brought her to a state of proper appreciation of himself, when she turned her head and met his eye calmly. Biron looked away and fastened his attention instantly on Gillbret. He had missed a few sentences.

            “I haven’t the slightest idea why the ship’s screen had failed. It was just one of those things to which no one will ever know the answer, but it had failed. Anyway, the meteor struck amidships. It was pebble-sized and piercing the hull slowed it just sufficiently so that it couldn’t blaze its way out again through the other side. If it had done that, there would have been little harm to it, since the hull could have been temporarily patched in no time.

            “As it was, however, it plunged into the control room, ricocheted off the far wall and slammed back and forth till it came to a halt. It couldn’t have taken more than a fraction of a minute to come to a halt, but at an original velocity of a hundred miles a minute, it must have crisscrossed the room a hundred times. Both crewmen were cut to pieces, and I escaped only because I was in the cabin at the time.

            “I heard the thin clang of the meteor when it originally penetrated the hull, then the click-clack of its bouncing, and the terrifying short screams of the two crewmen. When I jumped into the control room, there was only the blood everywhere and the torn flesh. The things that happened next I remember only vaguely, although for years I lived it over step by step in my nightmares.

            “The cold sound of escaping air led me to the meteor hole. I slapped a disk of metal over it and air pressure made a decent seal of it. I found the little battered space pebble on the floor. It was warm to the touch, but I hit it with a spanner and split it in two. The exposed interior frosted over instantly. It was still at the temperature of space.

            “I tied a cord to the wrist of each corpse and then tied each cord to a towing magnet. I dumped them through the air lock, heard the magnets clank against the hold, and knew that the hard-frozen bodies would follow the ship now wherever it went. You see, once we returned to Rhodia, I knew I would need the evidence of their bodies to show that it had been the meteor that had killed them and not I.

            “But how was I to return? I was quite helpless. There was no way I could run the ship, and there was nothing I dared try there in the depths of interstellar space. I didn’t even know how to use the sub-etheric communication system, so that I couldn’t SOS. I could only let the ship travel on its own course.”

            “But you couldn’t very well do that, could you?” Biron said. He wondered if Gillbret ‘were inventing this, either out of simple romantic imaginings or for some severely practical reason of his own. “What about the Jumps through hyperspace? You must have managed those, or you wouldn’t be here.”

            “A Tyrannian ship,” said Gillbret, “once the controls are properly set, will make any number of Jumps quite automatically.”

            Biron stared his disbelief. Did Gillbret take him for a fool? “You’re making that up,” he said.

            “I am not. It’s one of the damned military advances which won their wars for them. They didn’t defeat fifty planetary systems, outnumbering Tyrann by hundreds of times in population and resources, just by playing mumblety-peg, you know. Sure they tackled us one at a time, and utilized our traitors very skillfully, but they had a definite military edge as well. Everyone knows that their tactics were superior to ours, and part of that was due to the automatic Jump. It meant a great increase in the maneuverability of their ships and made possible much more elaborate battle plans than any we could set up.

            “I’ll admit it’s one of their best-kept secrets, this technique of theirs. I never learned it until I was trapped alone on the Bloodsucker--the Tyranni have the most annoying custom of naming their ships unpleasantly, though I suppose it’s good psychology--and watched it happen. I watched it make the Jumps without a hand on the controls.”

            “And you mean to say that this ship can do that too?”

            “I don’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised.”

            Biron turned to the control board. There were still dozens of contacts he had not determined the slightest use for. Well, later!

            He turned to Gillbret again. “And the ship took you home?”

            “No, it didn’t. When that meteor wove its pattern through the control room, it didn’t leave the board untouched. It would have been most amazing if it had. Dials were smashed, the casing battered and dented. There was no way of telling how the previous set of the controls had been altered, but it must have been somehow, because it never took me back to Rhodia.

            “Eventually, of course, it began deceleration, and I knew the trip was theoretically over. I couldn’t tell where I was, but I managed to maneuver the visiplate so that I could tell there was a planet close enough to show a disk in the ship telescope. It was blind luck, because the disk was increasing in size. The ship was heading for the planet.

            “Oh, not directly. That would have been too impossible to hope for. If I had just drifted, the ship would have missed the planet by a million miles, at least, but at that distance I could use ordinary etheric radio. I knew how to do that. It was after this was allover that I began educating myself in electronics. I made up my mind that I would never be quite so helpless again. Being helpless is one of the things that isn’t altogether amusing.”

            Biron prompted, “So you used the radio.”

            Gillbret went on: “Exactly, and they came and got me;”

            “Who?”

            “The men of the planet. It was inhabited.”

            “Well, the luck piles up. What planet was it?”

            “I don’t know.”

            “You mean they didn’t tell you?”

            “Amusing, isn’t it? They didn’t. But it was somewhere among the Nebular Kingdoms!”

            “How did you know that?”

            “Because they knew the ship I was in was a Tyrannian vessel. They knew that by sight, and almost blasted it before I could convince them I was the only one on board alive.”

            Biron put his large hands on his knees and kneaded them. “Now hold on and pull back. I don’t get this. If they knew it was a Tyrannian vessel and intending blasting it, isn’t that the best proof that the world was not in the Nebular Kingdoms? that it was anywhere but there?”

            “No, by the Galaxy.” Gillbret’s eyes were shining, and his voice climbed in enthusiasm. “It was in the Kingdoms. They took me to the surface, and what a world it was! There were men there from allover the Kingdoms. I could tell by the accents. And they had no fear of the Tyranni. The place was an arsenal. You couldn’t tell from space. It might have been a rundown farming world, but the life of the planet was underground. Somewhere in the Kingdoms, my boy, somewhere there is that planet still, and it is not afraid of the Tyranni, and it is going to destroy the Tyranni as it would have destroyed the ship I was on then, if the crewmen had been still alive.”

            Biron felt his heart bound. For a moment he wanted to believe.

            After all, maybe. Maybe!

ELEVEN:

And Maybe Not!

And then again, maybe not!

            Biron said, “How did you learn all this about its being an arsenal? How long did you stay? What did you see?”

            Gillbret grew impatient. “It wasn’t exactly what I saw at all. They didn’t conduct me on any tours, or anything like that.” He forced himself to relax. “Well, look, this is what happened. By the time they got me off the ship, I was in more or less of a bad state. I had been too frightened to eat much--it’s a terrible thing, being marooned in space --and I must have looked worse than I really was.

            “I identified myself, more or less, and they took me underground. With the ship, of course. I suppose they were more interested in the ship than in myself. It gave them a chance to study Tyrannian spatio-engineering. They took me to what must have been a hospital.”

            “But what did you see, Uncle?” asked Artemisia.

            Biron interrupted, “Hasn’t he ever told you this before?”

            Artemisia said, “No.”

            And Gillbret added, “I’ve never told anyone till now. I was taken to a hospital, as I said. I passed research laboratories in that hospital that must have been better than anything we have on Rhodia. On the way to the hospital I passed factories in which some sort of metalwork was going on. The ships that had captured me were certainly like none I’ve ever heard about.

            “It was all so apparent to me at the time that I have never questioned it in the years since. I think of it as my ‘rebellion world,’ and I know that someday swarms of ships will leave it to attack the Tyranni, and that the subject worlds will be called upon to rally round the rebel leaders. From year to year I’ve waited for it to happen. Each new year I’ve thought to myself: This may be the one. And, each time, I half hoped it wouldn’t be, because I was longing to get away first, to join them so that I might be part of the great attack. I didn’t want them to start without me.”

            He laughed shakily. “I suppose it would have amused most people to know what was going on in my mind. In my mind. Nobody thought much of me, you know.”

            Biron said, “All this happened over twenty years ago, and they haven’t attacked? There’s been no sign of them? No strange ships have been reported? No incidents? And you still think--”

            Gillbret fired at him, “Yes, I do. Twenty years isn’t too long to organize a rebellion against a planet that rules fifty systems. I was there just at the beginning of the rebellion. I know that too. Slowly, since then, they must have been honeycombing the planet with their underground preparations, developing newer ships and weapons, training more men, organizing the attack.

            “It’s only in the video thrillers that men spring to arms at a moment’s notice; that a new weapon is needed one day, invented the next, mass-produced the third, and used the fourth. These things take time, Biron, and the men of the rebellion world must know they will have to be completely ready before beginning. They won’t be able to strike twice.

            “And what do you call ‘incidents’? Tyrannian ships have disappeared and never been found. Space is big, you might say, and they might simply be lost, but what if they were captured by the rebels? There was the case of the Tireless two years back. It reported a strange object close enough to stimulate the massometer, and then was never heard from again. It could have been a meteor, I suppose, but was it?

            “The search lasted months. They never found it. I think the rebels have it. The Tireless was a new ship, an experimental model. It would be just what they would want.”

            Biron said, “Once having landed there, why didn’t you stay?”

            “Don’t you suppose I wanted to? I had no chance. I listened to them when they thought I was unconscious, and I learned a bit more then. They were just starting, out there, at that time. They couldn’t afford to be found out then. They knew I was Gillbret oth Hinriad. There was enough identification on the ship, even if I hadn’t told them myself, which I had. They knew that if I didn’t return to Rhodia there would be a full-scale search that would not readily come to a halt.

            “They couldn’t risk such a search, so they had to see to it that I was returned to Rhodia. And that’s where they took me.”

            “What!” cried Biron. “But that must have been an even greater risk. How did they do that?”

            “I don’t know.” Gillbret passed his thin fingers through his graying hair, and his eyes seemed to be probing uselessly into the backward stretches of his memory. “They anesthetized me, I suppose. That part all blanks out. Past a certain point there is nothing. I can only remember that I opened my eyes and was back in the Bloodsucker; I was in space, just off Rhodia.”

            “The two dead crewmen were still attached by the tow magnets? They hadn’t been removed on the rebellion world?” asked Biron.

            “They were still there.”

            “Was there any evidence at all to indicate that you had been on the rebellion world?”

            “None; except for what I remembered.”

            “How did you know you were off Rhodia?”

            “I didn’t. I knew I was near a planet; the massometer said so. I used the radio again, and this time it was Rhodian ships that came for me. I told my story to the Tyrannian Commissioner of that day, with appropriate modifications. I made no mention of the rebellion world, of course. And I said the meteor had hit just after the last Jump. I didn’t want them to think I knew that a Tyrannian ship could make the Jumps automatically.”

            “Do you think the rebellion world found out that little fact? Did you tell them?”

            “I didn’t tell them. I had no chance. I wasn’t there long enough. Conscious, that is. But I don’t know how long I was unconscious and what they managed to find out for themselves.”

            Biron stared at the visiplate. Judging from the rigidity of the picture it presented, the ship they were on might have been nailed in space. The Remorseless was traveling at the rate of ten thousand miles an hour, but what was that to the immense distances of space. The stars were hard, bright, and motionless. They had a hypnotic quality about them.

            He said, “Then where are we going? I take it you still don’t know where the rebellion world is?”

            “I don’t. But I have an idea who would. I am almost sure I know.” Gillbret was eager about it.

            “Who?”

            “The Autarch of Lingane.”

            “Lingane?” Biron frowned. He had heard the name some time back, it seemed to him, but he had forgotten the connection. “Why he?”

            “Lingane was the last Kingdom captured by the Tyranni. It is not, shall we say, as pacified as the rest. Doesn’t that make sense?”

            “As far as it goes. But how far is that?”

            “If you want another reason, there is your father.”

            “My father?” For a moment Biron forgot that his father was dead. He saw him standing before his mind’s eye, large and alive, but then he remembered and there was that same cold wrench inside him. “How does my father come into this?”

            “He was at court six months ago. I gained certain notions as to what he wanted. Some of his talks with my cousin, Hinrik, I overheard.”

            “Oh, Uncle,” said Artemisia impatiently.

            “My dear?”

            “You had no right to eavesdrop on Father’s private discussions.”

            Gillbret shrugged. “Of course not, but it was amusing, and useful as well. “

            Biron interrupted, “Now, wait. You say it was six months ago that my father was at Rhodia?” He felt excitement mount.

            “Yes.”

            “Tell me. While there, did he have access to the Director’s collection of Primitivism? You told me once that the Director had a large library of matters concerning Earth. “

            “I imagine so. The library is quite famous and it is usually made available to distinguished visitors, if they’re interested. They usually aren’t, but your father was. Yes, I remember that very well. He spent nearly a day there.”

            That checked. It had been half a year ago that his father had first asked his help. Biron said, “You yourself know the library well, I imagine.”

            “Of course.”

            “Is there anything in the library that would suggest that there. exists a document on Earth of great military value?”

            Gillbret was blank of face and, obviously, blank of mind.

            Biron said, “Somewhere in the last centuries of prehistoric

            Earth there must have been such a document. I can only tell you that my father thought it to be the most valuable single item in the Galaxy, and the deadliest. I was to have gotten it for him, but I left Earth too soon, and in any case”--his voice faltered--”he died too soon.”

            But Gillbret was still blank. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

            “You don’t understand. My father mentioned it to me first six months ago. He must have learned of it in the library on Rhodia. If you’ve been through it yourself, can’t you tell me what it was he must have learned?”

            But Gillbret could only shake his head.

            Biron said, “Well, continue with your story.”

            Gillbret said, “They spoke of the Autarch of Lingane, your father and my cousin. Despite your father’s cautious phraseology, Biron, it was obvious that the Autarch was the fount and head of the conspiracy.

            “And then”--he hesitated--”there was a mission from Lingane and the Autarch himself was at its head. I--I told him of the rebellion world.”

            “You said a while ago you told nobody,” said Biron.

            “Except the Autarch. I had to know the truth.”

            “What did he tell you?”

            “Practically nothing. But then, he had to be cautious too. Could he trust me? I might have been working for the Tyranni. How could he know? But he didn’t close the door altogether. It’s our only lead.”

            “Is it?” Biron said. “Then we’ll go to Lingane. One place, I suppose, is like another.”

            Mention of his father had depressed him, and, for the moment, nothing mattered much. Let it be Lingane.

            Let it be Lingane! That was easy to say. But how does one go about pointing the ship. at a tiny speck of light thirty-five light-years away. Two hundred trillion miles. A two with fourteen zeros after it. At ten thousand miles an hour (current cruising speed of the Remorseless) it would take well over two million years to get there.

            Biron leafed through the Standard Galactic Ephemeris with something like despair. Tens of thousands of stars were listed in detail, with their positions crammed into three iigures. There were hundreds of pages of these figures, symbolized by the Greek letters ρ (rho), θ (theta), and φ (phi).

            ρ was the distance from the Galactic Center in parsecs; θ, the angular separation, along the plane of the Galactic Lens from the Standard Galactic Baseline (the line, that is, which connects the Galactic Center and the sun of the planet, Earth) ; φ the angular separation from the Baseline in the plane perpendicular to that of the Galactic Lens, the two latter measurements being expressed in radians. Given those three figures, one could locate any star accurately in all the vast immensity of space.

            That is, on a given date. In addition to the star’s position on the standard day for which all the data were calculated, one had to know the star’s proper motion, both speed and direction. It was a small correction. comparatively, but necessary. A million miles is virtually nothing compared with stellar distances, but it is a long way with a ship.

            There was, of course, the question of the ship’s own position. One could calculate the distance from Rhodia by the reading of the massometer, or, more correctly, the distance from Rhodia’s sun, since this far out in space the sun’s gravitational field drowned out that of any of its planets. The direction they were traveling with reference to the Galactic Baseline was more difficult to determine. Biron had to locate two known stars other than Rhodia’s sun. From their apparent positions and the known distance from Rhodia’s sun, he could plot their actual position.

            It was roughly done but, he felt sure, accurately enough. Knowing his own position and that of Lingane’s sun, he had only to adjust the controls for the proper direction and strength of the hyperatornic thrust.

            Biron felt lonely and tense. Not frightened! He rejected the word. But tense, definitely. He was deliberately calculating the elements of the Jump for a time six hours later. He wanted plenty of time to check his figures. And perhaps there might be the chance for a nap. He had dragged the bed makings out of the cabin and it was ready for him now.

            The other two were, presumably, sleeping in the cabin. He told himself that that was a good thing and that he wanted nobody around bothering him, yet when he heard the small sound of bare feet outside, he looked up with a certain eagerness.

            “Hello,” he said, “why aren’t you sleeping?”

            Artemisia stood in the doorway, hesitating. She said, in a small voice, “Do you mind if I come in? Will I be bothering you?”

            “It depends on what you do.”

            “I’ll try to do the right things.”

            She seemed too humble, Biron thought suspiciously, and then the reason for it came out.

            “I’m awfully frightened,” she said. “Aren’t you?”

            He wanted to say no, not at all, but it didn’t come out that way. He smiled sheepishly, and said, “Sort of.”

            Oddly enough, that comforted her. She knelt down on the floor beside him and looked at the thick volumes opened before him and at the sheets of calculations.

            “They had all these books here?”

            “You bet. They couldn’t pilot a ship without them.”

            “And you understand all that?”

            “Not all that. I wish I did. I hope I understand enough. We’ll have to Jump to Lingane, you know.”

            “Is that hard to do?”

            “No, not if you know the figures, which are all here, and have the controls, which are all there, and if you have experience, which I haven’t. For instance, it should be done in several Jumps, but I’m going to try it in one because there’ll be less chance of trouble, even though it means a wasteful use of energy.”

            He shouldn’t tell her; there was no point ill telling her; it would be cowardly to frighten her; and she’d be hard to handle if she got really frightened, panicky frightened. He kept telling himself all that and it did no good. He wanted to share it with somebody. He wanted part of it off his own mind.

            He said, “There are some things I should know that I don’t. Things like the mass density between here and Lingane affect the course of the Jump, because that mass density is what controls the curvature of this part of the universe. The Ephemeris--that’s this big book here--mentions the curvature corrections that must be made in certain standard Jumps, and from those you’re supposed to be able to calculate your own particular corrections. But then if you happen to have a super giant within ten light-years, all bets are off. I’m not even sure if I used the computer correctly.”

            “But what would happen if you were wrong?”

            “We could re-enter space too close to Lingane’s sun.”

            She considered that, then said, “You have no idea how much better I feel.”

            “After what I’ve just said?”

            “Of course. In my bunk I simply felt helpless and lost with so much emptiness in all directions. Now I know that we’re going somewhere and that the emptiness is under our control.”

            Biron was pleased. How different she was. “I don’t know about it’s being under our control.”

            She stopped him. “It is. I know you can handle the ship.”

            And Biron decided that maybe he could at that.

            Artemisia had tucked her long unclad legs under her and sat facing him. She had only her filmy underclothes for cover, but seemed unconscious of the fact, though Biron was definitely not.

            She said, “You know, I had an awfully queer sensation in the bunk, almost as I were floating. That was one of the things that frightened me. Every time I’d turn, I’d give a queer little jump into the air and then flop back slowly as if there were springs in the air holding me back.”

            “You weren’t sleeping in a top bunk, were you?”

            “Yes, I was. The bottom ones give me claustrophobia, with another mattress six inches over your head.”

            Biron laughed. “Then that explains it. The ship’s gravitational force is directed toward its base, and falls off as we move away from it. In the top bunk you were probably twenty or thirty pounds lighter than on the floor. Were you ever on a passenger liner? A really big one?”

            “Once. When Father and I visited Tyrann last year.”

            “Well, on the liners they have the gravitation in all parts of the ship directed toward the outer hull, so that the long axis of the ship is always ‘up,’ no matter where you are. That’s why the motors of one of those big babies are always lined up in a cylinder running right along the long axis. No gravity there.”

            “It must take an awful lot of power to keep an artificial gravity going.”

            “Enough to power a small town.”

            “There isn’t any danger of our running short of fuel, is there?”

            “Don’t worry about that. Ships are fueled by the total conversion of mass to energy. Fuel is the last thing we’ll run out of. The outer hull will wear away first.”

            She was facing him. He noted that her face had been cleaned of its make-up and wondered how that had been done; probably with a handkerchief and as little of the drinking water as she could manage. She didn’t suffer as a result, for her clear white skin was the more startlingly perfect against the black of her hair and eyes. Her eyes were very warm, thought Biron.

            The silence had lasted a little too long. He said hurriedly, “You don’t travel very much, do you? I mean, you were on a liner only once?”

            She nodded. “Once too often. If we hadn’t gone to Tyrann, that filthy chamberlain wouldn’t have seen me and--I don’t want to talk about that.”

            Biron let it. go. He said, “Is that usual? I mean, not traveling.”

            “I’m afraid so. Father is always hopping around on state visits, opening agricultural expositions, dedicating buildings. He usually just makes some speech that Aratap writes for him. As for the rest of us, however, the more we stay in the Palace, the better the Tyranni like it. Poor Gillbret! The one and only time he left Rhodia was to attend the Khan’s coronation as Father’s representative. They’ve never let him get into a ship again.”

            Her eyes were downcast and, absently, she pleated the material of Biron’s sleeve where it ended at the wrist. She said, “Biron.”

            “Yes--Arta?” He stumbled a bit, but it came out.

            “Do you think Uncle Oil’s story can be true?”

            “Do you suppose it could be his imagination? He’s been brooding about the Tyranni for years, and he’s never been able to do anything, of course, except to rig up spy beams, which is only childish, and he knows it. He may have built himself a daydream and, over the years, gradually come to believe in it. I know him, you see.”

            “Could be, but let’s follow it up a little. We can travel to Lingane, anyway.”

            They were closer to one another. He could have reached out and touched her, held her in his arms, kissed her.

            And he did so.

            It was a complete non sequitur. Nothing, it seemed to Biron, had led to it. One moment they were discussing Jumps and gravity and Gillbret, and the next she was soft and silky in his arms and soft silky on his lips.

            His first impulse was to say he was sorry, to go through all the silly motions of apology, but when he drew away and would have spoken, she still made no attempt at escape but rested her head in the crook of his left arm. Her eyes remained closed.

            So he said nothing at all but kissed her again, slowly and thoroughly. It was the best thing he could have done, and at the time he knew it.

            Finally she said, a bit dreamily, “Aren’t you hungry? I’ll bring you some of the concentrate and warm it for you. Then, if you want to sleep, I can keep an eye on things for you. And--and I’d better put on more of my clothes.”

            She turned as she was about to go out the door. “The food concentrate tastes very nice after you get used to it. Thank you for getting it.”

            Somehow that, rather than the kisses, was the treaty of peace between them.

            When Gillbret entered the control room, hours later, he showed no surprise at finding Biron and Artemisia lost in a foolish kind of conversation. He made no remarks about the fact that Biron’s arm was about his niece’s waist.

            He said, “When are we Jumping, Biron?”

            “In half an hour,” said Biron.

            The half hour passed; the controls were set; conversation languished and died.

            At zero time Biron drew a deep breath and yanked a lever the full length of its arc, from left to right.

            It was not as it had been on the liner. The Remorseless was smaller and the Jump was consequently less smooth. Biron staggered, and for a split second things wavered.

            And then they were smooth and solid again.

            The stars in the visiplate had changed. Biron rotated the ship, so that the star field lifted, each star moving in a stately arc. One star appeared finally, brilliantly white and more than a point. It was a tiny sphere, a burning speck of sand. Biron caught it, steadied the ship before it was lost again, and turned the telescope upon it, throwing in the spectroscopic attachment.

            He turned again to the Ephemeris, and checked under the column headed “Spectral Characteristics.” Then he got out of the pilot’s chair and said, “It’s still too far. I’ll have to nudge up to it. But, anyway, that’s Lingane right ahead.”

            It was the first Jump he had ever made, and it was successful.

TWELVE:

The Autarch Comes

The Autarch of Lingane pondered the matter, but his cool, well-trained features scarcely creased under the impact of thought.

            “And you waited forty-eight hours to tell me,” he said.

            Rizzett said boldly, “There was no reason to tell you earlier. If we bombarded you with all matters, life would be a burden to you. We tell you now because we still make nothing of it. It is queer, and in our position we can afford nothing queer.”

            “Repeat this business. Let me hear it again.”

            The Autarch threw a leg upon the flaring window sill and looked outward thoughtfully. The window itself represented perhaps the greatest single oddity of Linganian architecture. It was moderate in size and set at the end of a five-foot recess that narrowed gently toward it. It was extremely clear, immensely thick, and precisely curved; not so much a window as a lens, funneling the light inward from all directions, so that, looking outward, one eyed a miniature panorama.

            From any window in the Autarch’s Manor a sweep of vision embracing half the horizon from zenith to nadir could be seen. At the edges there was increasing minuteness and distortion, but that itself lent a certain flavor to what one saw: the tiny flattened motions of the city; the creeping, curved orbits of the crescent-shaped stratospherics climbing from the airport. One grew so used to it that unhinging the window to allow the flat tameness of reality to enter would seem unnatural. When the position of the sun made the lenslike windows a focus for impossible heat and light, they were blanked out automatically, rather than opened, rendered opaque by a shift in the polarization characteristics of the glass.

            And certainly the theory that a planet’s architecture is the reflection of a planet’s place in the Galaxy would seem to be borne out by the case of Lingane and its windows.

            Like the windows, Lingane was small yet commanded a panoramic view. It was a “planet state” in a Galaxy, which, at the time, had passed beyond that stage of economic and political development. Where most political units were con. glomerations of stellar systems, Lingane remained what it had been for centuries--a single inhabited world. This did not prevent it from being wealthy. In fact, it was almost inconceivable that Lingane could be anything else.

            It is difficult to tell in advance when a world is so located that many Jump routes may use it as a pivotal intermediate point; or even must use it in the interests of optimal economy. A great deal depends on the pattern of development of that region of space. There is the question of the distribution of the naturally habitable planets; the order in which they are colonized and developed; the types of economy they possess.

            Lingane discovered its own values early, which was the great turning point of its history. Next to the actual possession of a strategic position, the capacity to appreciate and exploit that position is most important. Lingane had proceeded to occupy small planetoids with neither resources nor capacity for supporting an independent population, choosing them only because they would help maintain Lingane’s trade monopoly. They built servicing stations on those rocks. All that ships would need, from hyperatomic replacements to new book reels, could be found there. The stations grew to huge trading posts. From all the Nebular Kingdoms fur, minerals, grain, beef, timber poured in; from the Inner Kingdoms, machinery, appliances, medicinals; finished products of all sorts formed a similar flood.

            So that, like its windows, Lingane’s minuteness looked out on all the Galaxy. It was a planet alone, but it did well.

            The Autarch said, without turning from the window, “Start with the mail ship, Rizzett. Where did it meet this cruiser in the first place?”

            “Less than one hundred thousand miles off Lingane. The exact coordinates don’t matter. They’ve been watched ever since. The point is that, even then, the Tyrannian cruiser was in an orbit about the planet.”

            “As though it had no intention of landing, but, rather, was waiting for something?”

            “Yes.”

            “No way of telling how long they’d been waiting?”

            “Impossible, I’m afraid. They were sighted by no one else. We checked thoroughly.”

            “Very well,” said the Autarch. “We’ll abandon that for the moment. They stopped the mail ship, which is, of course, interference with the mails and a violation of our Articles of Association with Tyrann.”

            “I doubt that they were Tyranni. Their unsure actions are more those of outlaws, of prisoners in flight.”

            “You mean the men on the Tyrannian cruiser? It may be what they want us to believe, of course. ‘ At any rate, their only overt action was to ask that a message be delivered directly to me.”

            “Directly to the Autarch, that is right.”

            “Nothing else?”

            “Nothing else.”

            “They at no time entered the mail ship?”

            “All communications were by visiplate. The mail capsule was shot across two miles of empty space and caught by the ship’s net.”

            “Was it vision communication or sound only?”