risking a thing yourselves."

 

"What do you suggest, then'?" Vonnie asked. "You give us the list of these other

customers you mentioned. It'll be an equal deal, a secret for a secret. If we're going to

end up partners, we would end up sharing the information anyway."

 

Jules and Yvonne glanced at one another, and then Vonnie nodded. "Khorosho, you've

got a deal.'.' There was, of course, no list of customers that the d'Alemberts'

organization had been supplying. Jules and Yvonne spent a full day making up a

convincing sounding list of names. For the sake of thoroughness, they transmitted a

copy of the list to the local SOTE office, with instructions that these names were to be

entered in the Service's official files in case Chactan's people ran a detailed check.

 

Another snag occurred when Chactan balked at letting the d'Alemberts take their own

ship to the secret world where the munitions plant was hidden. His reasoning was

logical: the d'Alemberts had already proven their hostile intentions toward his

organization, and if he simply told them where the plant was they could fly over it and

bomb it to smithereens. J ules and Vonnie countered that if they went in one of

Chactan's ships some "accident" might befall them.

 

A compromise was finally developed. Two ships would make the journey, la Comete

Cuivre and one of Chactan's. Chactan would accompany Jules in the Cornet, while

Vonnie would travel with the crew from the other side, each would serve as hostage to

the others good behavior. The d'Alemberts were a little reluctant to allow Chactan

aboard their vessel because of all the top secret equipment it contained, but they

realized there was no other logical way of achieving their goal. They hid as much of the

special SOTE equipment as they could, and disguised the rest to look like ordinary

spaceship gear. They were fortunate in that George Chactan was not himself a licensed

pilot, and had little idea what was supposed to be there and what wasn't.

 

Once they had blasted off the surface of Nampur, Chactan gave Jules the directions to

head for the system containing the planet Tregania, twenty-three light-years away.

Jules handed Chactan the envelope containing the names of his fictitious customers,

and they were on their way.

 

Once they reached the new solar system, Chactan ordered Jules to go, not to Tregania,

which was the fourth planet out from the sun, but to the first planet, which had no

official name. There, safe from prying eyes, the munitions plant was in full operation.

The people who worked on that world had given it the singularly appropriate nickname

of Slag.

 

Slag was an airless ball of rock ten thousand kilometers in diameter, orbiting a mere

fifty-three million kilometers from its sun. As far as anyone outside the conspiracy knew,

it was both uninhabited and uninhabitable. Temperatures on the daytime hemisphere

were in excess of 350 Celsius, hot enough that pools of molten lead and rivers of

flowing tin were conceivable, if not commonplace. On the night side, the temperatures

plummeted to just slightly above absolute zero. Nobody gave Slag much thought when

there were so many more planets perfectly suitable for human habitation. That was

what made it such a perfect hiding place.

 

As the Comet approached this barren world, a signal was beamed out to the ship,

giving landing instructions so that it could set down near the base. As Jules came in

low, he saw that landing was a feat that would tax his abilities as a pilot to the limit. The

ground was so cracked from the alternating periods of searing heat and bitter cold that

it was difficult to find a smooth, open area in which to set his ship down.. Other ships

were clustered about on a small plain, including the ship that Vonnie had traveled

aboard. After receiving radioed assurances that everything was smooth with her, Jules

completed the ticklish task of bringing the Comet down within the tiny zone provided.

 

A passenger tube snaked out from the main dome of the factory, attaching itself to the

Comet's hatch and forming an airtight seal. Jules and Chactan walked down the tube to

the base without ever having to don their space suits.

 

Despite the fact that this was a large factory for the manufacture of munitions, the base

had a temporary look to it. Indeed, the dome did have to be periodically taken apart and

relocated elsewhere on the planet, because Slag rotated on its axis once every fifty-four

days, while it revolved around the sun in seventy-seven days. It did not keep one face

perpetually toward its primary, as Luna did to Earth. The base, being this close to the

sun, used solar power to run its generators (rather than nuclear power which was

common through the rest of the galaxy) so it had to stay on the sunny side to remain in

operation.

 

Jules was reunited with Yvonne in the main reception lock, a large chamber with

windows looking out onto the landing field. The two were then taken off to the living

quarters so they could be settled in. They had not told Chactan that they were

married-they wanted to keep him guessing about their identities and relationship-so he

had conservatively assigned them to separate rooms. Neither Jules nor Yvonne was

excited by the idea of sleeping apart so recently after their marriage, but they were

resigned to it as simply one more sacrifice to be made in the service of their emperor.

Vonnie did manage to whisper in Jules's ear how much she would miss him, and Jules

squeezed her hand to show he reciprocated.

 

As they walked back with Chactan toward the mess hall, Jules asked, "I can see that

this is a great hiding place for your factory, but is there any other reason for its being

here? The operational costs must be far higher than they would be on a more habitable

planet."

 

"True. But we get our raw materials for nothing." Chactan waved a hand expansively.

"This entire world is one vast chemical laboratory. Metals that you normally Dave to dig

out of the ground, smelt down, and refine are flowing freely in their molten state,

relatively pure. Of those materials that remain solid, we have unlimited solar energy

available to help us break them down into more usable form. Energy, resources, and

secrecy are the three big advantages to Slag. The inconvenience of maintaining the

base is at most a minor disadvantage by comparison."

 

In the crowded conditions that existed on Slag, the mess hall doubled as a recreation

room, and there were several hundred people scattered about at the various tables,

playing electronic games, gambling at cards, or merely whiling away the time with talk.

"How many people are stationed here?" Jules asked as the party made its way to the

food dispenser.

 

"About two thousand," Chactan replied. "The exact number depends on how busy we

are at any given time." He ordered his food from the dispenser, then moved to a vacant

spot at one of the long tables. After a moment, Jules and Vonnie joined him.

 

"Large portions of the plant are automated," the criminal leader continued as they ate.

"We obviously don't want to have any more people involved in the operation than is

absolutely necessary, both from a standpoint of safety and from a standpoint of

secrecy. We do need some people though, to run the machines, to help take them

down, move them, and set them up again whenever night starts overtaking us, to scout

the geological locations for usable resources, and to mine the resources once we find

them."

 

"It sounds fascinating," Yvonne said, genuinely interested. She had never visited so

hostile a world before, and found the concept of living and working here most exciting.

 

"The entire operation is extremely efficient," Chactan beamed with justifiable pride. It

was clear he had established this base himself, and it was his expertise that made it

work. The admiration Yvonne was showing made him open up more than he normally

might have.

 

After their meal they toured the production facilities and watched munitions being

manufactured through all stages of their development. They saw chemicals being mixed

in large vats to create the plastics that would be poured into molds and shaped into the

gun bodies. They saw metals being smelted down and formed into the interior

components of blasters and casings for bombs. They visited the mixing rooms in a

separate complex, where highly volatile compounds were combined to form powerful

explosives. The plant even manufactured its own fuses.

 

.,We specialize in the acid-mix type," Chactan explained. "Acids of all sorts are very

plentiful around here."

 

Jules and Yvonne nodded knowingly. Acid-mix fuses were among the simplest kinds to

use. A small vial. of acid was broken in the top container of the fuse. The center of the

container was made of a material that the acid would eat away, until eventually it

reached the second half of the container. There it mixed with another compound,

generating enough heat to detonate the bomb to which it was attached. The length of

time it took to detonate could be altered by varying the strength of the acid and the

thickness of the material it had to eat through. It was all totally- automatic, and could be

explained to anyone with normal intelligence, so it was the natural device to give to

terrorists with little technical training.

 

As they made their way back to the living quarters Vonnie remarked, "I'm very

impressed with what I've seen, but there's one omission. You've got all strengths of

blasters, bombs, explosives, and fuses, but I haven't seen any stun-guns being

manufactured here."

 

"We don't make them," Chactan said flatly. "Stunners are not a fearsome enough

weapon, and our customers don't want them. In order to spread terror, they have to

absolutely convince people that they will die if they disobey orders. Nothing does that

better than a bomb or a blaster."

 

He gave a snort. "Stunners are gentlemen's weapons, a promise not to hurt the victim

permanently if he plays by the rules. We don't follow those rules. We play for keeps."

 

"I'll keep that in mind," Jules said solemnly. During the "night" shift, while Jules and

Vonnie were asleep, a message came over the telecom machine installed in the base's

communications and control office. The woman on duty requested a printout, then

delivered it personally to Chactan's room.

 

After the woman had left, Chactan unfolded the note and read it privately, becoming

more and more disturbed at its consequences. He had sent the list of customers Jules

had provided to his boss C for further checking. The reply did not please him:

 

CUSTOMERS DID NOT EXIST IN SOTE'S FILES UNTIL DAY BEFORE YOUR

QUERY. DO NOT EXIST ANYWHERE ELSE. SUSPECT SOTS AGENT ACTIVITY.

 

C

 

As was the standard procedure with all communications from his boss, Chactan burned

it immediately after reading it, then summoned Ray Furman, the plant manager, to his

room. While he waited for the man to arrive, he coldly considered his alternatives.

 

"I made a serious mistake," he admitted when Furman showed up, "but fortunately it's a

correctable one. The two people I brought with me today have turned out to be SOTE

agents. Naturally, we cant let them leave Slag alive."

 

Furman nodded. "I understand. They're sleeping right now. I could round up a couple of

men and--" "It's too risky to do anything inside the base," Chactan said, shaking his

head. "They're armed right now, and they might end up doing some damage to the

plant before we kill them. I don't want anything to endanger our operation here."

 

"What do you suggest, then?"

 

Chactan smiled. "They were scheduled to go out tomorrow with one of the mining

teams to see how that phase of our process works. We'll just let them go. After all, Slag

is a very inhospitable world-all sorts of accidents can happen, can't they?"

 

Chapter 9

Panic In the Hall

 

On Purity, in the main offices of Tresa Clunard, there was little cause for happiness.

Elspeth FitzHugh, the counselor's chief assistant, was presenting the weekly figures for

recruitment into their Army of the Just. "As you can see, Sister Tresa," FitzHugh said,

"the figures show a decline for the third straight week."

 

Clunard took the papers from her aide's hand and skimmed the columns of numbers

quickly. The drop in recruits was all too obvious. What was worse, the figures were

dropping by larger amounts every week. If this trend were to continue unabated, within

two weeks there would be virtually no new recruits joining her army.

 

She looked up from her chair at the woman standing before her. "Would you care to

venture any opinions about why this is happening, Sister Elspeth?" she asked. "Is it

because they're getting tired of listening to me? Am I asking the impossible of them?"

 

"You're asking no more than you're willing to give yourself," FitzHugh soothed. "And as

for getting tired of listening, I'd have to say that the crowds seem to be as enthusiastic

as they ever were."

 

"Yes, but they're smaller. Even I can see that, despite the lights shining in my eyes."

 

FitzHugh could not deny such an unquestionable fact. Instead, she nudged the subject

in a slightly new direction. "I think it's because of this new counselor, this Cromwell

Hanrahan. His dress and his manner of. speech are outrageous, and his exhortations

refute every principle you stand for. He uses the twisted logic of Satan himself to make

sin sound holy and tells people that their wicked thoughts and deeds are ordained by

God. He preys upon the weakness in people's minds, whereas you try to build up the

strengths. The sinners want to believe him because he offers them the easy path. He

offers them pleasure; you only offer them hard work and devotion to God."

 

Clunard nodded. "That's true. God must have placed him in my path as a further test of

my faith. I'll have to work even harder to prove myself and my cause."

 

"I think you should do more than that."

 

Clunard stopped and looked at her. "What do you mean?"

 

"I mean that Hanrahan is our enemy. You are right, God sent him to us as a test of your

faith and your will. You have spoken out well against sinners like Hanrahan. Perhaps it's

time to be more specific."

 

"You mean mention him by name, single him out as a symptom of the evil that's

infected the galaxy as a whole?"

 

FitzHugh shrugged. "If that's what's necessary to rid us of the plague, then I say yes."

 

"You don't fight evil by shouting at it, Sister Elspeth. I've told you that many times

before. All I would be doing is advertising his heresies even further, spreading them in

places he himself cannot teach." "Yet you must do something."

 

Clunard stood up and walked to the far end of the room. She had her back turned to

FitzHugh and, for a long moment, was lost in deep thought. Finally, she straightened

her shoulders and turned once more to look at her aide. About her face was the divine

glow FitzHugh had seen there during some of the counselors better performances.

 

"You're absolutely right," Clunard said. "I must do -something. So far, all my promises to

God have been accomplished through words, not deeds. It is very easy to speak out

against evil, far more difficult to raise a hand against it. I have counseled, I have

preached, I have strutted, amassing a force in God's name. But building an army is not

the ultimate mission. God knows the truth, and He has sent Hanrahan as a reminder to

me. All our forces will be of no use to the Lord if we never use them."

 

"Sending our army out against one man is a little extravagant, don't you think?"

 

It needn't be the entire army," Clunard said. "But I can see now that Hanrahan is an evil

placed in our path by God to test our resolution and our will. We shall not fail Him.

Hanrahan must be excised from our midst at any cost. I leave it to your discretion Sister

Elspeth, but I want Cromwell Hanrahan removed so that our cause of righteousness

may continue to grow."

 

"As you wish, Sister Tresa," said FitzHugh-as ever, the model of the ideal assistant.

 

The signs that Tresa Clunard's crusade was in trouble were apparent even to Pias and

Yvette. After Pias had been on the stump for three weeks preaching his gospel of

religious hedonism, Yvette left him and attended a couple of Clunard's meetings.

 

"There's no question about it," she reported back to her husband. "Clunard's crowds are

down. I think your message is beginning to sink in."

 

"Give the people what they want and they'll always come back for more," Pias grinned.

 

"But this means we have to be even more careful now. They're not going to take this

threat lying down."

 

"I certainly hope not, or I'll have gone to a lot of trouble for nothing."

 

Pias was a deliberately exposed target. His gaudy figure, sparkling white on the well-lit

stage, night after night, presented an easy mark for any potential assassin in the

audience. With the bright lights shining directly into his eyes, he could scarcely see

beyond the first few rows of people; there could be an army complete with cannons in

the back rows and he would never see them.

 

That was Yvette's responsibility. While Pias was busy being the visible half of the team,

she was practicing hard to be invisible. She would station herself toward the back of the

audience, usually standing against the rear wall, and scan the darkened hall for any

sign of trouble. Paying no attention to her husband's words or actions, she kept her

eyes roving through the crowd for restlessness or animosity. Most of the time the

people were just confused, sometimes offended, eventually overwhelmed. But as the

weeks wore on and their response became stronger and more enthusiastic, she knew

that eventually the opposition forces would make their move.

 

The first attempt came as the two were returning from lunch to the hotel in the small

town through which they were touring. As Pias ran the lightkey over the photosensitive

lock and started to turn the knob, Yvette's sharp ears detected a slight click that should

not have been there. Grabbing her husband's shirt, she yanked him bard back toward

her. The two of them stumbled and fell to the ground, but fortunately each was trained

enough in the art of falling so that the tumble under three-gee conditions did not break

any bones.

 

At almost the same instant, the door exploded in a burst of flames and energy that

rocked the entire hotel. Fragments of the door and of the wall around it flew across the

corridor and blasted large chunks out of the opposite wall. Plaster rained down from the

ceiling onto the floor, up and down the hallway, and windows shattered all along that

side of the building.

 

Shaking his head to clear the ringing from his eardrums, Pias pulled himself slowly to

his feet. "You're a lifesaver, Evie," he said, helping Yvette get up as well. "Under the

circumstances, I'll forgive your ripping my shirt."

 

The inside of their room was a mess, with pieces of furniture strewn about, intermingled

with burned clothing and shattered luggage. From the way the debris lay throughout the

room, it was impossible to tell whether the people who had set the bomb had also

searched their possessions for any clue to the Bavols' identities. A crowd naturally

gathered, and the hotel manager came to examine the damage. Police too arrived to

enhance the confusion, and it was more than two hours before Pias and Yvette had a

chance to make a search in private. Fortunately, they had hidden all their specialized

equipment quite well behind pieces of furniture, and it all survived the blast undamaged.

As near as they could tell, their covers had not been exposed.

 

Pias gave his exhortation at the town hall that night as planned, though he was forced

to wear the clothes he'd had on that afternoon because his flashier outfits had been

destroyed in the explosion. This was a small town, and everyone had heard what had

happened that afternoon; as a consequence, the audience was the largest of Pias's

young ministerial career. If they were expecting any unusual controversy though, they

were disappointed; Pias kept strictly to his standard spiel, making no references at all to

possible enemies or to threats against his life. To look at him, one would think he had

spent the day relaxing in bed, rather than narrowly escaping death.

 

Yvette, however, was a nervous wreck. She did not relax the entire evening as she kept

a careful watch on the audience. Still, there were no signs of danger there, and at the

end of Pias's talk the crowd gave him a most unusual round of applause for his bravery.

After the exhortation, the SOTE team checked into a different hotel under other

assumed names. They tried to sleep in shifts, in case assassins should strike in the

middle of the night, but it ended up that neither of them got much sleep at all.

 

The next day was spent traveling to a new town via Purity's primitive railroad system.

News of this amazing young counselor and the hint of danger about him brought a

sizable crowd out to greet him at the depot. Pias thanked them all and gave an

impromptu speech, though his real talk wasn't scheduled until the next night. He did

make a passing reference to "those who want to silence the Truth," and pointed out that

the strategy was backfiring. He left them wanting more, which is the primary rule for any

showman.

 

When he and Yvette reached their hotel, a new white outfit was waiting for them. Pias

had wired ahead and told the tailors what he needed. A large bonus, even on Purity,

assured prompt service.

 

The next afternoon, as Pias and Yvette were emerging from a restaurant after lunch,

they heard the gentle whine of a groundcar's engine accelerating. Groundcars were so

rare on Purity that the sound instantly alerted them that something out of the ordinary

was about to occur. Both looked up in time to see a small car gunning down the narrow

street toward them. Instinctively they split up, diving in opposite directions as low to the

ground as they could get. A blaster beam sizzled the air just centimeters above them,

burning its way through the stone wall of the restaurant beyond, and cutting through the

glass of the window.

 

Yvette rolled lightly to her feet. She had her own blaster in hand, ready to fire, but

thought better of it. The car had already gotten two dozen meters down the street, and

was speeding away at an increasing rate. Her marksmanship was unquestionably good

enough to hit the car at that distance, but she had to give some thought to the

consequences. There would be a great many questions asked if the wife of a counselor

proved to have such deadly aim with a blaster, and they would be attracting undue

attention on themselves. Plus, it would alert Clunard's forces that Cromwell and Vera

Hanrahan might be a little more than what they seemed.

 

With a slight sigh of regret, Yvette tucked her blaster back inconspicuously into the

pocket of her skirt and turned to survey the damage behind her. Pias too was getting to

his feet, and Yvette could see that his weapon was also half-drawn. Fortunately, no one

in the immediate area had seen exactly what had happened; all eyes were on the car

as it sped away.

 

No one had been injured in the restaurant, though the damage from the blaster bolt had

been extensive. Pias promised to make restitution out of the collections from his

exhortations, thereby ingratiating himself further with the locals.

 

"It'll be soon," Yvette remarked when the two were once more alone. "They've tried

twice and missed; they can't afford to continue that way."

 

"A most comforting thought."

 

"We're making them look incompetent. And what's worse, we're getting more attention

and drawing larger crowds because of it. We've got public support swinging in our

direction. They've got to make the definitive attempt to stop us soon."

 

She tapped her fingers lightly on the top of the table in their hotel room. "Maybe

tonight."

 

Both agents were well armed when they left for Pias's exhortation. Pias, as usual,

carried a ministunner tucked into the sleeve of his shirt; in addition, tonight he had a

small blaster tucked into the top of one boot, in case the fighting became too serious.

 

Yvette carried stunner and blaster as well, both standard Service issue. Neither weapon

was far from her hand at any given instant, though both were well out of sight to avoid

startling the innocent members of the audience.

 

Tonight's crowd was their largest yet. In a way it was gratifying that Pias was able to

attract so many people, but tonight it was merely an annoyance. If trouble were to break

out, as it was certain to do, the large number of innocent bystanders would complicate

the situation enormously. Yvette preferred to think of her job in terms of protecting the

innocent rather than hurting them.

 

Pias was half an hour into his exhortation when the attack began. Yvette-whose eyes,

as always, had been scanning the audience looking for any faint hint of

trouble-detected a subtle motion three rows in front of her. One man, supposedly

listening with the same rapt attention as his neighbors, was reaching surreptitiously

under his shirt. The movement was too slow, too calculatedly casual, to be the mere

scratching of an itch.

 

There could still be a dozen different interpretations for the man's gesture, but Yvette

had to put her intuition on the side of the worst possible one. "Rube!" she shouted to

warn her spouse. At the same instant, her stunner was in her hand and she was firing

at the person who'd raised her suspicions.

 

She never did find out whether that particular man was a part of the conspiracy-but it is

a fact that, at her shout, all hell broke loose in the auditorium. The man she'd shot

slumped forward in his seat, unconscious for two hours, the effect of the number four

stun Yvette had her weapon set for. But other guns seemed to sprout like mushrooms

throughout the rest of the hall. At least six other people, as though on cue, rose from

their seats, weapons in hand. Yvette's shout from the rear of the room had startled

them, but they remained true to their original purpose and aimed their blasters at the

figure on the stage.

 

Pias had been raised with a different heritage than Yvette. To him, the cry of "Rube!"

was just the meaningless utterance of a name, rather than the old circus battle cry of

"Hey Rube!" that had been abbreviated over the passage of centuries. Unlike a

d'Alembert, he did not leap into instinctive action upon hearing that sound.

 

He was, though, very much on edge after the previous attempts on his life. He

recognized Yvette's voice and knew that she would not be yelling anything in the middle

of his exhortation unless something was very wrong indeed. It was the cry itself, not its

content or meaning, that prompted him to act.

 

In midstride and midsentence, he suddenly broke for the right-hand side of the stage.

The searing, white light of blaster bolts was suddenly flashing out of the darkness

toward him, and every move he made seemed much too slow. $y the time he'd reached

the end of the stage, his ministunner was in his hand and ready for use. He dived off

the stage into the right hand aisle, rolled, got to his feet, and started running into the

comparative darkness of the hall-straight into the teeth of danger.

 

The crowd flew into a panic at this unexpected display of violence. People looked

around at one another dumbfounded, afraid. At the exhibition of blaster fire, several of

the hysterical sorts began screaming at the top of their lungs. This only added fuel to

the fire, of course. People began standing up to head quickly for the exits, regardless of

the fact that such action put them directly within the line of blaster fire. Several people

were cut down simply because they panicked and started to flee when they should have

remained frozen in their seats until the shooting was over. Many other people were

seriously injured in the general rush to evacuate the auditorium as quickly as possible.

 

Yvette managed to down two of the gunmen before the major panic made conditions

too hectic to do much. She was, unfortunately, working against the flaws of her stunner,

which was a limited weapon. Instead of simply being able to sweep across an area in a

single beam, like a blaster, a stun-gun shot out discrete charges, then required a

fraction of a second to recharge before it could be fired again. Yvette's reflexes were

faster than her weapon's. The gun slowed her down.

 

The lighting technicians in the hall were just as startled and frightened as the audience.

Instead of turning on the houselights, they simply deserted their posts and fled the

building, leaving the majority of the auditorium in darkness. Pias, coming off the stage

where lights had been shining in his eyes, had trouble adapting to the dim light in the

aisle--but here the panic worked in his favor. So many people had stood up and tried to

leave, jamming the aisle with their bodies, that the gunmen had no clear shot at him.

The brief respite gave Pias's eyes time to adjust, after which he took a more active role

in the proceedings.

 

Pias shrugged off the outer caftan that would only hamper his movements and pushed

his way through the crowd in a relentless determination to get back at some of the men

who'd been shooting at him. The audience's panic made his antagonists stand out all

the more-they were the ones calmly holding their ground, weapons drawn, and

searching for him in the midst of the chaos. They were more visible than he was at the

moment, though his bright, white costume stood out from the people around him, and

Pias was able to get off two good shots with his ministunner before being swept along

with the tide of panicky people.

 

There were still a couple of blasterbats in the hall, but their position was becoming less

tenable by the second. They had lost their primary advantage of surprise and secrecy,

and still had failed to hit their target. Not only was this counselor able to fight back, but

he had help from some very skilled person in the audience, who was picking them off

cleanly. Now that all the spectators had bolted for the exits, the rebels' cover was gone,

as was a clear shot at their target. These men were not ordinary gangsters, with no

concern for human life; they were religious zealots who wanted to rid the galaxy of

opposition to their beliefs. They still had strong moral principles, and firing their blasters

into a crowd of innocent people just to kill one heretic went against their grain. They

decided that the time had come to flee.

 

Almost as though they were of one mind, they left their stations and pushed their way

through the screaming mob, toward the side exits. Yvette first saw them go, and yelled

to Pias, barely making herself heard over the din. Pias saw where she pointed and

nodded back at her. The two SOTE agents elbowed people aside as they pushed

against the current, not toward the side door where the gunmen were going, but toward

the front of the stage.

 

Once they were past the bulk of the mob they were able to move faster. The two

unharmed blasterbats had disappeared out the side door by now, which made speed all

the more imperative. The Bavols raced backstage, where they encountered not a soul,

and out the stage door. There were only a few aircars on Purity, but Yvette and Pias,

pulling rank by using their code names Periwinkle and Peacock, had appropriated one

from the local SOTE office for just such a situation. This one was not as fancy as the

one Jules and Vonnie had with them on Nampur, but it would serve its purpose.

 

The agents hurried inside their vehicle and Pias turned on the antigrav. The aircar shot

straight up into the sky, unmindful of any other air traffic; after all, a small town on Purity

didn't have any other air traffic. From their lofty vantage point, Yvette and Pias could

survey the scene around the meeting hall with almost godlike objectivity.

 

In the darkness below however, they could barely make out the shapes of the audience

milling in confusion outside the auditorium. A pair of headlights could be seen moving at

well over a hundred kilometers an hour down the narrow streets of the village away

from the hall. Since mechanized traffic on Purity was so slight, those lights could only

represent the getaway car being driven by the two escaping gunmen. Yvette pointed,

but Pias had already seen the lights and was flying their car in that direction.

 

"Not too low," Yvette cautioned him. "We don't want them to spot us. After all, we want

them to get away."

 

She smiled as she added, "Or at least we want them to think they did."

 

Chapter 10

Ambush under the Sun

 

The day after they arrived on Slag, Jules and Yvonne were to be shown how the base

searched for its raw materials, and how those resources were mined and transported

back to the plant for processing. George Chactan, their host, begged off from the trip,

claiming he had important work to do in his office; instead, he left them in what he

assured them were the capable hands of his plant manager, Ray Furman.

 

Along with a crew of seven workmen, the d'Alemberts and Furman boarded a small

rocketbus and began the long flight away from the base. The rocketbus was a

boxcarlike craft, operating on a combination of antigravity and rocket propulsion. It was

basic transportation for use under conditions similar to Slag's, with few amenities

available for its passengers. The rocketbuses in use here had been specially adapted

for this environment, with a shiny exterior hull that reflected most of the searing

radiation it received every second from the sun that hung motionless overhead.

 

Although they were completely enclosed in the rocketbus, all of them wore their space

suits fully closed, in case of an accident. The space suits, too, were not the standard

issue. The soles of the boots were triply reinforced and insulated against the rigors of

Slag's heat. The exteriors, like the hull of the rocketbus, were highly reflective, and

special design considerations had gone into ensuring that the cooling systems were as

effective as man knew how to make them. The helmet faceplates were extra thick and

highly tinted, to minimize the glare from the rocks all around.

 

One of the workmen piloted the craft, leaving Jules and Yvonne nothing to do but gaze

out the window at the startling scenery below: Both d'Alemberts had visited airless

worlds before--particularly Jules, who had done significant work on the moon Vesa - but

they had never experienced anything quite like Slag.

 

It was a w ; Id of stark contrasts. Where the sunlight shone on bare rock, the glare was

nearly blinding, even through their dark faceplates. In places where the rocks cast

shadows along the ground, the darkened area was pitch black, without hope of

illumination. High, ragged chains of mountains shot up out of nowhere from barren

plains whose floors were cracked and crisscrossed with crevices. Occasionally they

could see silvery pools lying placidly, like enormous globules of mercury. Temperatures

could range from 350 Celsius in direct sunlight to -240 within the inky shadows.

 

As they passed over the ground, Yvonne spotted some machinery busily working below

them. "What's that?" she asked Furman, pointing out her window.

 

The plant manager leaned over to look. "'that's an automated mining station. Our

geologists found a good surface vein of something there. I'm not precisely sure which

station that is, so I can't say what it's mining. It digs up the ore, loads it into homing

cargo rockets, and sends it to the base. The rockets then return for another load."

 

"Can we stop and see it?"

 

"There's really nothing to see. We're going to a site that has a little more potential, one

we have to check out to see whether it's worth putting an automated station there. That

should give you a lot more to see. We'll be there in just a little bit."

 

As Furman predicted, it was only a few minutes later that the rocketbus began settling

toward the ground near some low hills. Their pilot was so skillful that they landed with

just the gentlest of bumps. "Ride's over," Furman announced. "Time to get to work.

Everybody out."

 

Even though their suits were well insulated, Jules and Yvonne experienced a

psychological effect as they walked out into the bright sunlight, like walking into an

oven. They knew better than to look straight up at the sun, which would have appeared

to be the size of a large dinner platter held at arm's length; nonetheless, the temptation

to peek at it, to view its corona and prominences with their own eyes, was a strong one.

They had to content themselves with a look at the stars near the horizon in the daytime,

spelling out unfamiliar constellations.

 

Furman's voice came over their helmet radios. "Our geologists tell us that the vein we're

looking for is at the base of those hills over there. Why don't we all go over and look?"

 

Jules and Yvonne began walking in the indicated direction, their boots crunching over

the powdery surface. It was Jules who first noticed something wrong, an itch at the back

of his mind that things were not happening as they should. In a group of workers like

this, under hazardous conditions, there was always friendly banter, an undercurrent of

conversation to help take their minds off the rigors they faced. He had seen plenty of it

back at the base, both in the mess hall recreation room and in the factory area. The

men were always joshing one another, making ribald comments, engaging in small talk

about the most insignificant subjects to ward off the boredom that would otherwise set

in on a lonely outpost planet.

 

Now the radio was completely silent. The only sounds he could hear were his own

breath, the slight noises of nine other people breathing, and the sound of the blood

rushing through his ears. He put a hand out to touch his wife's shoulder, cocking his

head at a quizzical angle to ask in an unspoken way whether she thought anything

strange was happening. The act of tilting his head let his eye catch a motion behind

them, and he spun quickly around to see what was going on.

 

Fur-man and the seven workmen were grouped tightly together about ten meters back.

All of them were armed with blasters, as were Jules and Vonnie; it had been considered

prudent, since their partnership had not yet been fully confirmed. The motion Jules had

caught out of the corner of his eye was Furman slowly reaching to his belt to grab the

blaster he carried. Others of the men were reaching for their weapons as well.

 

At first, Furman froze when he saw Jules whirl quickly around to face him. Then after a

second's hesitation, he stopped trying to be secretive. There was no point in hiding his

intentions any further. Pulling his blaster violently out of its holster, he aimed straight at

the DesPlainians. "Fire; men!" he ordered.

 

But that split second's delay had given the d'Alemberts time to start some action of their

own. Seeing her husband's movement, Yvonne had also partially turned to find out

what was happening behind them. Her mind was just as quick at assessing the situation

as Jules's. "Break!" Jules cried, giving her arm a slight push, and-seeing the drawn

blasters in the workmen's hands-she needed no further instructions.

 

Bolts of potent energy leaped from the barrels of the enemy's blasters, but the targets

were no longer where they'd been. The surface gravity on Slag was eighty percent of

Earth normal-enough to make Furman and his cohorts feel livelier and a little faster

than they normally would have, but not nearly fast enough to keep up with a pair of

well-trained DesPlainians.

 

Jules and Yvonne were moving in opposite directions, so quickly that they seemed

scarcely more than a blur to the men aiming at them. Jules was headed for the foothills

a dozen meters away, hoping to find cover behind some rocks. The bulky space suit

slowed him down a bit, even more so than normal because it was not the proper size;

Vonnie and he were shorter and stockier than average, and the suits they'd been given

were an awkward fit. Nevertheless, desperation lent extra speed to his feet, and Jules

fairly flew across the open ground to the safety of the rocks. He was tempted, as the

blaster bolts cleaved through the empty space he'd vacated, to make a long leap and

dive behind the boulders, but he knew that would be a foolhardy maneuver. One tiny

tear in his space suit would finish him just as surely as a dead hit by a blaster beam. He

made it behind the rocks on his feet, then drew his blaster to return fire.

 

Yvonne did not have as easy a time of it. There was no readily available cover in the

direction toward which she broke when the trouble began. There were better than

twenty meters of open ground to cover before she could reach the dark shadows of the

range of hills, but once inside those shadows, even though there was nothing physical

between herself and the gunmen, she would be reasonably safe. On an airless world

like Slag there were no atmospheric particles to diffuse sunlight into places the sun

itself did not reach. When an area was in shadow it was totally black, and she would be

completely invisible to the men standing in sunlight, while she'd be able to see them

perfectly.

 

The problem, though, was living long enough to reach the shadowed area. Even as she

sprinted for safety, Yvonne drew her blaster and fired a shot in the general direction of

the men behind her. She was moving too fast to aim well, but the effort did remind them

that they too were in an exposed position. A couple of them started to look for cover of

their own, now that the ambush had failed to achieve its objective, and that gave

Vonnie a few extra precious seconds.

 

Jules, seeing his wife's plight, was now in a position to help her. From the security of his

hiding place, he fired out at the enemy grouped in the open. They had already started

to break up and take cover after Yvonne's shot, so they were not quite as easy a target,

but J ules was a crack shot. His beam hit one man dead center. There was a hissing

sound through the radio receiver, and then a soul-shattering scream that died out

quickly as the man's air supply rushed out of his suit, through the hole the blaster bolt

had left. A small cloud of vapor surrounded his spacesuit momentarily, then vanished

as the oxygen molecules rapidly dissipated into the vacuum.

 

Jules's beam continued slashing outward, catching a second victim along the back of a

leg. Although the wound would not have been fatal on most worlds, it was the hole

burned in his space suit that killed the man. He died with the same scream of agony,

the same cloud of rapidly dispersing gases as the first.

 

The rest of the men had, by now, managed to take cover, either behind scattered, small

rocks or alongside the rocketbus itself. Vonnie too was now out of sight, hidden most

effectively by the shadow in which she stood.

 

"Why the double cross, Furman?" Jules asked over the suit radio. "If we don't make a

favorable report, our two organizations- will never work together as partners."

 

"It's hard to picture us working as partners with SOTE anyway," Furman replied. "Too

many differences of opinion."

 

Jules's heart sank. If his and Vonnie's cover as SOTE agents had been pierced, it

would be impossible to talk their way out of the situation; all the forces at Chactan's

disposal would be after them. Still, he had to try making one last attempt to continue his

bluff. "SOTE? I don't know what you're talking about. We hate them as much as you

do."

 

We checked that list of 'customers' you said you had. None of them exists anywhere

except in SOTE's files. And not even there until you made the list up."

 

Jules was certainly impressed with this gang's informational sources. He had expected

them to need a week or better to track down that list and come to any conclusions;

instead they seemed to have the data almost instantly. Their intimate knowledge of

what was in SOTE's files, as well as in files elsewhere in the galaxy, bespoke computer

taps that rivaled those of the Empire.

 

He was trying hard to think of something to say that might salvage the situation, but

Yvonne spared him the trouble. From the shadowed darkness, her blaster raked out at

the men in hiding. Her beam caught one who'd been slightly careless, leaving his flank

exposed; she had walked calmly through the darkness of her shadow, assured of

invisibility, and gotten him from an unexpected angle. As her bolt continued to play

across the open area, it hit the rock behind which another man was hiding. The rock

shattered and flew apart, but the man behind it managed to escape uninjured. He fired

quickly back into the shadow at the approximate point where Yvonne's shot had come

from. The SOTE agent had to back away quickly to avoid being hit.

 

The enemy gunmen now unleashed their firepower into the shadowy area. Even though

they couldn't see Yvonne, they knew she was in there somewhere, unprotected by

rocks or other obstacles; if they played their beams throughout the area, they were

bound to hit her. Jules realized that, too. Taking a deliberate risk, he stood up and

sprayed them with fire of his own. The parched ground cracked and blew apart as the

searing ray from his weapon burned across the landscape. The opponents ceased their

shooting into the shadow as they had to cover themselves from the attack from the

other direction, thus giving Yvonne more time to hide herself once again.

 

Jules ducked back down behind his rocks after accomplishing his objective of taking the

fire away from his wife. "It's a stalemate, Furman," he said over the radio. "We can keep

trading shots back and forth all day without much result. We're going to have to come to

some agreement."

 

"We still outnumber you, five to two. You can't keep dodging all our beams forever."

 

"It doesn't have to be forever," Jules pointed out.. "All our oxygen tanks are the same

size. I estimate we've got less than four hours apiece before they have to be changed,

or we'll all die of asphyxiation."

 

"There are more tanks inside the bus. We can get to that and you can't."

 

In response to that, Jules fired a shot at the ground right in front of the bus's hatch.

"Anyone who tries won't live to make it inside. Care to risk it?"

 

There was silence from the other side for more than a minute, as Furman thought over

the possibilities. Jules was comforted by the knowledge that at least the other men

could not be conferring on secret plans; they were so spread out that their only means

of communication was via helmet radio, and the SOTE agents would be able to

overhear everything they said.

 

At last Furman broke the stillness. "Cover me, men," he said. "I'm going to try to make it

anyway." White rays of intense energy poured out of the gunmen's barrels as the space

suited figure of the plant's manager ran across the open ground to the bus.

 

Jules tried to get a shot at him, but he was pinned down by fire from the workmen's

blasters; there was no way he could reach a good shooting position without exposing

himself to those deadly bolts. Yvonne too dared not shoot, lest she give away her

position in the shadow. The DesPlainians could only watch helplessly as Furman

reached the bus's hatch and dived inside safely.

 

"Khorosho, men, I did it, now it's your turn. Once we get in the bus, we can let them

have this place if they like it so much. Or they can try to walk the three hundred

kilometers back to the base."

 

As a group, the four remaining gunmen broke from their hiding places and ran for the

rocketbus. They tried to keep up their blaster fire as they did so, but it was harder for

them to shoot and run at the same time, and they were not nearly as effective as they'd

been before. Realizing that if they did not act now they would never have another

chance, Jules and Yvonne began firing back at the fleeing figures.

 

Two of their shots hit home, and the men died, sprawled out on the baked ground just a

few meters short of their destination. But the other two men succeeded in reaching the

hatch and climbing inside the bus. The instant they were in the door slammed shut,

locking the agents out from their only mode of transportation.

 

Seconds later, the craft gave a slight shudder and began lifting soundlessly into the

darkened sky. Jules and Yvonne, no longer fearing any blaster fire, raced out of their

hiding places toward the spot where the craft had lain. Jules fired upward at the belly of

the receding bus, hoping to hit something on the unshielded underside and disable the

vehicle. Vonnie added her firepower to his, and the twin blaster beams scored the

bottom of the rocketbus.

 

Nothing happened for several seconds, and the rocketbus lifted higher off the ground. It

was at the very limit of effective blaster range when the continued beams from the

d'Alemberts' weapons finally burned through the casing and hit some of the vital

machinery. In this case, it was the antigravity generator that was most severely

affected.

 

There was a flash of sparks and the bus suddenly lurched to one side. As the

pilot-Furman, most likely-realized what had happened, he tried to compensate by firing

the rockets on the other side. In his panic, he fired too long, and the vessel began to roll

over, turning the antigravity field away from the body of the planet. With the field

weakened by the damage to the generator and the ship no longer oriented in the proper

manner, the antigrav drive could not keep the bus aloft. It began plummeting to the

ground with all the grace of a dead condor. The pilot, in those last few seconds, tried

several desperate maneuvers with the jets and the gyros, but to no avail.

 

The rocketbus hit the ground with a jolt the d'Alemberts could feel even through their

thickly padded boots. It was a strange, silent crash with no explosion; the craft just

caved in, as though it had been made of wet cardboard, then lay deathly still on the

bright plain of Slag.

 

Jules and Yvonne ran over to the wreck with guns drawn, just in case there might be

some survivors-but there weren't. Looking at the twisted mass of metal, the agents

knew that no living thing could have lived through a crash that bad. The wreckage was

so badly mangled that there wasn't even any way to get inside without professional

salvage equipment. Furman and his two remaining henchmen were undeniably dead.

 

The d'Alemberts stood silently beside the demolished bus, looking first at it, and then at

each other. Both of them were fully aware how bad their situation was; no words could

have expressed the desperation. They were stranded on the surface of the galaxy's

most hostile planet, three hundred kilometers from any occupied settlement. Their only

means of transportation had been destroyed, and even if they could get back to the

base, they would be shot on sight. If they tried to walk back to. the base across the

blazing terrain, they would have to take into account the fact that they only had enough

oxygen to last them four hours-and not even a DesPlainian could walk that fast!

 

Chapter 11

The Army of the Just

 

Pias and Yvette hovered leisurely above the town, looking down at the darkened

streets. The groundcar driven by the fleeing gunmen was readily identifiable as a pair of

headlights speeding along the road, the only motorized vehicle in the area. Groundcars,

no matter how rapidly they were driven, were no match in a race with an aircar; Pias, in

fact, had to hold down their air speed to a bare minimum to avoid overshooting their

quarry. Other than that, he and his wife had little trouble keeping track of the men who

had just tried to kill them.

 

If the fugitives knew they were being followed, they gave no indication. They traveled in

the straightest possible course, with no attempt to elude possible pursuit. "Amateurs,"

Yvette remarked. "They know how to fire a blaster, but they don't know the first thing

about real undercover work. One of the first things they teach at the academy is how to

follow someone and how to know when you're being followed yourself. I really don't

think we have much to worry about from their sort."

 

"There are a lot of them though, and they're well armed," Pias reminded her. "Their

sheer force of numbers makes them dangerous."

 

"And they do have that robot on their side. That worries me most of all."

 

Below them, the groundcar had left the outskirts of the town and was fleeing now

through open countryside. After half an hour's fast drive, it pulled up in front of a small

farmhouse, kilometers away from its nearest neighbors.

 

"Looks so quiet and innocent down there, doesn't it?" Pias commented.

 

"We'd better move in fast, before they have a chance to report to their headquarters

about their failure at the hall. The more confusion we can sow at HQ, the better off we'll

be."

 

- Obligingly, Pias dropped their vehicle silently to the ground, landing with a gentle

bump, a hundred meters from the farmhouse. The two agents leaped out from either

side of the craft and ran toward the quiet building, stun-guns drawn. At Yvette's

whispered instructions, Pias ran around to the far side of the house, while Yvette took

up a station beside a window on the nearside. She grabbed hold of the top of the

window frame and waited for several seconds, giving her husband time to get into

position. Then, pushing herself away momentarily, she swung back toward the window,

feet first. She dropped into the room amid a crashing of glass and drew her stunner

once again.

 

Her entry had been Pias's signal. On the other side of the house she could hear

another crash as the male half of the team also forced his way into the farmhouse.

Yvette raced toward the center, knowing Pias would be doing the same. They would

catch their enemies somewhere in the middle-not an enviable position to be in when

such a highly trained team of SOTE agents was on the move.

 

The room Yvette found herself in was dark and empty. She crossed it quickly and

opened the door to the central hallway. She was just in time to catch sight of a figure

fleeing from a room on the other side of the house. On sheer reflex Yvette fired and the

man dropped. The SOTE agent continued on into the room her victim had just left.

 

Pias, she found, had everything under control in here. Four bodies-three male, one

female--were lying unconscious on the floor, in undignified poses. They had been taken

completely by surprise at the sudden entrance, and had no chance to reach for their

own weapons before Pias downed them. Yvette's husband grinned as his wife raced

into the room. "Simple target practice," he said. "Not even moving targets really, except

for the one who ran out of the room. I presume you got him."

 

"What about the rest of the house?"

 

The grin wavered on Pias's face. "I haven't checked yet."

 

"Then don't be so cocky," Yvette lectured sternly. "Always check to make sure you've

gotten everybody before you relax." She herself had made that mistake once, on a

spaceliner en route to Vesa, and she still considered herself lucky to have survived it. If

her voice sounded excessively harsh, it was because she loved her husband and did

not want him killed because of some stupid blunder.

 

Pias looked hurt by Yvette's tone, but knew she was right. "Yes, ma'am," he said,

saluting smartly.

 

The two agents separated once more and spread out to search the rest of the house.

Yvette checked a couple of rooms and found them empty. The door to a room at the

back was closed. Yvette hesitated for a moment, then kicked it in and backed off

slightly. It was well that she did, as a blaster beam came sizzling through the air just

centimeters in front of her nose.

 

Recovering her balance, she dived forward through the opened door, rolled, and fired

her stunner in the direction from which the blaster bolts had come. Her opponent had

moved slightly himself, and her shot just missed. The blaster beam came sweeping

through the air in a deadly arc, as she squeezed off a second shot. This time she hit her

mark and the man dropped to the floor-but not before the leading edge of the blaster

beam had touched her left shoulder. Yvette cried out and fell backward, avoiding more

serious injury from the beam. Her shoulder burned like fire itself, even though she knew

intellectually that it was a minor wound.

 

Pias was at her side in an instant. He had finished checking out his side of the house

when he heard the crackling sound that he knew meant trouble. He kept his eyes

scanning for any further ambushers, but there were none. "Evie," he said, kneeling

beside his wife, "are you badly hurt?"

 

"I'll be smooth," she said, trying to give him a smile of confidence. "You should see the

other guy."

 

Pias smiled back at her. "Yeah, it takes more than a blaster to down a tough old

battle-ax like you."

 

"Is the house secure?"

 

"All smooth. I checked, this time."

 

"Bon. Then help me to my feet. We've still got work to do and, pleasant though it is, I

can't afford to just lie here in your arms all night."

 

Yvette winced at the pain as Pias helped her up, but she made no sounds of protest.

The old d'Alembert stoicism was coming to the fore, and she was certainly not going to

let a little flesh wound prevent her from doing her job. She insisted on performing an

equal share of the load as she and Pias hauled their captives all together into the first

room and tied them up. By this time, the number three stuns the people had received

were starting to wear off, and it was time to do some stern questioning.

 

This was Yvette's specialty. She had been trained in every form of the esoteric art of

interrogation: verbal persuasion, psychological pressures, torture (which she preferred

to call "physical inducement"), and drugs. She was a skilled practical psychologist, able

to tell after only a few minutes which methods would be most effective on a given

individual.

 

It was not hard to discover which of the captives was the leader. The others kept

looking at the man named Hoyden whenever Yvette asked them anything, as though

they were checking his reaction. None of them said much, which was about what Yvette

had been expecting.

 

"They're all fanatics," Yvette explained to Pias, rubbing her painful shoulder all the

while. "There's nothing worse than trying to break one of them. You can tear their

bodies apart joint by joint and it only makes them feel more noble. Given plenty of time

and the proper milieu I could work them down, but time is obviously limited. We want to

strike further before Clunard realizes her plans against us have failed. I'll have to resort

to the quick and dirty techniques."

 

Pias knew exactly what she meant: nitrobarb. It was the only drug ever developed

under which any subject was compelled to tell the complete truth, which would have

made it an invaluable tool except for its side effects. Unfortunately, the drug had a fifty

percent mortality rate, and this had led to its being banned throughout the Empire. Mere

possession of it was a capital offense. But that did not stop people on both sides of the

law from using it.

 

Yvette removed the tiny hyposprayer and vial of nitrobarb from the secret

compartments in the heels of her shoes and administered the drug to Hoyden. Within

half an hour he was powerless to resist her questioning, and told her everything she

needed to know about the location and organization of the Army of the Just.

 

The army itself was encamped halfway around the world, on another continent

altogether. The base was in a deep valley, heavily overgrown with vegetation, so that it

could not be spotted from space or from the air. All the recruits lived in a series of stark,

wooden barracks, under conditions that would have made the ancient Spartans seem

profligate. They practiced discipline and various techniques of combat and had at least

two prayer sessions every day. They had a well-stocked arsenal built on one of the

hillsides that surrounded the camp. Although they used all the latest advances in

weaponry, they eschewed technology in general. From the way Hoyden talked, their

fighting seemed to be on the level of the old Viking berserkers.

 

"They hardly seem like much of a threat to the Empire," Pias remarked privately to

Yvette. "It would seem that a few well-trained battalions of the Imperial Marines could

wipe them out in under an hour."

 

"Perhaps," Yvette mused. "But remember, you raised the question of-their sheer

numbers. Then too, they're all heavy-grav natives, far faster and stronger than most of

the marines. ln a face-to-face confrontation, it's true that some strategically placed high-

 

powered blasters could simply sweep across their ranks and decimate them. But

remember,-Lady A and her people will be planning their strategy, and I don't think

they're stupid enough to put this army into an open confrontation. The troops are more

likely to be used in spot fighting, where there aren't many marines at the moment. An

army like this could land at a chosen spot, devastate a city and lift off for their next

destination before the Empire could react. I suspect that's what the Head's worried

about, and I know the thought bothers me."

 

"Khorosho, then what do we do from here? Now that we know the location of the base,

we can simply bomb the army into the ground.'

 

Yvette shook her head. "The simplest solution isn't always the best. If the Clunard robot

doesn't happen to be at the camp when we do the bombing, she'll just go on and start

the whole process over again. We have to remember that she's the real enemy, not the

members of the army. Most of them are honest people who've been misled by a clever

traitor. I hate to kill them without reason. If we can eliminate the cause, the rest of the

movement will wither away of its own accord."

 

"Do we try tackling the army ourselves?" Pias asked. "I admit we're a pretty good team,

but even so I don't like the odds of several thousand against two."

 

"We should reconnoiter at least, look the army over for ourselves. Maybe then some

idea will occur to us. And of course we'll have some backup. We can notify the local

office exactly where the army is located, so that if anything happens to us they won't

have to start from scratch again."

 

"We'll have to do better than that," Pias said. "We'll be sure they have a team standing

by, ready to blast in there and help if we get into any trouble."

 

Yvette smiled. "I always thought you were the brash, confident gambler. Has married

life softened you, made you lose your nerve?"

 

"Not at all," her husband smiled back. "The smart gambler knows that you do everything

possible to increase the odds in your favor before you even start playing the game. A

successful gambler only bets on a sure thing."

 

They notified the local SOTE office of the army's whereabouts and told them that they

planned to conduct a little spying mission. The planetary chief assured them he would

have the local forces standing by; at a prearranged signal the two could broadcast over

their aircar's radio, his people would come in with blasters blazing, if necessary, to

rescue these special agents. He also assured Yvette he would dispatch a team to the

farmhouse to pick up the prisoners and hold them far further questioning.

 

With those details squared away, the Bavols took off on their long flight. If they'd had a

spaceship available to them they could have made the journey in a single suborbital trip

of only an hour or so; but Purity was a large planet and, despite their aircar's speed, it

took them better than fourteen hours to reach their destination on the other side of the

globe. They had to land carefully, a good distance away from the valley where the Army

of the Just was camped, so their vehicle would not be spotted. From that point they

continued on foot up the hillside to a spot overlooking the valley.

 

It was early in the morning, local time, just a few hours before sunrise. There was a light

snow on the ground, barely more than frost. Peering down into the gloom, the agents

had to compliment Clunard on her plans. The camouflage was so perfect that, even

knowing the base was there, they had a hard time spotting it. There was just the tiniest

glimmering of light through the underbrush to indicate where the watch fires were

burning.

 

"We'll have to move in closer," Yvette said, rubbing her shoulder as she'd been doing

frequently since they left the farmhouse. The burning pain had all but disappeared, to

be replaced by a dull, throbbing ache that was almost as bad. "We can't see anything

significant from here."

 

Pias nodded in the darkness and the two moved forward down the hill. The defenses

around this camp were not as stringent as those Yvette's family had encountered

around the terrorist camp on Glasseye, partly because the Army of the Just had done

nothing overtly illegal yet and were not afraid of being hunted. Also, their numbers were

sufficiently strong that they feared no local force. There were no metal detectors here,

just routine sentry patrols that the Bavols easily evaded. Even so, the hill was steep and

slippery with snow, and the climb was difficult, particularly for Yvette with her sore arm.

It was almost sunrise as they reached the floor of the valley.

 

They decided this time to stay together rather than to split up. They could only cover

half as much territory this way, but in the event of trouble they would be able to fight as

a team and thus have a better chance.

 

The valley floor was almost as thickly wooded as the hills surrounding it. There were no

parade fields, no exercise grounds, no large open areas for combat maneuvers:

nothing, in short, that would allow the camp to be spotted from the air. This army was

not being trained according to traditional methods of combat anyway; when they

attacked, it would be with wide-angle blaster fire that did not require accurate aim or

coordinated action. This was to be an army held together by the discipline and

righteousness of its faith, an army of fanatics like a relentless, brutal machine,

smashing all before it that did not agree with its stern principles.

 

The barracks were lined up in two rows down the center of the camp. They were of

unpainted wood with crude, thatched roofs, emphasizing the stark severity of Clunard's

philosophy. Each building was thirty meters long and ten wide, and there must have

been at least fifty of them stretching off to the far side of the valley. According to the

instructions posted on them, the barracks were strictly segregated according to sex.

Pias mused that this was one of the few armies in human history without camp

followers, racy language or drunken, bawdy songs. Pias privately doubted whether such

an army would be able to withstand a long, drawn-out campaign. But, as Yvette had

pointed out, they could do immense damage in the short period of time they would

actually be used.

 

They sneaked up alongside one of the buildings and peered in through a window at the

sleeping figures. Both of them were aghast at the living conditions inside. Bunks were

piled four high to the ceiling, with but the narrowest of aisles between one stack and the

next. There was no room for privacy, no room for comfort of any sort.

 

"I've seen fancier flophouses," Yvette whispered as they backed away into the

underbrush once more. "They must have at least two hundred men crowded in there.

That would mean something like ten thousand in the entire camp."

 

"It probably gets them in the proper mood," Pias observed. "If I had to live under

conditions like that, I know I'd be fighting mad."

 

They checked a few of the other buildings at random and found conditions similar to the

first. The sky was beginning to lighten now, though the sun itself had yet to climb over

the tall hills. Realizing that they had to hurry before they were caught in full daylight, the

two SOTE agents quickened their pace of observation. They gave the armory a quick

check. This was another crude building of the same style as the barracks but

considerably bigger. It was built right against the side of one hill, and three guards were

standing duty out front.

 

There were the beginnings of movement through the camp now as the cooking

personnel prepared the daily breakfast. Pias and Yvette had to move extra carefully to

avoid detection. Soon the entire army would be awake and bustling about on their daily

chores, and the SOTE team's spying would be curtailed. They had to make the most of

their few remaining minutes.

 

"Let's see if we can find the administration building," Yvette suggested. "Anything we

can get there is bound to be some help."

 

They slipped around the perimeter of the compound, two more moving shadows in the

emerging dawn. They passed the mess hall and the prayer hall before finally reaching

the building they were seeking. Like all the other structures in the camp, this was

merely a crude, wooden shack, unpainted except for the stenciled letters identifying its

function.

 

There were two women standing guard out in front of the building, but the back

windows were totally unsecured. After checking one room to make sure it was empty,

Pias pried open the window and the two agents slipped inside to continue their

investigation.

 

They had their stunners drawn, and it was a lucky thing. They had just emerged from

the room they'd entered and were starting down the hallway when a party of three

people emerged from a door at the far end-Clunard's aide Elspeth FitzHugh and two

others. The three were startled at the sight of the intruders and tried to draw their side

arms, but the Bavols, who'd been expecting possible trouble, were faster. Their

stun-guns buzzed and the three at the other end dropped to the floor. The rebels would

be out for two hours from the number four charges.

 

Yvette cursed. "I'd wanted to do this without leaving any trace." Even as she spoke, she

and Pias started moving quickly down the hall to investigate the room from which the

enemy trio had emerged.

 

"Almost impossible in a place as crowded as this," Pias consoled her. "Relax; we'll find

what we can and be away before they have a chance to get organized. Oof! This

FitzHugh's heavier than she looks." He helped Yvette drag the three bodies into an

empty office and closed the door. With their victims out of sight, it would be a while yet

before anyone knew of their presence here.

 

They were in luck. The office from which FitzHugh and the others had come was Tresa

Clunard's personal headquarters. Though as spartan in its decor as the rest of the

camp, there was still an aura of power to it, the feeling that decisions affecting many

lives were made in here all the time. "Jackpot!" Pias whispered. "Let's take all we can

get and sort it out later."

 

They both had a miniature camera tucked into a pocket, and they started snapping

pictures of every document in sight. There were several bookreels with coded labels;

Pias pocketed them in the hope they might contain revealing data about the Army of the

Just. They rifled quickly through desk drawers and pried open locked filing cabinets in

hopes of getting the vital clues they needed.

 

So intent were they about their business that they didn't hear the sounds of

approaching footsteps until it was almost too late. Yvette spun, stun-gun in hand, just

as the doorknob began to turn. Pias was a tiny fraction of a second slower, but the

angle at which he was standing in relation to the door gave him the better shot.

 

The door opened and Tresa Clunard stood there, just as surprised as the SOTE agents

she'd interrupted. Although he knew the effort would be wasted against the robot, Pias's

reaction was instinctive. His finger tightened on the firing button of his stunner, even as

he wished he'd pulled his blaster instead.

 

The buzzing from the stun-gun filled the room, and Tresa Clunard slumped to the floor.

 

Pias and Yvette looked almost as stunned at the results of their actions as their victim

had been. Clunard was a robot, and a stun-gun should not affect her. Was she playing

dead, trying to trick them into tipping their hand? But what would be the point of that?

 

Pias drew his blaster and kept it trained on the still figure lying on the floor while Yvette

approached it slowly. Kneeling down, she felt Clunard's pulse then, on impulse, took a

small pin from a map on the wall and pricked the counselor's finger.

 

A drop of blood oozed through the tiny opening. Tresa Clunard was not the robot they

had fought that night in the dark. But who was?

 

Chapter 12

A Saunter Through Hell

 

The immensity of their predicament beat into Jules's and Yvonne's brains. They were

stranded in an environment as hostile as any the mind of man could comprehend, with

a limited amount of oxygen and no transportation. Short of shooting themselves

immediately, there seemed little they could do to avoid a lingering death on the surface

of this aptly named slag heap.

 

It was Vonnie who broke the silence and broached the question. "What do we do now?"

 

Jules looked around them: at the wreck of the rocketbus, at the bodies strewn over the

landscape. "The first thing," he decided, "is to get ourselves a little more air, which

means more time. I don't think those fellows will be needing their tanks any more."

 

He walked over to one body and inspected the oxygen tanks. Even though the suit had

been burned open by the d'Alemberts' blasters and the gas within it had escaped into

the vacuum of Slag's surface, the tanks were still doing their job, releasing their

contents at a precisely measured rate. Jules turned off the valves and the flow stopped.

 

"We've. got a lot more air than we first thought," Jules said, looking at the five bodies

sprawled on the ground. "I'd estimate another twenty hours total, or ten more apiece in

addition to our present four."

 

"Fourteen hours," Vonnie said slowly. "It's better than four, but it's still not enough to get

us home. The base is three hundred kilometers away."

 

She and Jules were walking briskly among the corpses, turning off the oxygen tanks as

they pondered their situation. "We might wait for them to come to us," Jules suggested.

"Chactan will be listening back at the base for word from his men about how the

ambush went. When he doesn't hear anything, he'll get anxious; he may even send out

another rocketbus to investigate."

 

"Eh bien, and what will they find when they get here? Five dead bodies sprawled out on

the ground and us standing around waiting to be picked up. Try again, mon cher."

 

"We hide the bodies and stand in the shadow so they can't see us."

 

"We can't hide the rocketbus, darling. The crash is all too obvious."

 

Jules turned off the last dead man's tanks as he paused to consider his wife's

argument. "And you think they'd prefer to leave well enough alone rather than land and

try to rescue any possible survivors. That way they could be sure we were dead, even if

it cost them a few men of their own." Jules sighed. "You're probably right. Whatever

Chactan has flowing through his veins, I doubt it's the milk of human kindness. That

leaves us right back at our original problem. There is no way we can walk three hundred

kilometers in only fourteen hours."

 

Yvonne suddenly stiffened and straightened up. "How about twenty kilometers?" There

was an edge of excitement in her voice.

 

"Easily. But what good will that do us?"

 

"Remember as we were flying here, we passed over that automated digging station.

Furman commented that it dug up the ore, put it in homing cargo rockets and sent it

back to the base. I'm not sure exactly how far back that was, but I don't think it could

have been more than twenty kilometers. It was only a couple of minutes before we

landed here." Her voice was positively ecstatic now.

 

Jules caught her enthusiasm. "We can hijack one of those homing rockets and use it to

get us back to the base. We may have just enough time. Of course," he added, trying to

keep his excitement under control, "the instant they spot us there it'll be all-out warfare."

 

"Do I have to come up with everything? I thought of this plan; I'll leave the problem of

the base to you, when we get there." She put a slight emphasis on the word "when." "In

the meantime, shall we go for a little stroll? It's the perfect day for it. The sun is shining,

the sky is clear. There would be birds singing in the trees, if there were any birds, or

trees, or any air for them to sing in." She reached out and took her husband's gloved

hand in her own and gave it a squeeze for luck.

 

They stayed around just long enough to remove the vital air tanks from the dead men's

suits and strap them loosely around their own shoulders for future use. They conferred

for a moment on which direction they had come from and agreed that it must have been

over that range of hills on their right. With those details taken care of, there was no

further need to remain at this spot, and they began their long trek across the barren

landscape.

 

At first, in an effort to make their trip as short as possible, they took long, loping strides,

as only a person from a 3-gee world on a.8-gee world could take. They covered almost

a kilometer across open ground in this manner before they had to stop it. The extra air

tanks they had strapped around them kept banging into their bodies awkwardly, and

their suits' cooling systems, which had to work hard under the harsh glare of Slag's sun,

had been strained near to the limit by their exertions during the shootout. These long,

graceful leaps of theirs brought the suits right to the tolerance point. The agents found

their faceplates fogging up with the moisture of their own breath and sweat, and the

heat inside the suits building to uncomfortable levels. Realizing that they still had a long

distance to cover, they decided it would be wiser to pace themselves at a more

reasonable rate. There would be enough time to reach the digging station even if they

kept themselves to a normal walk.

 

To save their suits from further strain during what they knew would be a long and

arduous ordeal, they did as much walking as they could in the coldness of shadows,

holding hands to avoid losing one another in the pitch darkness of those shaded areas.

Even this solution had its drawbacks, however; Vonnie walked straight into a rock that

had lain unseen in her path and would have gone sprawling had not Jules's strong grip

pulled her back and kept her on her feet.

 

The patches of shadow were comparatively rare, though, on this open plain. For the

most part they walked under the full heat of the blazing sun. They left a small trail of

slowly settling dust in their wake, and their thickly insulated boots crunched over the

dry, crumbly soil. The ground and the rocks reflected the killing heat back at them; it

seemed almost as though they were at the focus of a telescope mirror. Even though the

temperature inside their suits remained within comfortable limits, the DesPlainians

could imagine only too well the temperatures around them.

 

To take their minds off their psychological discomfort, they talked a bit about the case,

analyzing the situation and discussing alternative plans for what to do once they

reached the base. Jules, though, was more concerned with the larger aspects of the

situation.

 

"Chactan can't be the top man in this scheme," he reasoned. "He doesn't have the

authority to establish a base here, not on a planet in an entirely different solar system

from his native world."

 

"Does he even need any authority? This is an unclaimed, undeveloped world. While it

belongs to the Emperor by the simple fact of its being within the borders of the Empire,

there is technically no one who controls it."

 

"There are plenty of technicalities that go by the boards in this galaxy. There is an

inhabited planet in this system, Tregania. If you were the duchess there, you'd keep an

eye on all the worlds in your system, for your own peace of mind if nothing else. With so

many terrorist gangs springing up all of a sudden, a world like Slag could harbor a viper

very near your bosom, n'est-ce pas? Yet there is the base, right out in the open,

apparently unconcerned that it might be spotted by some ducal patrol ship. That strikes

me as strange, to say the least."

 

"You think the Duke of Tregania is in on this conspiracy, then?" Vonnie had met only a

couple of dukes in her life, one of them being her new father-in-law, and their

trustworthiness had been beyond question. Although she knew that was not universally

the case, she was still reluctant to believe that anyone who ranked that highly in the

aristocracy would be willing to-betray it.

 

Detecting the doubts in his wife's tone, Jules hedged. "Not necessarily him, but it would

almost have to be someone high on his staff. Someone has to give the local police

orders not to investigate any goings-on here and be able to cover up the facts if the

base should accidentally be spotted. It could only be a top-ranking police official or a

member of the duke's council. But we can't rule out the duke himself just because of his

title. Remember, Duke Fyodor of Kolokov was a full participant in this conspiracy. And

we netted nearly forty dukes and duchesses in the Banion affair. To some of these

people, having power only increases their appetite for more; if they can't get it from the

Emperor in a legal way, they'll go to someone else who'll promise them a better deal, no

matter how treasonous it is."

 

Two hours of walking brought them to the base of the hills that lay between them and

the digging station. The range of hills extended as far as they could see in either

direction, ruling out any thought of going around. There simply wasn't the time. The hills

looked less than a kilometer high at the tallest point, and the d'Alemberts were in good

physical condition. There appeared to be no insurmountable difficulties involved.

 

On Slag, though, nothing was quite as simple as it seemed. The DesPlainians

discovered that, although the gloves of their spacesuits had been padded to allow them

to handle objects on the surface, the gauntlets could not be padded nearly as thickly as

the soles of the boots; otherwise the fingers, palms and wrists would not be able to

bend well enough to be of any use. Holding onto any rock for more than ten seconds

allowed the rock's heat to soak through the pads and begin burning their hands.

 

The climb was steep, and much more difficult than they'd expected. There was no wind

or rain on Slag to erode the surfaces of the rock, to smooth them down and make them

more gentle for climbers. Jagged escarpments rose above the agents as they

ascended, some offering few handholds. In some instances, the rock projections were

so sharp that they threatened to cut right through the material of the space suits, which

would have had fatal consequences. The d'Alemberts had to learn quickly not to put

their full weight on any grip, and not to linger too long in one place lest they burn their

hands. Several times the route they took upward proved to be impassable, and they

had to work their way down again and look for another path to the top.

 

They were torn between the conflicting desires for both speed and caution. Every

second's worth of oxygen was beyond price, and they dared not waste their time with

needless safeguards. At the same time, they had none of the standard safety

equipment climbers normally carried-ropes, pitons, etc.-and a single slip could send

them tumbling down onto some jagged outcrop of rock that would slice their suits open,

killing them instantly. Physical exertion was not their problem, but they were sweating

profusely nonetheless from sheer tension.

 

They had made it only halfway up the slopes when the air in their present tanks began

running out. They found a firm outcrop on which to rest and changed to new sets of

tanks, leaving the discarded old ones as eternal reminders of the two human beings

who had once passed this way. On the surface of Slag, those containers would remain

until the sun above went nova and swallowed the planet to which it had given birth.

 

They made it to the top of the ridge and took a second's rest to survey the journey

ahead of them. On this side, the hills sloped downward less- steeply, but with ominous

series of deep ridges gouging through the range at irregular intervals. Jules and Yvonne

discussed the best route to take to avoid those chasms.

 

"Look!" Vonnie pointed. Far away, across the plain at the base of another set of hills,

was a small dot. "That's the digging station, I'm sure of it."

 

"It better be," Jules said. His voice was even, but Yvonne could sense the tension

behind it. "We don't have the oxygen to try climbing past that next range of hills as well."

 

Climbing down was in some ways even more hazardous than climbing up, because

they had gravity pulling in the same direction they were moving. If their handholds or

footholds were not secure, they would find themselves falling, with tragic

consequences.

 

At one point, Jules found himself lowering his feet into a silvery puddle. It had looked

deceptively gentle, but the instant his boots entered the liquid there was a burning that

scorched right through the suit material. He cursed and hurriedly pulled himself out,

inspecting the damage ruefully.

 

Both his boots were covered up past the ankles with a bubbling, gray liquid. He yowled

in pain and Vonnie, who was just to his side and slightly above him, turned her attention

his way. "What is it?"

 

"I stepped in a pool of something molten. I'm not sure what, exactly."

 

His wife bent down to give it a closer examination. "Offhand, I'd say it was lead. It's

starting to solidify, too."

 

True enough, the molten lead, now in contact with the comparatively cooler surface of

the space-suit, was rapidly cooling into a solid coat on Jules's boots. The transference

of heat was being conducted through the fabric of the boots to Jules's feet and legs.

Without the suit, his feet would have been burned completely off; with it, he was merely

in an agony comparable to a very bad sunburn.

 

"Will you be able to move on?" Vonnie asked. "I'll have to, won't IT' But Jules's body

belied the courage of his words. He tried to stand on his own and groaned from the

pain.

 

"Here darling, put your arm around my shoulder," his wife said. "We're almost down to

the plain. We'll just have to watch where we step from now on, that's all."

 

Vonnie's estimate of the distance turned out to be overly optimistic; it took them another

couple of hours before they reached the bottom of the range of hills, and by that

time-they had had to shed air tanks once more. They now had just under six hours left

in which to get back to the base and replenish their air supply.

 

Jules gazed out across the horizon at the tiny speck they hoped was the digging

station. "That's a long way for me to limp in a short time," he said wistfully. "Whoever

said I was going to let you limp, lummox?" Yvonne said, stooping over. "Climb on. My

husband rides first class."

 

"Vonnie, I couldn't..."

 

"Nonsense. You never objected to riding me before. Besides; the gravity's so light here

that the two of us and our suits combined weigh less than I do normally back home on

DesPlaines. Nothing to it. Now climb aboard."

 

Jules did as he was told, hooking his arms and legs around her to hang on. The

distribution of the weight was different than what she was used to, but it took only a

small adjustment for Yvonne to compensate. The extra mass caused some inertia

problems getting started that she hadn't expected, but once she was in motion it felt as

though she were strolling through the Bois Mercredi back home with a knapsack on her

back.

 

The molten lead on Jules's boots was hardening now into a tough metallic coating; the

actual heat had stopped as the temperature equalized inside and outside the boots. But

the burning pain in Jules's feet remained. "You won't be able to run quite as fast with

your boots coated with lead," Yvonne remarked lightheartedly as she walked. "I think

you're about to get a new nickname: Leadfoot."

 

Jules's response was unprintable.

 

The ground over which Yvonne walked was cracked and hard, an uneven surface

unwilling to concede anything to the DesPlainian's indomitable courage. The weight of

Jules on her back was not burdensome as she'd said, the total of their combined

weights was less than her own weight on her native world-but the distribution of the

weight was awkward. She had to continually be leaning forward to avoid becoming

unbalanced, producing a strain on her back and shoulders. They could both tell that she

was breathing harder, using up her precious supply of air that much more quickly.

 

It seemed like ages before their destination became anything more than a mere speck

on the horizon. Finally, Jules's sharp eyes could detect a glint there, brighter than the

natural color of the rocks around them-the reflection of brilliant sunlight off the polished

metal surface of the automated digging station. A moment later Vonnie spotted it too,

and her pace quickened in an effort to reach the station before too much more of their

air was gone.

 

Soon they could make out more than just the glint of the metal as the station's shape

became clearer. It was a collection of long, spidery legs on either side of a central axis.

The multitudinous legs kept the machine stable while digging drills and shovels were

constantly working at the ground underneath, loosening the desired material and

loading it onto a conveyor-belt that ran the length of the station's axis. The

conveyor-belt dumped its material into a large bin at the back end of the station; The

bin itself was detachable, and, when full, would empty itself into the drone rocket that

carried the ore back to the base for processing. Sticking up from the back of the digging

station and shading most of the area was an enormous solar umbrella, its surface

completely covered with photocells. The digging station would continue to operate as

long as the sun itself kept shining down. When it ran out of ore beneath its present

location, the legs would simply move it a few dozen meters away and the process would

begin all over again. The series of deep trenches cut into the ground all around the

station testified to the length of time it had been working in this area.

 

It was, of course, the drone rocket in which Jules and Yvonne had the most interest. It

took them longer to reach than they thought at first because they had to climb into and

out of a series of deep trenches previously dug by the machine. Vonnie was sweating

profusely now, and her suit was barely adequate to the task. Already the edges of her

faceplate were fogging over again with the moisture from her perspiration.

 

Finally, they climbed out of the last trench and there before them, fifteen meters away,

was the drone rocket. The fatigue suddenly lifted from Yvonne and she walked toward

the rocket with renewed vigor.

 

It was a simple device, lying horizontally behind the digging station, little more than an

open tube with rocket engines on the back and a guidance system in the nose. It was

about twelve meters long and four in diameter; the cargo hatch stood ajar, waiting for

the station's bin to drop in its loads of ore. Being on Yvonne's shoulders already gave

Jules an advantage for climbing up onto the rocket and looking down into the hold.

 

"It's almost empty," he said, not even bothering to hide the disappointment in his voice.

"We must have just missed a full one taking its load back."

 

"We can't just sit around here and wait for this one to fill up," Vonnie said. "That could

take hours, or even days." What she did not bother to say-they both knew it only too

well-was that they only had less than two hours of air left in their tanks.

 

Jules was not about to give up. Leaning back down from the top of the missile, he

helped Yvonne climb up there beside him. "There's got to be some trip gauge," he

mused aloud, "some automatic register that tells the rocket when it's full. Then the door

will close automatically and the rocket will head back to the base. All we have to do is

find that and convince the ship it's got a fell load."

 

The two agents lowered themselves into the cargo hold and began their exploration of

the interior. The logical place to look for the control was near the top, where the ore

would be piled when the hold was filled. Jules once again climbed atop his wife's

shoulders and they moved slowly around the nearly empty chamber, scanning the walls

intently for an indication of anything that might be the control they sought.

 

After ten minutes their search was successful. Jules located the little mechanism, a

simple device that pressed against the forward bulkhead, closing an electrical

connection. Under normal conditions, the contact would not be made until the hold was

so full of rock that it pushed against the top, but Jules could duplicate that effect by

hand. "Here goes," he said, pushing the contact lever.

 

The result was all they could have hoped for. Above them, the cargo hatch swung

ponderously shut, sealing them in total darkness within the missile. Jules climbed down

from his wife's shoulders and the two of them braced themselves against the missile's

rear wall. A few moments later they felt the walls begin to shake and a sudden pressure

pushing them backward. Their rocket was homeward bound.

 

Chapter 13

Standoff

 

With the discovery that'Tresa Clunard was not the robot they sought, Pias and Yvette

realized that once again they had badly miscalculated in evaluating their enemy. It had

seemed so logical that the rapidly moving, female shape they'd seen in the darkness at

Clunard's headquarters would be Clunard, that they hadn't stopped to analyze further.

Now they would have to think extra fast to make up for their earlier mistake.

 

Yvette raised her head and looked about, as though just noticing something. "Listen,"

she whispered.

 

"I don't hear anything."

 

"That's the problem. Neither do I. The camp was on the verge of waking up when we

came in here, and we've been here quite a while. Reveille should have blown by this

time. Something has changed the camp's routine, and I don't like what that implies.

Let's get out of here, vitement-and don't hesitate to use blasters."

 

As it was, their action was barely in time. They came racing out of the administration

building to find the structure almost completely surrounded by an advancing squadron

of armed guards. The instant the two were spotted, blaster beams began sizzling all

around them. They returned the fire with beams of their own, forcing the attackers to

break for cover. The Bavols did the same.

 

They used the layout of the camp itself to their advantage. There was an overgrowth of

vegetation throughout the area to help camouflage it; that same underbrush helped

hide them as they raced away from the scene of their near-entrapment.

 

All around them, the general alarm was sounding. Now that there was no longer the

chance to take them by surprise, the army's security forces chose to rely on their

superior numbers to capture and/ or kill these intruders. Thousands of fighters, primed

for action ever since coming to this camp, poured out of their barracks like ants

defending their hill. Loudspeakers all over the base blared that a pair of enemy agents

had infiltrated the camp and were to be destroyed on sight.

 

If the Army of the Just had been trained according to standard military discipline, the

Bavols would have been doomed. Fortunately for them, this army had been intended to

fight as individual berserkers rather than as a coordinated unit. They were filled to

overflowing with energy and enthusiasm but had little sense of teamwork. Even without

a clear idea of what they were after, they started firing their blasters at random into the

forest, burning down anything that moved-and occasionally hitting some of their fellow

Puritans as well as starting small fires in the brush around the camp.

 

Pias and Yvette picked their way carefully through the confusion. Although the

conditions for search were less than optimal, the enemy was present in such

overwhelming numbers that there was always the fear a random shot might hit true. "If

we could make it back to our aircar," Pias gasped as he ran alongside Yvette, "we could

send for reinforcements. The Service has its people all ready to jump in and bail us

out."

 

In answer, Yvette merely pointed at the sky. The army had mobilized some of its

mechanized units, with several aircars already aloft and scanning the ground below.

"They'd see us going over the hill," she said. "And they'll spot our car soon enough,

anyhow. We'd never reach it."

 

Pias stopped for a moment, standing still in the midst of confusion. "So what are we

supposed to do then? Run in circles around the bottom of this valley, hoping to tire out

ten thousand soldiers by ourselves?"

 

"At this point, I'm not fussy. I'll listen to any reasonable alternative." Yvette stopped too,

brushing her hair out of her face and looking at her husband with an inquisitive

expression.

 

Pias closed his eyes for a second and took a deep breath. "When in doubt, bluff," he

said. "Get out your stunner again and follow me." Opening his eyes once more, he led

the way in a new direction through the forest. Wondering what he was up to but too out

of breath to ask, Yvette could only follow after him and hope her Gypsy lord had not

snapped a gear in his mental processes.

 

After a moment, his direction became clear. He was moving toward the one area where

there was no shooting-and for good reason. The camp's armory was directly in front of

them, and a few misplaced blaster beams could conceivably blow the entire valley into

a fine powder.

 

They stopped right at the edge of the brush to give the armory a quick scan before

going in. The three guards they had originally seen had been supplemented by two

more, all standing out of stun-gun range from where the Bavols were now hiding. The

agents would have to expose themselves before they could hope to down their

opponents.

 

"We have an old saying on Newforest," Pias explained breathlessly. "Better to bargain

with borrowed goods. We'll be in a better position to negotiate if we hold a power equal

to theirs. If they have more people, we'll have more firepower."

 

This is madness, Yvette thought, but knew that only inspired madness had any chance

of saving them now. "You're a fool, and I love you!" She gave him a quick kiss on the

cheek and raced out into the open, facing the guards. Pias, a little startled by her

bravado, was nonetheless just a step behind her.

 

The guards were understandably nervous that two people should come charging out of

the bushes like lunatics, yelling and screaming and firing their weapons indiscriminately,

with the armory right there. It took an extra second to recognize that it was only

stunners, not blasters, the two were firing, and thus they were posing no immediate

threat to the weapons cache behind them. The guards were armed only with stunners,

too-there had been no sense in tempting fate with weapons of higher potency in such a

dangerous area-and their guns had no greater range than the Bavols'. Both sides had

to wait until the gap between them had narrowed before they could expect to hit

anything.

 

The odds were five against two, but those two were far better trained, better prepared,

and more highly motivated than their opposition. Their lives were at stake, while to the

guards it was merely a job. The SOTS agents moved so quickly that the guards could

not get a clear shot at either of them. The Bavols' accuracy, unlike their opponents',

was perfect.

 

The five guards fell to the ground, and the agents rushed inside the rickety building, just

as a group of pursuers burst from the bushes behind them. A couple of the soldiers

raised their blasters to shoot the fleeing pair, but their squad leader brought them up

short. "Are you crazy?" he shouted. "If you miss, the whole valley will blow up."

 

By that time, Pias and Yvette had made it safely inside the building. They kept their

stunners at.the ready, but apparently there were no more guards inside. "We've got

them off-balance for the moment," Yvette said, as she gulped in deep lungfuls of air.

"What happens now?"

 

"Now we get a few moments' respite while they check with whoever's in charge. In the

meantime, we have to prepare our bluff. Help me attach a deadman's switch to some of

these explosives. We'll have to make them think seriously before attacking our

position."

 

Yvette was the more experienced of the pair at dealing with munitions, so she ended up

doing most of the work. Her wounded left shoulder was bothering her again; during the

brief chase she had managed to ignore the pain, but it was returning now with a

vengeance. She pushed herself to the limit anyway; they had to work quickly before the

army could regroup.

 

The deadman's switch they rigged took the form of a rope over a pulley. Pias held one

end, while the other end was weighted. If he were to be shot, his hand would let go of

the rope, the weight would fall, and several tons of explosives would be ignited within

this confined area. "Now we'll see how good they are at gambling," Pias remarked. "The

odds are just about even."

 

"But what can we gain?"

 

"Time, if nothing else. We'd be dead by now if we hadn't ducked in here. Be thankful for

small favors." They had barely finished rigging the switch when a party of soldiers burst

into the armory, carrying stunners. They hesitated momentarily when they saw the

unusual contraption the intruders had rigged, which gave Pias a chance to speak up.

"I'd advise you to point those things in some other direction," he said. "If I'm knocked

unconscious and let go of this cord, Purity will have an enormous bomb crater to add to

its list of scenic wonders-not that any of us would be around to enjoy it."

 

The soldiers looked back and forth among themselves, wondering whether this crazy

intruder was bluffing, and not daring to take the risk. The man in front, who must have

been the leader of the group, finally spoke. "What do you want?"

 

Pias smiled. For the moment, the game was his. "A broad philosophical question

indeed," he said, "but one that indicates more of a cooperative spirit than you previously

exhibited. For the beginning, let us say I want a bullhorn so that I may communicate

with your high command over a long distance. One of you may go fetch it for me and

the rest of you are to leave in as orderly a manner as you can arrange."

 

The soldiers stood where they were, unsure of exactly what to do. Their orders had

been to come up here and deal with the spies; they had probably even been willing to

die in the attempt. But they could not take the responsibility for blowing up the entire

camp in the process, and they had no way to judge how serious this young man was

about his threat.

 

"I'd suggest," Pias said after a pause, "that you leave at once." He gave the rope a

threatening shake, and the soldiers took the hint. They left quickly.

 

"That worked for now," Yvette said, "but how much longer can we go on bluffing?"

 

"Long enough-I hope. Just pray my arm doesn't get tired."

 

"They can outlast us. All we have in here are weapons and explosives, no food. They

could try starving us out."

 

"They'll bring us food if I tell them I'm about to faint from hunger."

 

Yvette looked at him seriously. "Are you really prepared to go through with the bluff? It

may come down to that."

 

"We have our orders to break up this army somehow. I admit the Head wanted it done

a bit more quietly, but if we can't get out of this with our lives, at least we can go

knowing we've accomplished our mission. I have no intention of dying without good

purpose. You're damn right I'll go through with it." He sighed. "If only we knew who the

robot was..."

 

"It's got to be the assistant, Elspeth FitzHugh," Yvette said. "She's the only other

high-ranking female in this organization."

 

"But we got her with a stunner just a few minutes ago in the administration building, and

she went down with the other two. The robot back in God's Will City wasn't even slowed

down by a stunner."

 

"The circumstances were different. It was completely dark back at the city headquarters

raid. The robot knew we wouldn't be able to identify it, so it didn't mind betraying itself in

an attempt to destroy us. Jules and I fought one in the dark on Ansegria, and it behaved

the same way. But as soon as there was a chance it might be discovered, it ran away. It

knows that its best weapon is to keep its identity totally secret."

 

"Then it was faking today when we shot it," Pias continued the reasoning. "I thought it

felt too heavy when I dragged it into the other room."

 

Yvette nodded. "It knew we'd be able to see it, so it pretended to succumb like the

others and waited until we had left before sounding the alarm. It could see we were

armed with -blasters today, and that one of us could probably have destroyed it before

it could act. It places survival and secrecy above everything else."

 

The female agent shook her head now, as though trying to clear it of a mental fog. "If I

weren't so damned stupid, I should have seen it was FitzHugh rather than Clunard right

away."

 

"What do you mean? And how dare you call the woman I love stupid?"

 

Yvette smiled in spite of herself. "There's a pattern to the way these robots are being

used. They're never the star of the picture, never the one on whom all attention is

focused. That might give them away. Instead, they're someone at the side, someone

few people would notice but who will be there when needed. The conspirators didn't try

to duplicate the princess on Ansegria, just the man they'd hoped to make her husband.

When that didn't work, they had a duplicate of Lady Bloodstar all ready to step in, to be

an important member of the wedding party, but not the one in the spotlight. Now in this

conspiracy they wouldn't pick Clunard, the star attraction who's standing in front of large

crowds every night; instead, they'd go for little, unnoticed Elspeth FitzHugh, who just

happens to be the top assistant and who keeps the entire operation running smoothly.

The robots are content to be out of the limelight, but having the power nonetheless."

 

The discussion was interrupted by the return of one of the soldiers with the bullhorn

Pias had requested. Pias thanked the man, then told him to leave, with the added

stipulation that he tell Sister Elspeth to begin negotiations via bullhorn. The man left

quickly; the farther he was from the armory and the suicidal spies, the more comfortable

he would feel.

 

A few minutes later, the voice of Elspeth FitzHugh boomed up the hill at them.

"Counselor Hanrahan, you and your wife must surrender immediately," she said. "We

have you completely surrounded. There's no way you can escape."

 

If there had been any doubts at all in the Bavols' minds about the robot's identity, they

vanished in that instant. They had given FitzHugh a number four stun; no

flesh-and-blood woman would be capable of talking to them now, so soon after that. If

Elspeth FitzHugh had been a living person, she would still be unconscious for at least

an hour. The fact that she had called Pias by his cover name meant she had to have

recognized him; only a robot would have reflexes fast enough to notice his face before

he'd stunned her.

 

Despite the grimness of their situation, Pias smiled. "We Gypsies are old hands at

bargaining," he told Yvette. "The first rule is, when the other side starts off with a

preposterous offer, you make an equally preposterous counterproposal. You can

always work your way down to reality from there."

 

Putting the bullhorn to his mouth, he bellowed back, "I'm afraid that won't do, Sister

Elspeth. Instead, I suggest you have your entire army file past the door of the armory

and drop their weapons here. Then we can talk."

 

There was a short silence from the bottom of the hill. Then FitzHugh's voice came back,

"You know I can't do that."

 

"And you know we can't accept your kind offer either. Shall we begin talking more

realistically?" After another hesitation, FitzHugh said, "Perhaps we can work out a deal,

Brother Cromwell, something to our mutual interests."

 

"That sounds a little better. What do you have in mind?"

 

"First tell my why you came here-and why you broke into our offices in God's Will City."

 

Another piece of verification! Only the robot could have identified Pias in that darkened

complex. "I came here to find out why you were trying to kill me," Pias said. "Perhaps

it's old fashioned of me, but I was curious."

 

"We weren't trying to kill you."

 

"Your man Hoyden told me otherwise."

 

Another pause. "Well, counselor, you must admit that the philosophy you espouse is

quite contradictory to our own. Some of our people may have gotten hotheaded in the

Lord's cause, but I can assure you they will suffer severe reprimands."

 

"Oh good. I was so worried." .

 

"And now that we've settled that little problem, perhaps you'd care to come out and

discuss the rest of our differences in a civilized manner."

 

"I'd love to," Pias replied. "There's just one more small detail to be taken care of first."

 

"What's that?"

 

"I'd like some assurance that we won't be killed the instant we step outside this

building."

 

"You have my word as a sister in God that no harm will befall you."

 

"Sister my gluteus maximus," Yvette growled. "The only thing she's sister to is a B-1014

computer." "That's very generous of you," Pias said via bullhorn. "But on matters as

delicate as this I'm afraid I can't take the word of a second-in-command. I'll have to hear

the same vow from Sister Tresa." "She's-indisposed, as I'm sure you well know." "That's

smooth, I'm not going anywhere. I can wait. It should only be a couple of hours."

 

Pias put down the bullhorn and, despite further entreaties from FitzHugh, did not

broadcast another word. Instead, he talked to Yvette about the plans he was

developing. "Now that we know Clunard isn't the robot," he said, "we're going to have to

take the chance that she's a relatively honest woman who really believes what she says

and has been led astray by subtle manipulations from FitzHugh."

 

"This may be the biggest gamble of your life," Yvette said. "What happens if you're

wrong." Pias shrugged. "Then everybody loses."

 

Chapter 14

The Comet Goes to Work

 

Jules and Yvonne had no way to look out of their cargo rocket and see how fast they

were moving; the craft had not been intended for passengers and was not provided with

windows. They did know, however, that automated cargo rockets were not renowned for

their speed. The rocketbus had made the journey from the base in just under an hour; if

the cargo ship took much longer than that getting back, they'd have very little air left to

do anything once they got there.

 

Jules tried to look on the bright side. "The rocket's much lighter than it normally is,

because all it's carrying is us. That should help it move faster."

 

With their fate now totally out of their hands, they sat down in the darkness against the

rear wall of the chamber and did their best to conserve their air. They spoke little,

resting instead, and trying to'make their breaths as shallow as possible. They knew

once they arrived at the base they would be involved in more action and would use up

oxygen at a prodigious rate. It had to be saved until then.

 

Jules's feet and ankles were throbbing from where he'd stepped in the molten lead. He

experimented a little bit and found that he could stand now if he leaned against

something like a wall for support; but moving at any speed faster than a hobble was

impossible. He chafed at the idea of being so helpless, but his wife reminded him that

he still had the use of his hands and his mind, potent weapons indeed.

 

The ride dragged on for agonizing minutes until finally, after an hour, the nose dropped

slightly-an indication that their craft was now angling downward toward the base. The

DesPlainians checked their air gauges; twenty minutes worth of oxygen was left. With

luck, that should just about last them through what they needed to do.

 

The ship landed with a solid bump, then rolled so that the cargo door was beneath their

feet. The d'Alemberts braced themselves for the shock they knew was coming; without

warning, the hatch suddenly sprang open, dropping them-slowly, under Slag's light

gravity-almost five meters onto the ore stockpile. After a minute, the hatch door closed

again and the ship took off, returning to the digging station for another load of ore.

 

Below them the pile of ore was shifting as it sifted through an opening in the bottom that

led almost certainly to a furnace. Overhead, through the open top of the bin in which

they were standing, the stars gleamed down out of a jet black sky.

 

"I think I'd prefer going out that way," Jules said, pointing upward. There was a ladder

along the side wall for inspection parties to get in and out of the bin. Jules pulled

himself up the rungs with just the power of his arms, using his legs only to steady

himself. Yvonne was right behind him. In a couple of minutes the two SOTE agents

were at the rim of the tank, looking down at the base spread out below them.

 

After scanning the situation for several moments, Jules pointed. "There," he said. "We'll

enter through that auxiliary airlock, away from the main occupied section, but we won't

take off our suits immediately; I want to be prepared in case they try something

desperate, like blowing out a section of the wall to let the air out. If our luck holds

there-may be some spare tanks at that lock; if not, we work our way around the

perimeter of the base to the passenger tube connected to the Comet. Once were safely

in there, I don't think they'll be able to hurt us."

 

They climbed down the ladder on the outside of the ore bin without anyone spotting

them and, as before, Vonnie loaded her husband on her shoulders. She took off at an

easy jog across forty meters of open ground before reaching the designated hatch. The

air lock was unguarded-after all, there was really no one on Slag against whom to guard

it-and they slipped inside without anyone being the wiser. Once inside, they had to

move more slowly; the corridors were too low for Vonnie to carry Jules on her back, and

he had to hold onto the wall and proceed one slow, painful step at a time.

 

There were no spare oxygen tanks inside the auxiliary airlock, meaning that they had

fourteen minutes to inch their way around the periphery and slip into their own ship,

hopefully undetected. Vonnie led the way, blaster drawn, while Jules walked gingerly

behind her on his injured feet.

 

They had traveled three quarters of the way around to their ship when they encountered

a party of workmen coming at them from a cross corridor. The men were curious about

these space-suited figures inside the base, but not immediately hostile. They waved at

the pair, and the DesPlainians waved back-but then the workmen noticed the blaster in

Vonnie's hand. One of them whispered something to the others, and they suddenly

turned and ran back the way they'd come. Vonnie fired a shot and hit one of them in the

back of the leg, but the others rounded a

 

corner and were out of sight before she could do anything further.

 

"The alarm will be raised any second now," she said. "This is no time for dignity."

 

Picking Jules up bodily, she carried him in her arms like a groom about to carry his new

bride across a threshold. She ran at top speed down the empty corridor toward the

main reception lock, aware of the precious seconds ticking away. They reached the

main lock at almost the same instant as an armed party of their opponents. Vonnie's

hands were full, but she trusted Jules to use his blaster effectively enough for the both

of them.

 

Jules did not bother firing at the enemy. Instead, he fired his weapon at the large, glass

viewing ports that looked out onto the landing field. The glass was reinforced and built

to withstand rigorous conditions, but it couldn't hold up to a Mark 29 Service blaster's

deadly bolts. As it shattered outward, a hurricane hit the reception area.

 

The force of the air whooshing out of the room nearly pulled Vonnie off her feet, but she

managed to brace herself against one wall and hang on until the draft had died down.

The enemy forces had not been as lucky. None of them had had time to don their

space-suits, and they were unprepared for vacuum conditions. They were ripped off

their feet against the forward bulkhead and began gasping for air that wasn't there.

Jules and Yvonne instinctively turned their heads away; they had seen many people die

before, but death by explosive decompression was never a pretty sight.

 

"Have we blown out the whole base?" Vonnie wondered.

 

"I don't think so. If this is constructed according to standard practice, each doorway is

built to shut airtight, in case of a blowout. This room will be sealed off from the rest of

the base until the blowout can be repaired and internal pressure restored. It'll give us a

little time; let's. not waste it."

 

Yvonne steadied herself and opened the door to the passenger tube that led to their

own ship. They made it inside, sealed off the tube, and turned on the Comet's internal

air supply. When the lights told them the air around them was breathable, they cracked

open their suits' helmets and breathed the pure, sweet air of the ship-a welcome

change after the sweaty environment inside their suits. According to the gauges on their

air tanks, they had made it with three minutes to spare.

 

They had little chance to luxuriate in the fresh oxygen, however. "We'd better get up to

the control room, fast," Jules said. "We've still got plenty of work to do."

 

Without stopping to remove the rest of his suit, Jules moved over to the ladder and

once again began pulling himself up by his arms. He and Yvonne were dead tired after

their ordeal on Slag's surface, and both could easily have slept straight through for a

week. But there was to be no rest for them yet.

 

Checking the outside screens, Jules scanned the activity going on around them. The

people at the base had reacted far faster to this situation than he had expected;

apparently they had practiced invasion drills, in case their factory was discovered by

imperial forces, and they knew just what they should be doing. Space-suited figures

were running about the field outside, manning the big artillery pieces that had been

hidden around the base's perimeter.

 

Jules realized that, if he was not careful, the Comet would be knocked out of the fight

while still sitting on the ground-an ignominious defeat for so proud a vessel. Flipping on

the series of switches to activate the pile and let the ship warm up, he said, "We're

going to have to get out of here. This fight's far from over."

 

Across the field another ship was taking off: Chactan's ship. "We can't let him get

away," Vonnie said. "He has to lead us to his superior."

 

"I'll do the best I can," Jules answered. "The Comet's a great ship, but she can't take off

stone-cold." The ship rocked from a near miss as one of the big energy guns was

swung in its direction. The Comet had plenty of offense of its own, but as long as they

were sitting here on the ground, Jules couldn't use it. They were inside the weapons'

minimum range, and they themselves would be caught in the explosion if they tried to

fire back at their attackers. In this particular instance, they suffered from an

embarrassment of riches. "I never thought too much firepower would be a handicap,"

Jules muttered.

 

The board suddenly gave him a green, and Jules did not hesitate. Slapping at his

switches, he goosed the ship to maximum power and the Copper Comet leaped off the

surface of Slag at the devastating acceleration of fifteen gees, crushing its two

passengers into the acceleration couches. All around them, more energy bolts

exploded, some perilously near. But none of the enemy gunners had expected the

Comet to rise quite that quickly, and their aim was affected by their miscalculations.

 

After several seconds of the intense acceleration, Jules reached out a heavy hand to

shut the switch off, and the pair suddenly found themselves in free fall. Had Slag been

a world with an atmosphere, Jules would have waited longer to clear it; the Comet had

not been designed with intricate atmospheric maneuvering in mind. It was a space

fighter, as out of place in open air as a fish.

 

But the vacuum above Slag gave Jules the perfect opportunity to slue the ship around

and point the weapons downward at the base below. As he gripped the controls he tried

not to think of the two thousand individual lives down there; they were all just the

enemy, and they were more than willing to do the same to him.

 

The Comet's guns spoke, with all the authority SOTE had built into them. For a

moment, the base down on the surface was enveloped in a red glow, an almost

peaceful sight in contrast to the hell the d'Alemberts knew it truly was. If the base had

been of a more ordinary nature, it simply would have blown apart under the ferocious

energies focused on it; but being a manufacturing plant for highly explosive materials,

the d'Alemberts' blast triggered a chain reaction within the base itself. With the silent

suddenness of events in a vacuum, the entire base vaporized in a fireball of blinding

intensity. Jules and Yvonne could not keep their eyes on the screen, and when the glow

had died, all that was left of the base was yet another crater on the face of Slag.

 

Jules sighed and turned the ship outward once more. "Now, let's go after Chactan," he

said grimly. The other man's ship had only a couple minutes head start and could not

compare in speed to the Copper Comet. Had Jules opened his ship to the limit, he

could easily have overtaken the fugitive and either blown his vessel apart or forced him

to surrender. But that was not his intent now. He had theorized, while traveling across

the surface of Slag, that Chactan had some high-level help on Tregania itself; now that

the man was fleeing for his life, he would certainly head for the nearest and strongest

place of refuge. And the d'Alemberts were only too willing to let him get there. That

would save them a lot of time and investigative effort.

 

Jules therefore was careful to gauge his speed exactly against that of his quarry,

allowing his ship to close the gap only at an excruciatingly slow pace. As they'd figured,

Chactan's ship did not dive into subspace the instant it was beyond the safety limit of

Slag's gravitational field, but instead headed straight for the inhabited planet of this

system, Tregania, which was presently one-quarter of the way around the sun from

Slag and millions of kilometers further out. The ship's computer informed them that, at

present speeds, it would take them better than twelve hours to reach the other world.

That was time which the d'Alemberts could put to good use. Jules radioed ahead on the

standard SOTE frequency to the Service headquarters on Tregania. His code name,

Wombat, got him quickly through to the local chief, a man named Lee. Jules explained

the situation succinctly and Lee nodded.

 

"My entire office is at your disposal," Lee said when Jules had finished, "but I'm afraid

that's not as much as either of us would like. Tregania's always been a quiet place, and

the Service only has a few ships stationed here. I'll put through a priority call to the

navy, but it'll take them at least a day, possibly longer, to arrive."

 

Jules nodded grimly, then began giving his instructions. Lee was to put all the ships he

had aloft, but keep them as inconspicuous as possible. He gave Lee the course

coordinates of Chactan's ship but warned that under no circumstances was Chactan to

be interfered with until he reached his destination. Once the enemy had landed and

joined with his allies, there would be a no-holds-barred attack. The penalty for treason,

after all, was death. It was hoped though, that they could take the leaders alive to

question them about possible connections to any conspiracies higher up.

 

That accomplished, Jules and Yvonne could take care of more pressing bodily needs.

Both were famished and both were fatigued; in addition, Jules's feet were still throbbing

from the burns they'd received. The agents were finally able to doff their space-suits-

 

Jules with some difficulty because of the solidified lead coating his boots-and Vonnie

rubbed some first-aid cream on Jules's blistering feet before floating back to the ship's

compact galley, to fix them a quick, nourishing snack. When they had both eaten, Jules

insisted that Vonnie sleep for the first five-hour shift; she had done most of the work

carrying him across the plains of Slag, and she was the most tired. His wife gave him

little argument. When the shift was over, Jules woke her and she stood watch over the

instruments while Jules had some rest of his own. Vonnie was not as good a pilot as

her husband; her primary duty was to make sure Chactan kept to his previous course

without_ trying any new tricks. If something out of the ordinary were to occur, she was

to wake Jules instantly.

 

Chactan's only concern though, seemed to be escaping from his pursuers, and he

strove for that goal with single-minded determination. When Vonnie woke Jules, half an

hour out from Tregania, Chactan's ship was still on the same, desperate trajectory, and

the Comet was only marginally closer.

 

"Time to really turn the screws," Jules said, as he strapped himself down once again in

front of the control console. He and Yvonne were now feeling rested from their ordeal

on Slag and were actually looking forward to the upcoming battle with a great deal of

relish. They had spent weeks on this case so far and were eager for its conclusion.

 

At his deft command, the Comet suddenly leaped ahead toward the ship it was chasing.

It must have come as a shock to the occupants of the other craft to see the ship that

had been just matching their speed for so many hours start to close the gap with ease.

Their vessel was already traveling at its top speed; there was no way they could

outdistance their pursuer now.

 

"Do you think it would frighten them a little more if I fired at them?" Jules wondered

aloud.

 

"I think we can save our guns for better effect," Vonnie replied. "I traveled from Nampur

to Slag on that ship, and I took the chance to look around. It's just a passenger ship, no

armament of any kind except a few handguns. If we shot at them they might just stop

dead, and we'd lose the connection. We want to tickle them a little, not scare them to

death."

 

"Khorosho," Jules agreed. "No shooting, we just push them a little harder."

 

But as the Comet gained on its prey it soon became clear that Jules was not the only

person who had radioed ahead to Tregania for help. A fleet of seven ships rose from

the planet, racing upward toward a meeting with Chactan's craft. "I told Lee to remain

inconspicuous," Jules muttered. "Those can't be his ships."

 

Indeed they weren't. As the fleet drew nearer to the pair of ships coming from Slag, it

was obvious they were going to let the first go by them. Their target was the Comet.

And there could be little doubt that these ships were armed. "Better 'start evading,"

Vonnie said. But even as she opened her mouth, Jules was playing with his controls,

maneuvering their ship into position for a fight against vastly greater odds. Yvonne,

meanwhile, turned for the radio and started calling Lee, to tell him that the time for

subtlety had passed.

 

A stream of tiny blips on the screens showed a pattern of space torpedoes laid down in

their path by the seven oncoming cruisers. Jules turned on the rapid-fire autoblasters.

The sensors locked onto the targets, and a series of small, staccato bursts of energy

blazed forth from positions around the Comet's hull. Directly ahead a series of silent

explosions meant that the autoblasters had done their job, clearing a path through the

torpedo field. Jules's concentration was entirely on the space ahead as he steered the

vessel through the lane it had opened up.

 

Beside him, Vonnie had finished talking to Lee and was busy at her own task, manning

the Comet's not inconsiderable offensive array. Those seven enemy cruisers might

have them outnumbered, but they'd learn that dealing with d'Alemberts meant they

were in for a fight.

 

Her job as gunner was complicated by the fact that Jules was twisting the ship around

constantly to avoid the enemy's weapons. Yvette, having worked with her brother for

years, would have formed an almost telepathic rapport with him, knowing instinctively

which way he would go, and being able to compensate for it in her aim. Yvonne, having

teamed with Jules for a shorter time, was less sure what he would do under any given

circumstance, and her aim suffered slightly because of it. Even so, her shots were

landing close enough to the enemy ships to force them to take some evasive action of

their own, easing a little of the pressure on Jules.

 

Then suddenly the attack ceased completely as five SOTE fighters zoomed into view

from out of nowhere, and the enemy cruisers changed course to face this new threat.

One of them swung directly into Vonnie's cross hairs, and she blasted it to shards of

glowing debris with evident satisfaction.

 

"Forget them," Jules told his wife. "Chactan's getting away, and he's the one we really

want. Lee can handle these mokoes on his own."

 

Ignoring the fighting then, the Copper Comet flashed through the battle zone and

followed doggedly after the quarry it had already chased a quarter of the way around

this solar system. Chactan's ship dipped into the atmosphere and began the complex

downward spiral of a landing pattern. Jules was tracking it every second, and laid the

coordinates of the orbit into the ship's computer to find out where the other vessel was

going to set down. The computer translated the numbers into a location on the

planetary grid and, since the spot was on the hemisphere of Tregania facing the ship, it

locked its telescopic cameras on the site.

 

The picture that appeared on the central screen made both agents gasp. It was a

fortress whose thick walls must have encompassed fifty hectares. The main building

was a group of four connected towers, massive stone cylinders rising twenty stories into

the air. Beside the grouping was a private spaceport field, from which, no doubt, the

seven attack ships had been launched, and to which Chactan was now speeding.

Scattered around the grounds were ominous lumps; a casual observer might have

thought they were intended as unusual art forms or whimsies, but to Jules's trained eye

they looked suspiciously like heavy gun emplacements.

 

"Someone was expecting a fight when he designed that place," Jules said.

 

"Your assumption was right," Vonnie acknowledged. "It's the duke himself. No one of

lesser importance could command a fort that imposing."

 

"We'll have to shift tactics. The Comet isn't really built for atmospheric maneuvering,

and if we try to land where Chactan's going we'll be blown to a powder so thin they

couldn't hold us in a sieve."

 

As he spoke, Jules was taking the big ship down to the upper reaches of Tregania's

atmosphere and setting it on autopilot to maintain an orbit at that altitude. He and

Yvonne then went off to the chamber where their aircar, the Mark 41 Service Special,

was snugged in its special niche. They turned on the internal systems and locked the

protective bubble around the car, making it airtight. Then, at a command from the car's

control console, the Comet opened the bay hatch and the tiny car pushed itself away

from the ship, downward toward the surface of Tregania.

 

The fall was in reality a carefully controlled glide, with Jules monitoring their progress

every meter of the way. He was aiming to bring the car down near the fortress, just a

short distance outside the walls. "They don't know about this car yet," he explained to V

onnie, "but if we come down right on top of them, they'll blow us out of the sky just for

target practice. Those big guns are aimed to defend against attack from the sky. If we

come in low, their guns will be useless."

 

They watched on their screens as Chactan's ship set down on the spacefield, and its

occupants ran for cover inside the fortress towers. It took only another five minutes

before they themselves were down, a kilometer north of the wall. Jules kept them

hovering, just a few meters above ground level, while he and Vonnie checked to see

that all their armaments were in good working order. When the final light on the board

flashed a welcome green, Jules gave his wife a brief nod. "Hang onto your hair," he

said. "We're going in."

 

The little car accelerated straight ahead at a rate of nearly five gees. The wall came up

to meet them at a breathtaking rate, but the touch of a button from Yvonne caused a

high-intensity beam to lash out and demolish a section of the barrier in front of them.

They zipped through the wall and into the grounds beyond.

 

As they passed the towers the first time, Vonnie gave them several strong bolts from

her heavy-duty multiblasters. The towers shook, but remained standing; the stonework

on the outside must have been ornamental, concealing some sturdy shielding under-

 

neath. The car raced past before she had time for more than one salvo, but there was

no hurry. There were plenty of other targets deserving her attentions, and the towers

would still be there the next time they came around in that direction.

 

Jules had memorized the layout of the grounds, as he'd studied it from the air, and had

planned his route with clinical precision. He headed for the first of the gun

emplacements at a speed so great that the defenders could not keep up with him. Even

if the gun had been built to deal with a menace charging at it from ground level, its

operators still would have been reluctant to fire for fear of missing the car and hitting the

towers instead. The fortress was armed with an elephant gun and was trying to stop a

wasp.

 

The d'Alemberts displayed no reluctance whatsoever at showing their sting. Jules was

taking their vehicle on a.wide swing around the emplacement, giving Vonnie plenty of

time to perfect her marksmanship. He needn't have bothered; one shot was all his wife

needed. I n a matter of seconds the big gun outside was just a towering column of

flames and black smoke, and the pesky aircar was on its way to the second target.

 

The fort's defenders tried gamely to stop the invaders from SOTE, but their attempts fell

pitifully short. Most of the stronghold's defense had been centered around the big

weapons, capable of stopping any attack from space. The defenders scattered about

the grounds had only hand-held blasters, not at all sufficient for penetrating the shields

that surrounded the d'Alembert vehicle.

 

Jules ignored the ground fire and concentrated exclusively on knocking out the big

weapons. One by one they fell, as Vonnie maintained a perfect shooting record. Jules

would chide her later that they had all been easy, sitting targets, but at the time they

were only concerned that the job be done right. As the last of the emplacements was

destroyed, Jules lifted the aircar off the ground and took it in a leisurely flight around the

four, grouped towers that constituted the main building.

 

The defenders tried some last-ditch shooting but the SOTE vehicle's shields had been

designed to withstand far worse. As Jules made lazy circles around the towers, like a

hawk, Vonnie dropped a series of bombs that shook the ground beneath them and

caused part of one tower to crumble away.

 

The radio crackled to life over the standard!SOTE frequency. "Wombat, this is Lee.

We've taken care of the problem upstairs and we're coming down with three ships-if

you need them."

 

At the same time, Vonnie pointed to the car's screens. Someone was raising a white

flag atop one of the towers. The DesPlainians slumped back in their chairs with evident

relief.

 

They hovered over the scene in their car, watching casually as Lee's ships landed and

took charge. The fortress's defenders were led out at gunpoint, and would all be taken

to local headquarters for intensive questioning.

 

Jules would also be visiting the local headquarters, to have a Service doctor check out

his burned feet and start them on the road to recovery. But the d'Alemberts' active role

was about at an end. After giving Lee a briefing on what questions to ask, they could at

last return home to DesPlaines.

 

Chapter 15

The Duel on the Hill

 

Back on Purity, the situation remained tense. Despite repeated pleas from FitzHugh,

the Bavols refused to speak further until Tresa Clunard could be roused from the stun

charge they had given her.

 

Most of the time Pias took on the dull job of holding the cord of the deadman's switch.

Yvette rested, but with gun at the ready. Her left shoulder was still aching, but she bore

up well, and only by looking closely could Pias tell the pain she was in.

 

During one brief shift while Yvette relieved him at the cord, Pias looked over the armory

and catalogued its contents. Not only were there plenty of hand weapons, but there

were also large heavy-duty models on their mobile tripods. There were cases of

explosives and box after box of the acid-mix fuses needed to set them off. There were

rows and rows of heavy body armor, for use in space battles. Pias took thoughtful note

of all these things, then returned to his post and relieved Yvette of the cord once more.

 

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, a new voice came booming up the hill at

them. "This is Tresa Clunard. I understand you want to talk to me." Pias took up the

bullhorn again. "Yes indeed. You're going to find this a little difficult to believe, Sister

Tresa, but we mean you no personal harm." "You do have an odd way of demonstrating

such intentions."

 

"We could have killed you back in your office if we'd wished. We'd hoped to avoid

senseless killing. We still do, as a matter of fact. We are here to warn you of a traitor in

your midst."

 

"Why should you do that for me?"

 

"Sister Tresa; we have both worked as servants of God. I grant you that our theological

stances have been far apart-some might even say diametrically opposed-but I'm sure

even you will have to admit that at no time did I ever counsel anyone to go against

God's will. We have different interpretations of that will, but can you at least admit that I

am sincerely on the side of God?"

 

"You seem to be." Clunard was still defensive. "Then I say to you, as someone who

loves God as dearly as you do, that there is, in your organization, a traitor not only to

you, but to me, to Purity, and to all of mankind. This person has joined your movement

only to subvert it, to twist its goals around to her own secular purposes. She would use

the force that you have built up, not for fighting God's battle, but for fighting the battles

of her treasonous masters. She is using you shamelessly for unholy ends, and she

herself is a slave to the very machines you decry so loudly."

 

He paused for breath, and Yvette took the opportunity to ask him, "Aren't you going to

say she is a machine?"

 

"Never tell an audience more than they're prepared to believe," Pias said in an aside to

his wife. "Clunard will have a hard enough time believing FitzHugh's a traitor; if I said

she was a robot as well, my entire story would be discredited."

 

His remarks to Yvette made the pause longer than he had intended, and Clunard took

the opportunity to interject a question of her own. "Whom do you accuse in my army?"

 

Pias took a deep breath. "I accuse Elspeth FitzHugh of being a traitor to you, to the

Empire, and to God Himself."

 

Down the hill there was a brief moment of stunned silence. "There is no one in the

universe more loyal to me than Sister Elspeth," Clunard said at last.

 

"Or no one who pretends to be," Pias countered. "What evidence can you offer of her

treason?"

 

"I have no physical evidence. I have investigated the matter thoroughly, however, and

all the evidence is inescapable."

 

"Your theology is faulty, why should I expect that your deductive powers are any

better?"

 

"Because we are at an impasse, Sister Tresa. You were wondering how it could be

broken, and I've just told you. Deliver Elspeth FitzHugh to us and we will leave quietly.

We want nothing more from you."

 

"I'd sooner give up my right arm," Clunard shot back. Pias did not respond, and silence

settled over the camp for several minutes. "Brother Cromwell?" Clunard called again.

 

"Yes?"

 

"Sister Elspeth has made a suggestion. Personally, I find your entire argument

ludicrous and without foundation, but she insists on treating it seriously. Her honor has

been besmirched, and she seeks the opportunity to right it again in the eyes of God and

of men."

 

"How does she propose to do that?"

 

"A duel. You and she will battle, alone and unarmed, in front of all of us. If you win, you

will have what you say you want, and you will leave us in peace. If she wins, you will no

longer be a threat to us and we will trust your wife to surrender as well."

 

"I thought trial by combat went out with the Inquisition," Pias muttered under his breath.

 

As though reading his thoughts, Clunard continued, "I've told Sister Elspeth that I didn't

want to risk her in such a foolish endeavor, but such is her faith that she knows God will

give her the strength she needs, just as He gives me the strength to bend the metal

rods." "Khorosho, I accept," Pias said.

 

Yvette looked at him wide-eyed. "Are you crazy? FitzHugh would never have suggested

that if she thought there were a chance she could lose. She's a robot,

remember-stronger, faster, and with better reflexes. In unarmed combat you don't stand

a chance against her."

 

"She can't use her full strength or her full speed against me," Pias replied calmly. "Even

these people's belief in miracles can only extend so far. If she looks too superhuman

they may begin to wonder. And remember how paranoid these robots are about giving

themselves away."

 

"She doesn't have to go full-out. All she has to do is be a split second faster, a tiny bit

stronger. One sharp blow to the neck can kill without appearing to be hocus-pocus."

 

Pias flashed her a confident smile. "We Gypsies have a few fighting tricks of our own.

I'll be careful." A few moments later, Pias appeared at the door to the arsenal looking

down on the assembled army-and at Clunard and FitzHugh. "I'm alone and unarmed,"

he called, spreading his arms to show that he carried no weapons. "My wife is back

inside there, still holding the cord. If there is any treachery against me, she'll drop it

instantly."

 

"What about you?" FitzHugh asked. "Will you stand by the agreement if you lose?"

 

"I swear by almighty God that I will," Pias said. "And my wife has assured me that she

will too. But if you break your word and use any artificial weapons.

 

then the deal is off and I'll defend myself as I choose." "Agreed," Clunard said before

FitzHugh could advise her differently.

 

The robot stepped forward. Her back was to Clunard and to the army, but Pias could

detect the hint of a smile at the edges of her lips. She knew that on this three-gravity

planet there was no one stronger or faster than she was. And if her opponent should

pull a weapon, she could still react fast enough to dodge it; plus, it would brand him a

liar and a cheat.

 

Pias stood his ground in a slight crouch. The snow underfoot had been trampled and

was becoming a bit slushy. For the moment, he held a slight advantage; FitzHugh had

to come uphill to approach him. But that advantage would not last long; if his plan was

to succeed, he would have to intentionally give up the edge, turn her around so that she

was facing the troops and Tresa Clunard down below.

 

FitzHugh approached with the easy confidence of a sure winner, while Pias held his

body tense and ready to spring. Yvette had been right about one thing: he dared not let

the robot get in so much as a single, solid blow, or he was doomed. Even if she didn't

kill him outright, one quick strike would disable him enough to let her finish at her

leisure. He had to win without touching her; and despite his confidence in front of

Yvette, there were some doubts in the back of his mind that he could manage it.

 

She came within two meters of him and stopped. For more than a minute the two

antagonists faced one another, neither moving. I 'don't have to make the first move.

Pias told himself. Let her do all the work.

 

Tiring at last of the deadlock, FitzHugh feinted with her left shoulder and started toward

Pias on her right foot. The SOTE agent held his ground as long as possible to make

sure there were no double-feints, then, at the last instant, danced out of the way of the

charge. The robot raced past, reaching out as she went by and just missing with a grab

for Pias's shirt. The SOTE agent thought the other's momentum would carry her several

meters past him, but she was able to spin around in the snow faster than he expected

and make another lunge at him. He was able to avoid this one only by the ungraceful

expedient of sliding to the ground. He scrambled to his feet quickly after she'd passed,

reminding himself not to underestimate her abilities.

 

"What's the matter, Brother Cromwell?" FitzHugh taunted. "Has your God suddenly

deserted you?" Pias did not bother to reply. The robot could afford to talk; it didn't need

air to live. Pias preferred to save his breath for the action that was to come.

 

The robot made three more charges, and each time Pias was able to duck out of the

way. But his margin for error grew smaller with each pass. Pias's native planet,

Newforest, had a surface gravity of two and a half gees, while here on Purity the gravity

was three gees. Under normal circumstances the difference was not significant. But in a

stressful situation such as this, that extra half gee could make a considerable

difference. Pias was tiring a trifle more easily than he should. He knew he would have

to make his move soon, or the robot might get its chance to kill him before he could

play out his trick.

 

He maneuvered himself into position to make it work. All during the fight, he had been

edging his way down the hillside, closer to Clunard and the army. He wanted to make

sure they would have a good view of what was about to transpire. He was now as close

as he could hope for. The robot was downhill from him, preparing for another charge

upward. So far, it had always gone past him, pivoted, and made a charge back down

the hill at him; he prayed it would continue in that pattern one more time.

 

As he waited, he shook his right sleeve slightly, letting the tiny vial he had concealed

there slip down into his hand. It was a container of acid from one of the acid-mix fuses

in the armory. Pias felt justified in using it despite his promise because, after all, the

robot had attacked him with something artificial-itself. He would have only the one

chance to throw it though, so he had to do it well; he needed to hit a spot where there

was plenty of "skin" rather than clothing.

 

FitzHugh charged, and Pias stepped aside to avoid the rush one more, simultaneously

flinging the bottle into the robot's face. The thin glass shattered, spilling the acid over

the automaton's visage, even as she whirled to make another downhill pass.

 

Pias had not stood his ground this time, but had run several steps further downhill,

toward Clunard and the army. "I want you to look carefully, Sister Tresa," he shouted.

"Look at this thing you trust so deeply."

 

The acid had begun to eat quickly away at FitzHugh's artificial skin, revealing the

machinery behind it. The robot froze, aware it was being exposed but uncertain, for a

split second, how to deal with the situation. In the meantime Tresa Clunard and her

Army of the Just had a clear view of the workings behind FitzHugh's face.

 

"It's a machine, Sister Tresa," Pias continued, hammering his point home. "You have

been fooled by the very machines you claim to detest. You Have listened to their advice

and trusted them, and they have betrayed you and misled you. That machine is your

enemy, not I."

 

The FitzHugh robot, realizing it was useless now in its undercover role, began to flee up

the hill, moving at a speed no human being could have matched. It had gone only a few

dozen meters though, when a blaster bolt sizzled out of the armory, hitting it squarely in

the chest. Yvette's shot knocked the robot to the ground. The machine sputtered for a

moment, twitched its limbs a few times, and then lay still.

 

Silence blanketed the hillside for half a minute.

 

Then a few bold members of the army detached themselves from the group and went

over to inspect the corpse. The blaster bolt had laid open the robot even further, and its

workings were self-evident. The soldiers looked down at FitzHugh and then over to

Tresa Clunard. There was a new expression on their faces. Before this moment, Tresa

Clunard had been, if not a demigod, then at least a saint. But now, seeing that she had

been fooled so badly by a symbol of all she had preached was evil, their adoration was

fading rapidly.

 

Pias fought to hold back a smile. There are some people who'll stay with her no matter

what, he thought. But by nightfall I doubt she'll have more than a few hundred followers

in her army. The threat from this paramilitary force had been ended.

 

He and Clunard stared at one another for a moment, both .aware of the momentous

change that had occurred. There didn't seem to be much left to say to one another so,

with a shrug, Pias turned his back and began walking up the hill to the armory.

 

"Brother Cromwell," she called, and Pias turned. "Are you satisfied now that you've

destroyed me?" "That was never my intention," he said gently. "I merely wanted to show

you the error of your ways. We can all get so caught up in our causes that we lose sight

of the morality of the situation."

 

"I still believe I'm right," she said. "I will continue exhorting against decadence in

society."

 

"I never asked you to stop." And Pias climbed uphill once more to help Yvette dismantle

the deadman's switch. As he reached the armory he looked back. Clunard was on her

knees beside the body of the FitzHugh robot. She was praying. But what she was

praying for, he never learned.

 

Chapter 16

Problems Ahead

 

As Pias had suspected, the Army of the Just virtually disintegrated during that day.

Their respect for Tresa Clunard had shattered along with the robot and, while they

might still agree with her philosophy, they simply could not follow her as a military

leader after she had been so badly duped by the enemy. True to Clunard's promise,

Pias and Yvette were allowed to leave in peace. They made it back to their aircar and

called the local SOTE headquarters, explaining what had happened.

 

When the regular SOTE forces arrived at the camp they met with no active resistance.

Most of the volunteers were in the process of leaving, and SOTE didn't try to stop them.

The weapons in the armory were confiscated, and the camp's buildings were burned.

Tresa Clunard was taken into temporary custody and given a stern lecture on loyalty to

the Empire. She listened sullenly and gave her word never to organize a military force

against the lawfully constituted government again. The local SOTS chief, seeing no

point in detaining her further, merely suspended her counseling license for five years

and released her.

 

Two days later, a regularly scheduled flight departed from Purity to DesPlaines. On

board were two very tired and very satisfied SOTE agents. Yvette had had her shoulder

wound treated by a Service doctor and had received assurances she would be as fit as

new in a week or two.

 

"In a way," she said to her husband during the flight, "I feel a little sorry for Clunard.

There she was at the peak of her persuasive powers, an army of ten thousand people

at her command, knowing with absolute certainty that God was on her side, and then it

all crashed down around her in a matter of seconds."

 

"Pity is the last thing you should feel for her," Pias remarked. "She'll bounce back;

fanatics always do. In some ways, this might be the best thing that could have

happened to her. Fanatics are really at their best when they're the underdogs. If they

ever get into a position where they're in charge, everyone's in trouble. As long as Tresa

Clunard is kept out of any positions of real power, everything will be smooth."

 

The trip back to DesPlaines proved uneventful. The Bavols found themselves greeted

at the spaceport by Jules and Yvonne, who had beaten them home by two days. There

was a happy reunion and a great deal of backslapping, as each team was relieved to

see that the other had survived its mission. As they drove back to the ducal mansion,

Felicite, they exchanged stories about how their tasks had gone, and each couple tried

to make their own adventures sound more harrowing than the others.

 

When they arrived at the estate, Jules and Yvette parted temporarily from their

respective spouses and went straight to the communications room to report in person to

the Head. It happened to be nighttime at the Head's home on Earth, but he was always

willing to be awakened with good news from his two best agents.

 

Jules had already made his report two days ago, and Yvette boiled hers down so

concisely that it took only ten minutes. A more detailed, written report, of course, would

follow.

 

The Head, as always, listened attentively. "That's one less robot to worry about," he

remarked when Yvette had finished. "But there's still at least one more somewhere. And

your supposition, Yvette, that the robots take subordinate roles coincides with my own

theory. But that only makes the remaining robot, or robots, harder to find. A male from a

heavy-grav planet..." His voice trailed off as he looked-thoughtful.

 

"Did you get my message from Purity and check out my hunch?" Yvette asked, since

the conversation had drifted this way.

 

"Yes, I did. Sorry, but for once you're wrong; our chief on Newforest was able to do a

quick, unnoticed test on Pias's brother. Tas Bavol is not a robot. Whatever mischief he

may be up to, it's purely human mischief." He saw Yvette's face fall and continued

quickly, "That's not to underestimate it, of course; human mischief is the worst kind. It's

usually more inventive. I don't approve of the younger Lord Bavoi's actions myself, and

I've ordered the chief there to keep a watchful eye on things. But for the moment,

there's little we can do until he actually makes his move."

 

Their boss changed his expression once again as he glanced over toward Jules.

"There've been more developments on your case since I last spoke to you. Duke Morro

of Tregania has been talking so fast we can hardly keep up with him. He doesn't know

Lady A, claims never to have heard of her, and since the rest of his story checks out, I

tend to believe him. He does confirm some of what we know about the mysterious C

though. He's never met C, nor does he know of anyone who has. All of C's messages

come over the telecom circuit, written out on the screen. If a physical copy is required,

it's burned the instant it's served its purpose. There is never anything left to give any

clues to C's identity or whereabouts."

 

"Just what we needed," Jules said, grimacing. "We only started getting a handle on

Lady A and now this C comes along. If he never goes anywhere and only

communicates via telecom, he could be sitting on any planet in the Empire and there's

no way to track him down."

 

"I suspect he must be Lady A's superior," Yvette said, thinking aloud. "He stays quietly

at home, running the show. If there are any errands to be run, he lets her do them. That

way she faces all the risks; he's still safe." The thought of anyone who could boss the

awesome Lady A around was frightening indeed, but the conclusion made sense to

Yvette.

 

The Head nodded slowly. "Your thinking matches my own-which makes the capture of

Lady A even more necessary. She's probably the only person who will be able to tell us

the identity of C."

 

"And finding her won't be easy, either," Jules said. "We've been so close a couple of

times. But close doesn't get us any points."

 

"There's going to be more pressure on us in the upcoming weeks than ever before," the

Head continued. "I want you both on standby alert for instant action. Four days from

now, the Emperor is going on a galaxy-wide com network to make a major announce-

 

ment. He's going to be abdicating on his seventieth birthday in favor of Edna."

 

Neither Jules nor Yvette was particularly surprised. Although the timing of the event

was, to their minds, premature-William Stanley was still a healthy and capable man-the

fact of his abdication had been discussed in their very first meeting with him. "I'm sorry

to see it happen so soon," Jules said. "I don't think I've ever met anyone so ideally

suited for the position."

 

"With the possible exception of Edna," Yvette smiled. "And it's not as if he'll be dead

and buried; he'll still be around to give counsel and guidance for a long time to come.

It's just that he'll have a little more time to enjoy life without the press of responsibilities."

 

"There is the precedent for this timing too," their boss reminded them. "If you remember

your history, Empress Stanley Three abdicated in favor of her son Karl when she was

seventy, so Bill decided that was as good a deadline for him as any. But that's only a

few months away, and you can bet that if Lady A and her crew had something special in

mind for Edna's wedding, they'll make an even more concerted effort around the time of

the coronation. A government is always at its most vulnerable when there's a transition

of power from one person to another. I have a feeling Edna is going to get her baptism

of fire very shortly after ascending the throne-and it'll be up to us to ensure that she

survives it."

 

And, elsewhere in the galaxy, Lady A-having spent a few hours cursing SOTE's

interference in her plans-calmly turned her devious mind to the next operation ...