Schwartz stirred. “What is it?” He felt scarcely rested. His tiredness went in and in, so deep as to come out at the other side, projecting in jagged streaks.
“Where’s Balkis?” urged Shekt.
“Oh—oh yes.” Schwartz looked about wildly, then remembered that it was not with his eyes that he looked and saw most clearly. He sent out the tendrils of his mind and they circled, sensing tensely for the Mind they knew so well.
He found it, and avoided touching it. His long immersion in it had not increased his fondness for the clinging of its diseased wretchedness.
Schwartz muttered, “He’s on another floor. He’s talking to someone.”
“To whom?”
“No one whose mind I’ve even Touched before. Wait—let me listen. Maybe the Secretary will—Yes, he calls him Colonel.”
Shekt and Pola looked quickly at one another.
“It can’t be treason, can it?” whispered Pola. “I mean, surely an officer of the Empire wouldn’t deal with an Earthman against the Emperor, would he?”
“I don’t know,” said Shekt miserably. “I am ready to believe anything.”
Lieutenant Claudy was smiling. He was behind a desk, with a blaster at his finger tips and the four soldiers behind him. He spoke with the authority that such a situation would lend one.
“I don’t like Earthies,” he said. “I never liked them. They’re the scum of the Galaxy. They’re diseased, superstitious, and lazy. They’re degenerate and stupid. But, by the Stars, most of them know their place.
“In a way, I can understand them. That’s the way they were born, and they can’t help it. Of course I wouldn’t endure what the Emperor endures from them—I mean their blasted customs and traditions—if I were the Emperor. But that’s all right. Someday we’ll learn—”
Arvardan exploded. “Now look here. I didn’t come to listen—”
“You’ll listen, because I’m not finished. I was about to say that what I can’t understand is the workings of the mind of an Earthie-lover. When a man—a real man, supposedly—can get so low in filth as to crawl in among them and go nosing after their womenfolk, I have no respect for him. He’s worse than they are—”
“Then to Space with you and your poor filthy excuse of a mind!” fiercely. “Do you know that there’s treason against the Empire afoot? Do you know just how dangerous the situation is? Every minute you delay endangers every one of the quadrillions in the Galaxy—”
“Oh, I don’t know, Dr. Arvardan. It is Dr., isn’t it? I mustn’t forget your honors. You see, I’ve got a theory of my own. You’re one of them. Maybe you were born in Sirius, but you’ve got a black Earthman’s heart, and you’re using your Galactic citizenship to advance their cause. You’ve kidnaped this official of theirs, this Ancient. (A good thing, by the way, in itself, and I wouldn’t mind rattling his throat for him.) But the Earthmen are looking for him already. They’ve sent a message to the fort.”
“They have? Already? Then why are we talking here? I must see the colonel if I have to—”
“You expect a riot, trouble of any sort? Perhaps you even planned one as the first step in an arranged revolt, eh?”
“Are you mad? Why would I want to do that?”
“Well, then, you wouldn’t mind if we released the Ancient?”
“You cannot.” Arvardan rose to his feet, and for a moment it looked as though he might hurl himself across the desk at the other.
But the blaster was in Lieutenant Claudy’s hand. “Oh, can’t we? Look here, now. I’ve gotten a little of my own back. I’ve slapped you and made you crawl before your Earthie pals. I’ve made you sit here while I told you to your face what a low worm you are. And now I would love an excuse to blast your arm off in exchange for what you did to mine. Now make another move.”
Arvardan froze.
Lieutenant Claudy laughed and put his blaster away. “It’s too bad I have to save you for the colonel. He’s to see you at five-fifteen.”
“You knew that—you knew that all the time.” Frustration tore his throat into hoarse sandpaper.
“Certainly.”
“If the time we have lost, Lieutenant Claudy, means that the issue is lost, then neither of us will have much time to live.” He spoke with an iciness that distorted his voice into something horrible. “But you will die first, because I shall spend my last minutes smashing your face into splintered bone and mashed brain.”
“I’ll be waiting for you, Earthie-lover. Any time!”
The commanding officer of Fort Dibburn had grown stiff in the service of the Empire. In the profound peace of the last generations there was little in the way of “glory” that any army officer could earn, and the colonel, in common with others, earned none. But in the long, slow rise from military cadet he had seen service in every part of the Galaxy—so that even a garrison on the neurotic world of Earth was to him but an additional chore. He wanted only the peaceful routine of normal occupation. He asked nothing beyond this, and for it was willing to humble himself—even, when it was necessary, to apologize to an Earthgirl.
He seemed tired when Arvardan entered. His shirt collar was open and his tunic, with its blazing yellow “Spaceship and Sun” of Empire, hung loosely over the back of his chair. He cracked the knuckles of his right hand with an abstracted air as he stared solemnly at Arvardan.
“A very confusing story, all this,” he said, “very. I recall you well, young man. You are Bel Arvardan of Baronn, and the principal of a previous moment of considerable embarrassment. Can’t you keep out of trouble?”
“It is not only myself that is in trouble, Colonel, but all the rest of the Galaxy as well.”
“Yes, I know,” somewhat impatiently. “Or at least I know that that is what you claim. I am told that you no longer
