The airboat was skimming rapidly above the treetops, toward the northern part of the city.
“What’s known about that package bomb?” Verkan Vall asked. “Who sent it?”
Dirzed shrugged. “The Statisticalists, of course. The wrapper was stolen from the Reincarnation Research Institute; so was the case. The Constabulary are working on it.” Dirzed shrugged again.
The dome, about a hundred and fifty feet in width and some fifty in height, stood among the trees ahead. It was almost invisible from any distance; the concrete dome was of mottled green and gray concrete, trees grew so close as to brush it with their branches, and the little pavilion on the flattened top was roofed with translucent green plastic. As the airboat came in, a couple of men in Assassins’ garb emerged from the pavilion to meet them.
“Marnik, stay at the controls,” Verkan Vall directed. “I’ll send Olirzon up for you if I want you. If there’s any trouble, take off for Assassins’ Hall and give the code word, then come back with twice as many men as you think you’ll need.”
Dirzed raised his eyebrows over this. “I hadn’t known the Assassin-President had given you a code word, Lord Virzal,” he commented. “That doesn’t happen very often.”
“The Assassin-President has honored me with his friendship,” Verkan Vall replied noncommittally, as he, Dirzed and Olirzon climbed out of the airboat. Marnik was holding it an unobtrusive inch or so above the flat top of the dome, away from the edge of the pavilion roof.
The two Assassins greeted him, and a man in upper-servants’ garb and wearing a hunting knife and a long hunting pistol approached.
“Lord Virzal of Verkan? Welcome to Starpha Dome. The Lady Dallona awaits you below.”
Verkan Vall had never been in an Akor-Neb dwelling dome, but a description of such structures had been included in his hypno-mech indoctrination. Originally, they had been the standard structure for all purposes; about two thousand elapsed years ago, when nationalism had still existed on the Akor-Neb Sector, the cities had been almost entirely under ground, as protection from air attack. Even now, the design had been retained by those who wished to live apart from the towering city units, to preserve the natural appearance of the landscape. The Starpha hunting lodge was typical of such domes. Under it was a circular well, eighty feet in depth and fifty in width, with a fountain and a shallow circular pool at the bottom. The storerooms, kitchens and servants’ quarters were at the top, the living quarters at the bottom, in segments of a wide circle around the well, back of balconies.
“Tarnod, the gamekeeper,” Dirzed performed the introductions. “And Erarno and Kirzol, Assassins.”
Verkan Vall hooked fingers and clapped shoulders with them. Tarnod accompanied them to the lifter tubes—two percent positive gravitation for descent and two percent negative for ascent—and they all floated down the former, like air-filled balloons, to the bottom level.
“The Lady Dallona is in the gun room,” Tarnod informed Verkan Vall, making as though to guide him.
“Thanks, Tarnod; we know the way,” Dirzed told him shortly, turning his back on the upper-servant and walking toward a closed door on the other side of the fountain. Verkan Vall and Olirzon followed; for a moment, Tarnod stood looking after them, then he followed the other two Assassins into the ascent tube.
“I don’t relish that fellow,” Dirzed explained. “The family of Starpha use him for work they couldn’t hire an Assassin to do at any price. I’ve been here often, when I was with the Lord Garnon; I’ve always thought he had something on Prince Jirzyn.”
He knocked sharply on the closed door with the butt of his pistol. In a moment, it slid open, and a young Assassin with a narrow mustache and a tuft of chin beard looked out.
“Ah, Dirzed.” He stepped outside. “The Lady Dallona is within; I return her to your care.”
Verkan Vall entered, followed by Dirzed and Olirzon. The big room was fitted with reclining chairs and couches and low tables; its walls were hung with the heads of deer and boar and wolves, and with racks holding rifles and hunting pistols and fowling pieces. It was filled with the soft glow of indirect cold light. At the far side of the room, a young woman was seated at a desk, speaking softly into a sound transcriber. As they entered, she snapped it off and rose.
Hadron Dalla wore the same costume Verkan Vall had seen on the visiplate: he recognized her instantly. It took her a second or two to perceive Verkan Vall under the brown skin and black hair of the Lord Virzal of Verkan. Then her face lighted with a happy smile.
“Why, Va-a-a-ll!” she whooped, running across the room and tossing herself into his not particularly reluctant arms. After all, it had been twenty years—“I didn’t know you, at first!”
“You mean, in these clothes?” he asked, seeing that she had forgotten, for the moment, the presence of the two Assassins. She had even called him by his First Level name, but that was unimportant—the Akor-Neb affectionate diminutive was formed by omitting the -irz- or -arn-. “Well, they’re not exactly what I generally wear on the plantation.” He kissed her again, then turned to his companions. “Your pardon, Gentlemen-Assassins; it’s been something over a year since we’ve seen each other.”
Olirzon was smiling at the affectionate reunion; Dirzed wore a look of amused resignation, as though he might have expected something like this to happen. Verkan Vall and Dalla sat down on a couch near the desk.
“That was really sweet of you, Vall, fighting those men for talking about me,” she began. “You took an awful chance, though. But if you hadn’t, I’d never have known you were in Darsh—Oh-oh! That was why you did it, wasn’t it?”
“Well, I had to do something. Everybody either didn’t know or weren’t saying where you were. I assumed, from the circumstances, that you were hiding somewhere. Tell me, Dalla; do
