skin showing a tinge of red, the eyes clearing from the haze of pain to become misted with chemically induced tranquility.
'Sleep,' she whispered. 'I must sleep. But don't leave me, Earl. You promise?'
'I promise.'
She sighed like a child and settled against him, one hand rising, the thin fingers clutching at his own. Her voice was a susurration, thoughts vocalized without conscious thought.
'I don't want you ever to leave me, Earl. I want you to stay with me for always. When I get my new, young body I will show you the real meaning of love. You will be proud of me then. I will make you a king.' Then, as the sky split with a crash of sound, she murmured, more loudly, 'Thunder, Earl. It's thunder. We are going to have a storm.'
She was wrong. The sound was that of a ship coming to land.
Standing before his desk Ibius Avorot listened to the even modulation of a voice asking questions and answered each with truth. More and he replied with lies. As the voice fell silent he said, 'Well?'
'Your equipment seems to be in order.'
'As I claimed.'
Cyber Khai made no comment, none was needed. The Commissioner was intelligent enough to have made checks and the test had been only to prove his veracity. Standing behind the desk where he had seen the signals of the lie detector he made a warm splash of color in the cold bleakness of the room. Tall, dressed in a scarlet robe, the breast emblazoned with the Seal of the Cyclan, he seemed both more and less than human.
There was a coldness about the face, the cheeks sunken, the bone prominent, the skull shaved to accentuate the likeness to a skull. A face which betrayed no emotion, for the cyber could feel none. Taken when young, taught, trained, an operation performed on his brain, he was incapable of anger, fear, hate, greed-the gamut of human desires. The only pleasure he could know was that of mental achievement. His sole ambition was to serve the organization to which he belonged. The Cyclan which, one day, would dominate the entire galaxy.
Avorot said, 'There is no mistake. The man is Earl Dumarest. How did you know he was here?'
'The prediction of his reaching this world was in the order of ninety-two percent probability once it was known he had left Laconde. Are you certain he did not leave on the vessel which had just departed?'
'Positive. I made a complete search.'
'Including cargo?'
'Yes.' Avorot added bleakly, 'I have my own reasons for not wanting him to escape.'
The loss of his position and the ruin of his career, but it was a matter which could be easily handled. The anger of the Owner concerned could be nullified with the offer of the service of the Cyclan. His own greed would make him accept the bargain and, once a cyber had been established, another step would have been taken to ensure the success of the Master Plan. Teralde was a poor world of jealous factions, one which posed no real problem and one of small gain, but if necessary it would be done.
Khai touched a control and listened to the recorded voices of the interrogation. Avorot had been a fool, not once had he asked a direct question as to guilt and Dumarest must have known that his physical reactions were being monitored to determine the truth of his answers. A matter he did not mention, the episode was past and recriminations would serve no useful purpose.
'The woman,' he said. 'Usan Labria. Why did you allow her to take the man into her custody?'
'I had no choice. Also I hoped to discover an association between them. There had to be a reason for her lies.'
'And have your informants reported?' There would have to be spies, otherwise Avorot could not have hoped to gain information. As the Commissioner hesitated Khai said again, 'Have they?'
'No. The woman is not at home. She left with Dumarest that same evening and neither has been seen since.'
'And she was not on the vessel which left?'
'No. Sufan Noyoka and Pacula Harada but not her and not the man. Both must still be on this world. The woman is old and ill, soon they will have to make an appearance, and when they do, I'll arrest Dumarest and hold him for judgment.'
The man was compounding his folly, blinded by his own limitations. Dumarest was not an ordinary man, something he should have realized from the first, and to plan as if he would act like one was to insult his intelligence. Yet the man was not wholly to blame. He did not have the ingrained attribute of any cyber, the ability to take a handful of facts, correlate them, extrapolate from a known situation to predict the logical sequence of events.
'Where did Usan Labria take Dumarest after she left her house? To that of Sufan Noyoka? And he with another left on the ship?'
'Yes,' said Avorot. 'But what has that to do with it?'
The cyber's voice did not change from its smooth, even modulation, tones designed to eliminate all irritant factors, but Avorot inwardly cringed as he listened to the obvious.
'Dumarest and the woman left the city and must now be in hiding somewhere. There was an association between them and those who left on the vessel. It was obvious you would make a search. Therefore the prediction that they expect to be picked up at some other place by the ship is in the order of ninety-eight percent.'
'Not certainty?'
'Nothing is or can be certain, Commissioner. Always there is the unknown factor to be taken into consideration. Bring me maps of the immediate area and have your men check on the movements of all rafts during the period since the interrogation.'
Fifteen minutes later they were in the air, flying toward the north and the loom of distant mountains. The cyber had selected three places as probable sites and at the second they found it. Even as they fell to land Avorot knew they were too late.
Bleakly he looked at the shelter, the crushed body of the insect. The fact it was still visible showed how close they had been; nothing edible was left by the scavengers for long.
* * *
That evening the sky flamed with color but Cyber Khai saw none of it. The pleasure it gave to normal men held no magic for him as neither did food and wine and sweet perfumes. Food was nothing but fuel to maintain the efficiency of the body-his gauntness was due not to deprivation but to an elimination of wasteful fat and water-heavy tissue. A flesh-and-blood robot, he was concerned only with the determination of the logical sequence of events.
Again Dumarest had escaped, the unknown factor of luck and circumstances which worked so well on his behalf augmenting his innate cunning. Even now he was on a ship traversing the void-heading where?
Given an intelligence large enough, a single leaf would yield the pattern of the tree on which it had grown, the planet on which it stood, the shape of the universe to which it belonged. Khai was not so ambitious; he would be content if the trained power of his mind could predict the world to which the ship was bound.
Seated in Avorot's office he assembled scraps and fragments of data; the name of the vessel, the number of its crew, the tally of those it carried. From the Commissioner's spies he learned more; casual words, idle gossip, and finally, a name.
'Balhadorha.' Avorot frowned. He sat at a communicator from which he relayed information. 'I've heard of it. The Ghost World.'
'A place of legend,' said Khai evenly. 'It's whereabouts is unknown unless those in the vessel have learned of it.'
A chilling thought. Space was vast and journeys could be long. Without a guide any planet in the galaxy could be its final destination. He needed more.
Yethan Ctonat provided it. He entered the office, smiling, bland, his eyes shifting from the cyber to Avorot, from the Commissioner back to the figure in the scarlet robe.
'My lord!' His bow was humble. 'It has come to my ears that you are in some small difficulty. It may be within my power to aid you. You are interested in Sufan Noyoka?'
'Yes. What do you know?'
'Perhaps little, but a man in my position hears odd items, and at times I have been entrusted with various commissions. They could have no meaning, of course, but who knows in what scrap of information the truth may
