As she stared, her eyes picked up a detail they had missed in her first casual glance-a detail almost unnoticeably tiny. Around this man's neck was a silver chain, from which dangled a single integrated circuit chip. Yvette had seen necklaces like that before; they were worn as identification symbols by the top minions of Lady A's conspiracy. If this pirate was a part of that organization, it would indeed explain why his advance information was so thorough. It also meant that this raid was likely to be of far more significance to the Empire than merely holding some n.o.bles hostage.

The pirate chief was looking at Pias with a quizzical expression on his face. "Bavol of Newforest?" he asked. "Are you by chance any relation...?"

"No," Pias said. "None whatsoever."

The man shrugged and made a small notation on his list. Theft, turning to one of his henchmen, he said, "These two are of no importance to us whatsoever. Take them away and dispose of them at once."

CHAPTER 8.

Trapped The morning after the fight in the hotel room, Jules reported to the address he'd been given by Howard. The building turned out to be a gymnasium in a less respectable part of the city. Its fake bricks were weathered, its facade grimy, the lettering on its sign barely readable. It was a hangout for punks on their way up,, athletes on their way down, and a good many nonent.i.ties who were going nowhere at all and were in no rush to get there.

As Jules walked in, the smell of stale sweat filled his nostrils. There were the repeated thumping sounds of fists. .h.i.tting punching bags and the moans of men in less than perfect condition overtaxing their muscles in an effort to look in shape. Jules thought briefly on how little change there had actually been in gymnasia since the days of the ancient Greeks. The equipment the men used for their training grew ever more sophis- ticated with the pa.s.sing years, but the basic activities remained the same, because the human body remained the same.

Jules looked the place over quickly, then walked over to the man at the equipment window. "A man named Howard told me to report here this morning," he said, showing the card he'd been given.

The equipment manager took the card and stared at it as though it were something entirely new in his life. Jules could see his lips move as he read it, could almost see the thought processes seeping slowly through the man's dim brain. "Yeah," the fellow said at last. "Meeting's upstairs, room D-5." He handed the card back to Jules.

Jules found the stairs and went up to the indicated room. Inside he found about a dozen other men seated in chairs that were arranged in rows, cla.s.sroom style. There was no sign of Howard, so Jules took a seat to wait. None of the other men paid him much attention after their initial once-over.

More men arrived and took their seats, until the room was filled. Five minutes later, Abel Howard entered. He was dressed casually, but there was a tough look about his face that told Jules this man was anything but casual.

"Let's get one thing straight first off," Howard began. "If any of you think working for me is going to be easy, you can leave now. You're all here because the people I had before are dead. There's a chance you'll end up that way yourself. If that scares you, you don't belong here."

No one made a move toward the door, but a few did shift around nervously in their seats. "What the h.e.l.l," one man at the back commented. "We're all going to die sometime, right? Why not get paid for it?"

His joke drew a nervous laugh from the other men. Howard waited for the laughter to subside, then continued. "The second thing I want to get across here is that I'm the boss. You're getting paid to do what I tell you-not to think, not to ask the guy next to you what he thinks, but to do what I say. I don't have to pay someone to argue with me or question my judgment. If anyone thinks that'll be too much of a strain on him, get out."

Again, no one moved.

"I'm glad we understand each other. Our first job is going to be tomorrow afternoon. It'll be rough. You all report here at ten in the morning, and I'll supply you with everything you need."

"Just what will we be doing?" one man asked when it became obvious that Howard was not about to elucidate.

"What did I just say about asking questions?" Howard barked. "What does it matter what you'll be doing? You'll do what I tell you, that's all."

"I think he meant," Jules spoke up, "that it might -be easier for us to prepare ourselves for the job if we had a rough idea of what we were supposed to do. There's a difference in preparation for babysitting and for bank robbing."

Howard gave him a black look. "You'll know when I know," he growled. "Don't worry, you'll get all the preparation you need."

Howard's reaction told Jules a great deal. It was clear that the boss didn't know either what was going to be done, and his testiness was an indication that he himself was not happy with that state of affairs. Abel Howard was a man who liked holding the upper hand; being someone else's underling was an irksome experience for him. It would take a powerful person to hold him in a subordinate position-and Jules had a good idea who that person must be.

The fact that the operation would be tomorrow afternoon was critical; that was when Crown Princess Edna would be married in a state ceremony of enormous proportions. The coincidence was too great to expect Howard to have some other target in mind, considering that he'd already been involved in attempts to kill members of the n.o.bility. Howard was an element in a treasonous plot, of that Jules now had no doubts at all. And to his mind, that suggested Lady A.

He had seen Lady A in action only once, on the tape he and Yvette, had captured during their adventure on Sanctuary. That little bit, though, had convinced him that the lady was no one to take lightly. She would be perfectly capable of putting Howard in his place, and Howard would particularly bridle at having to take orders from a woman.

Howard made a few more general comments and had everyone leave a number at which he could be reached if Howard needed him. Then he dismissed them, reminding them to meet back there at ten tomorrow morning.

Jules returned to his hotel room and spent half an hour taking the vidicom set apart. With the unit's innards spread all over his bed, he took a small device from a drawer and attached it to two other leads, then rea.s.sembled the set. Although it had been a tiny change, it was a very important one; this vidicom now had a SOTE scrambler unit, and was secure for cla.s.sified calls.

With that accomplished, he put in a call to the Head back in Florida. He explained in detail what he and Vonnie had learned so far, and he gave his own personal suspicions about Lady A's involvement. As always, the Head listened with rapt attention as Jules spoke; and as always, his agile mind was computing, planning, reevaluating everything on the basis of what he heard.

When Jules finished his report, the Head leaned back in his chair. "The alternatives as I see them are as follows," he said. "First, we could have this Howard picked up immediately. That would be a very shortsighted action, since it would alert his superiors that we're on to them and they could escape untouched. I discarded that plan instantly.

"Second, I could put out a full surveillance on him, cover him with so many agents and bugs that he won't even be able to go to the 'fresher in privacy. We could check out everyone he sees between now and the wedding, trace all his calls-if he hasn't gotten his orders yet, he has to get them sometime in the next twenty-four hours. I'd like us to know them just as soon as he does.

"But, if Lady A is involved in this-and my hunch, like yours, says there's a high probability of that-I can't help but be haunted by what she said on that tape, that her organization is aware of nearly everything we do. I've made no headway thus far in plugging the leak; everyone on the staff checks out loyal to twelve decimal places, and every square millimeter of every office has been examined thoroughly for bugs. There's simply no way she can know what she obviously knows, and it's driving me crazy.

"At any rate, if her boast is true, putting a blanket around Howard would be as bad as pulling him in directly. It would tip our hand that we know something is about to happen, at which point Lady A would simply ditch him and switch to another tactic that we might not discover in time. For obvious reasons, we prefer the devil we know to the devil we don't."

SOTE's top officer tilted his head slightly to the side and looked at Jules. "That leaves me with alternative number three. That is, to leave you and Vonnie right where you are and let you continue your own surveillance until the last possible moment. Hopefully the conspiracy will commit itself to a plan of action and won't be able to back- out in time to prevent us from closing our net. We-and you-would be walking a tightrope, and one slip could mean disaster."

"I've walked plenty of tightropes in my life, and I've managed them all so far," Jules smiled.

His boss returned the expression. "Remind me never to use circus metaphors around you; they can be interpreted too literally. But I hope I made my meaning clear. We would have to wait long enough to make sure Lady A and her group have committed their forces to their plan beyond recall, but if we wait too long, we might not be able to take effective enough action against it. With the welfare of the Empire at stake, waiting is an awfully dangerous game."

Jules's smile disappeared and he was as deadly serious as his superior. "I certainly understand that, sir. But let's face it-until we can plug that leak, it's the only game we can play."

The Head nodded. "I just wanted to make sure you understood the situation fully before agreeing to it."

"I do. In fact, I already came to the same conclusions myself. That's where Vonnie is right now, keeping an eye on Howard. She'll report in the instant anything happens."

The Head sighed. "You certainly know how to make an old man feel unnecessary. But then, that's why you're my best agent. Keep me posted on everything and good luck, Jules."

"Thank you, sir." But even as Jules spoke, his boss's image was fading from the screen.

Yvonne Roumenier was highly skilled at the delicate art of trailing a suspect. She had accompanied Jules to the gym for the meeting, waiting outside in his car. Jules took a cab back to the hotel when he left, leaving Vonnie with the supervehicle for her own use.

The female agent waited around outside the gym for another two hours before Howard emerged from the building once again, got into his groundcar, and drove off. Vonnie had surrept.i.tiously slipped a beeper under the body of his vehicle, so she had no difficulty following him across town without being conspicuous. Howard gave no indication that he suspected he was being tailed. He went directly to a restaurant, the Chez Gaston, and went inside. Vonnie followed him in.

When her eyes became accustomed to the darker interior, she looked around and saw her quarry seated at a table with a very beautiful woman. The two talked for half an hour-the woman calmly, the man with a variety of gestures and emphasis. At the end of their meal, the woman handed Howard a thick brown envelope, got up from the table, and left the restaurant. Vonnie hesitated; should she follow this contact, find out who she was and what she was doing, or should she stay with Howard and check him out further? She decided on the latter course. Howard was, after all, her a.s.signment; she was curious about the contents of that envelope. And besides, she had gotten enough pictures of the woman on her minicamera; hopefully SOTE would be able to run an ident check from those.

Had Vonnie known whom she was observing, she might have decided differently. But, like all but five people in the Service of the Empire, she had never heard of Lady A, and she did not realize the importance of that one person in the plot against the Empire. She had no way of knowing that, no matter how many photos she took of the woman, the Service would never be able to correlate them with Lady A's ident.i.ty, because Lady A did not officially exist in any of its files. The course of galactic history might have been significantly altered had Vonnie chosen to follow the woman; but, through no fault of her own, she did not do so. Given what she knew at the time, her decision was the correct one.

Howard finished his meal alone, paid the bill, and left. Vonnie was right after him, though she took great care to make sure he didn't spot her. Howard drove out of the city proper, into the hills; Vonnie stayed a respectable distance away so that he wouldn't realize anyone was following him. This was an expensive neighborhood, but Vonnie doubted Howard had too many financial worries. Her quarry stopped his car in the driveway of a large house, got out, unlocked the door, and went inside.

Vonnie parked a short distance farther up the hill and waited. This was probably Howard's home, and there was no telling how long he might stay here. Vonnie chafed. She wanted to break in there to get a look at whatever had been in the envelope the woman in the restaurant had handed Howard, and she wanted to be able to put a tap on his vidicom line. But she could do neither while he was there. All she could do was wait until he had left before making her break-in.

In the meantime, she called Jules back at the hotel. Her fianc had by this time completed his own call to the Head and was waiting eagerly for her report. She gave him the location of Howard's house and then a brief rundown on Howard's activities so far.

Jules's interest picked up enormously when Vonnie mentioned the woman Howard had met for lunch. "What did she look like?" he asked, trying his best to make his voice sound casual.

"Dark hair, light complexion, medium height, extremely beautiful, but very cold. I think she'd give an iceberg goose b.u.mps. It would be hard to guess her age; I'd say maybe forty, but very well kept up. She dressed stylishly. Sound like anyone you know?"

Jules was cursing the luck that had let Vonnie spot her rather than himself. "I'm not sure," he lied. "It might be a good idea, though, to investigate her a bit if you happen to run across her again. We have to check all leads."

"Khorosho, will do. In the meantime I'll just have to wait here for Howard to leave again so I can investigate inside."

It was more than an hour before Howard emerged once again from his house and drove off down the hill. Vonnie waited another five minutes to be sure he hadn't forgotten anything and come right back, and then she slipped out of her own car and walked around to the back of Howard's house.

The windows were all closed, and Vonnie could tell from the special sensors she carried in her utility belt that there was a burglar trapping system. If any unauthorized person touched the window while the system was in operation, it would ring alarms and give the intruder a severe electrical shock-not enough to kill, perhaps, but certainly sufficient to knock an adult unconscious until help could arrive. It was a sophisticated device, and it took Vonnie a full ten minutes to circ.u.mvent it with the tools she'd brought with her. That task accomplished, she forced the window open and entered the house.

She found herself in a small pantry just off the kitchen. Walking quietly through the house she came to the living room, but a quick look around told her there was nothing of interest for her there. Continuing on, she came to the study. On the desk was the en- velope she had seen Howard take at the restaurant, and in the ashtray beside it were the remains of whatever message it had contained. Vonnie sighed slightly. She wished she'd been able to get to it before Howard had burned it, but she was not a person to dwell on might have-beens. Taking a small, empty cylinder from her belt, she emptied the ashes of the note into it. The lab technicians at SOTE headquarters were experts at reconstructing evidence from the most trivial-seeming of sc.r.a.ps; perhaps they could make something out of these ashes. It would at least be worth a try.

Howard's home vidicom was a wall unit, one of the large, ostentatious models that took up an entire side of the study with its screen. She grimaced again. Taking one of those apart to plant a tap on the line would not be an easy task; she only hoped Howard would stay away a bit longer while she worked on it.

She set to the job with grim determination, and soon had dismantled the appropriate parts of the vidicom. Taking a handful of electronic components from the pouch at her waist, she began connecting them to the circuit. She had a more difficult time of it than Jules had had attaching the scrambler to his hotel set, because this tap was more complicated. It was capable not only of intercepting the messages that went in and out over this line and broadcasting them to a special receiver Vonnie had in her car, but also of tracing back any incoming calls so that Vonnie and Jules would know where any message was originating.

So intent was Vonnie about her business that she almost didn't hear the noise until it was too late. There was the slight swishing sound of loose clothing, the soft padding of bare feet along the carpet. Startled, Vonnie looked up and found herself staring into the muzzle of a stun-gun.

The person holding the gun was a young woman, no more than twenty by Vonnie's estimation, and ravishingly beautiful. She was wearing nothing but a loose-fitting silken bathrobe that reached only halfway down her thighs. A live-in girlfriend, Vonnie thought. d.a.m.n! I should have suspected there might be someone else around. But everything was so quiet!

The girl must have been sleeping toward the back of the house and been awakened by some slight noise Vonnie made. Thinking there was a burglar, she put on the robe and took the gun Howard kept for protection, walking down the hallways barefoot in her attempt to sneak up on the intruder. The poor girl was both very brave and very frightened; she clutched the stungun tightly with both hands, and even so the weapon was shaking as she pointed it at Vonnie.

Had the SOTS agent been an ordinary burglar, the stunner might have proved an effective deterrent; but Vonnie, as both a DesPlainian and a highly trained espionage agent, was not about to let so simple a thing stop her, particularly when it was being wielded by such an obviously inexperienced woman.

Even as the stun-gun buzzed, Vonnie was in motion. Her movements were so quick that they looked like a mere blur to the startled Earthwoman. One moment her target had been kneeling on the floor, and the next moment the interloper was coming quickly toward her. Her first shot landed harmlessly on the carpet where the woman had been; she had no time for a second. Vonnie gave her a gentle tap on the side of the neck, gentle, that is, for a DesPlainian-and Howard's girlfriend sank to the floor, unconscious.

Vonnie debated what to do now. If she left the girl behind, she'd call the police as soon as she woke up and tell them she'd interrupted a burglar working on the vidicom set. It would take only a minor inspection to discover the tap, and Howard would know his plans were compromised. That could not be allowed to happen.

On the other hand, Vonnie respected innocent human life too much to kill the girl simply because she'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time. To the best of Vonnie's knowledge, Howard's girlfriend was guilty of no more than bad taste in men and did not deserve to die simply for trying to stop a burglar breaking into her man's house.

In the end, Vonnie decided to take the girl with her. She could be dropped at the local SOTE office and held incommunicado for two days, until this whole affair was over. Howard would wonder where she had disappeared to; he might even be concerned enough to call the police and report her disappearance, though Vonnie doubted it. But in no case would he be able to make the connection between his girlfriend's vanishing and possible surveillance and monitoring activities directed against him.

This unexpected interruption did make Vonnie feel nervous, though. She finished her job with a rush, not wanting to come across any further surprises, then looked around to see where the study window was. She didn't want to carry the girl's body all the way back to the pantry window she'd originally used and, in her nervousness, carelessly overlooked the obvious solution of going out the front door.

She realized her mistake the instant she touched the window. Each of the windows in this house had been rigged with the burglar deterrent system independently of the others; her shorting out one had not affected the rest of them. It was not at all a common arrangement, but it was one she knew she should have checked for nonetheless; she cursed herself for her sloppiness.

But her thoughts came far too late. Even as the idea formed in her mind, a strong electrical shock surged through her body. With a loud, involuntary groan, she pulled away from the window sill and fell to the floor, unconscious.

It did not take Howard very long to figure out the truth. When he returned home his girlfriend Charla was just starting to recover consciousness, while Vonnie was still out completely. When Charla told him what "Lyla Beaumonde" had been doing, Howard's mind leaped to the inevitable conclusion.

She and Bledsoe must be working together on this, he thought. I'll have to do something to make sure they're stopped.

He considered telling Lady A and asking her opinion, but decided against it. She would be paying him good money for the job tomorrow, and if he told her he'd been shadowed she might decide to cancel her plans, which would leave him in a bad financial situation. He had already contracted with his own men, and he'd have to pay them or risk their anger. Besides, she already thought of him as inferior; he didn't want to confirm that opinion by seeming to have slipped so easily into this net. As long as he took care of these two spies himself, everything should be smooth.

He made two calls: the first to one of his more trustworthy men, and the second to Jules. "Bledsoe, I've got another quick little job for you."

"Oh?" Jules asked. "What is it?"

"What do you care? Just get over to my house right away." He gave the address, adding, "If you're not here in an hour, you can forget about tomorrow."

Jules was suspicious of this sudden move; it didn't seem to fit into the pattern. In addition, he hadn't heard from Vonnie in a couple of hours, and he was becoming worried. But there was little he could do; he had to stay on Howard's good side until he learned what the plans were for tomorrow. He took a cab up to Howard's home and knocked on the front door.

"Come in," Howard said, and the instant Jules complied, he was shot down with a stunner beam set on four-a two-hour stun. He fell to the ground without even having time to wonder how his ident.i.ty had been discovered.

"Take him and the girl out in your car," Howard told his henchman. "See to it that they have an accident but somewhere far away from here, understand?"

The other man nodded. He was very good at arranging accidents.

CHAPTER 9.

The Grate Escape Yvette and Pias were both startled at the abruptness of the death sentence p.r.o.nounced over them by the pirate leader. Whatever the plot was in which he was involved, it obviously was concerned only with those pa.s.sengers who were of n.o.ble birth, and while both SOTE agents actually were, they had denied it as part of their cover ident.i.ties. For that, they were to die.

One guard stepped forward from against the wall behind his leader. "The usual method?" he asked.

The boss nodded. "Yeah. s.p.a.ce'em."

Both agents shuddered at the thought: Being tossed out an airlock without a s.p.a.cesuit and exposed to the deadly vacuum was not a pleasant way to die. Though neither had ever witnessed such a death personally, they were well aware of the consequences of exposure to such a hostile environment. Even if the victim tried to hold his breath for a while, other effects entered the picture. Without external air pressure on the skin, the body bloated and blew up like a balloon. The blood literally began boiling in the veins, rupturing small capillaries and sending the fluid bubbling out of mouth, nose, ears, and other orifices. The thin layer of protective liquid over the eyes evaporated, leaving them dry and unprotected; unless the lids were kept tightly shut the eyes could even pop like two grapes under pressure. Eardrums ruptured as a matter of course. At this point, even the most stoic of heroes would have to cry out in pain, expending the last little bit of air in his lungs and causing them to collapse.

Small wonder that s.p.a.cing was one of the most feared punishments in human society. Give me a nice., clean blaster bolt through the brain, any day; Yvette thought.

The guard stepped around behind the two SOTS agents and pushed them forward; they practically flew across the room in the low gravity. "Get moving!" the pirate told them. "You heard what Ling said-we ain't got all day."

Yvette and Pias allowed themselves to be herded out the front door into a narrow, dimly lit corridor beyond. "Straight ahead," their guard insisted, motioning with his stunner to emphasize the point. "Turn right at the end, through the door to the air recycling plant."

The agents did as they were told, making their march as long and drawn-out as they could. A dozen plans occurred to them within those seconds, and were discarded as impractical just as quickly. They both knew Pias had his ministunner 'hidden behind the large red rose on the brim of his hat. They had to make sure he would get the chance to use it-and that they would have a chance to escape afterward. This corridor was a little too crowded, with too great a risk of their break being discovered immediately. They waited, hoping that the next few minutes would provide them with a better opportunity.

When they reached the end of the hall, they turned through the designated doorway as ordered. The air recycling plant for the pirate base was immense. A giant plastic dome arched over their heads. If the asteroid on which the base was located had been circling a star, the dome would have been transparent to let in the light and heat; but since this asteroid was at least a light-year from any star, the dome was opaque and covered with a series of bright spotlights shining down upon rows and rows of growing green plants that stretched for more than a hundred meters into the distance. The photosynthesis of these plants could not provide all the oxygen a base of this size required, of course; further along, Pias and Yvette could see a large rock-crusher. Robots would be sent out to mine the asteroid itself for oxygen-bearing minerals, which would then be brought back to the base and broken down into their components. Such an operation was standard for any base, legal or not, on an airless world; it had long since been discovered that planetoids of any reasonable size contained enough trapped oxygen to supply a human base with its needs indefinitely.

With the exception of themselves and their guard, the plant seemed entirely deserted. This was what they had been hoping for. Tending a plant like this was hard, dirty work, and so the pirates had made sure it was completely automated. After all, one reason they were pirates was to avoid honest labor if at all possible.

Pias took off his hat and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. "Hot in here, isn't it?" he said. "I guess all those lights in this enclosed s.p.a.ce build up a greenhouse effect." He put his hat back on his head, but during that maneuver, he had been able to take his ministunner from its hidden holster and palm it.

"Yeah, something like that," the pirate said. He had not been chosen for either his scientific knowledge or his loquacity. "You won't have to worry about it much longer."

"Ah yes, the very subject I was _going to bring up next. While Yvette and I are not n.o.bles, and therefore of no interest to your boss, we both are quite rich, and that might be of possible value to you. If you were to help us get out of here, we could make it well worth your while."

"I'll help you get out of here," the pirate grinned s.a.d.i.s.tically. "Right through that airlock over there." "No, you misunderstand me," Pias said, injecting the proper note of desperation into his voice. "If you were to steal a ship and take us to the nearest planet where there's a bank, I think we could reward you well. How does fifty thousand rubles sound?"

"It sounds crazy, tovarishch. If I set one foot on a planet with you, I'd be arrested immediately. Why should I betray my comrades to save your drapping necks?"

They had reached one side of the dome, and were now standing beside an auxiliary airlock. The guard gave them another evil grin. "Get inside, both of you."

There was no more time; they would have to act now. But the guard had his blaster already drawn and pointed at them. His attention would have to be distracted for the split second it would take Pias to aim and fire his own gun, or their only chance might be gone for good. Realizing this, Yvette took a step away from Pias.

"Maybe there are some things I can offer you that your comrades can't," she said in a sultry voice. She began unb.u.t.toning the top b.u.t.tons of her blouse. "It must get awfully lonely here on this base. Wouldn't you like someone to help you keep away the cold on the long, empty nights?"