XLIV.

LYR PULLED AT her chin as she slipped through the portals to the foundation office.

She knew the commander-the commodore, she corrected herself yet another time-would be waiting. His voice had been ice-cold.

Automatically she closed the portal behind her and touched the lock stud as she surveyed the reception area and found it lit, but vacant.

The faint sound that was a cross between a whine and a hum told her that the analyzers in the tech space were operating, and in a linked fashion.

"Come on back, Lyr."

She sighed and stepped into the tech room.

His privacy cloak lay draped over one of the console chairs. He stood and pushed back the swivel where he had been working.

"I didn't expect to see you so soon again," she said.

"Didn't expect to be back so quickly. Have a problem. Not strictly foundation, but it does impact us. Need to trust someone, and you're elected."

She opened her mouth, and he held up a hand. "I know. You have to account for everything. Perfectly legal for you to provide analytical services, provided you charge for them. Charge me the going rate, or MacGregor Corson. Charges aren't the problem."

"What is? Why did you insist on my being down here in the middle of the night?"

"Been a few other nights when you were," he observed laconically. "Running on a tight schedule. Ship time doesn't always agree with Imperial mean time." He grinned, and the lack of warmth in the hawk-yellow eyes sent shivers down her spine and chills through her body. She was not certain she wanted to know anything more.

"What do you want analyzed?"

"Lists and destinations."

"Lists and destinations? For that you got me up-" She broke off in midsentence as for the first time she saw a fire in his eyes that rep-resented anger, or a view of hell.

"What do you want from the analysis?" she temporized.

"Patterns." He sighed. "Let me explain. A group of individuals is engaged in a highly profitable and exceedingly illegal business. They use aliases, false destinations. Almost no possibility of determining which alias is a commercial traveler, on honest business, which a philanderer, and which the deadly anonymity of this group."

"That's not merely impossible. It would require a miracle-"

"I've contracted for a travel research contract for a shipping firm, and will be obtaining the monthly listings of selected passenger destinations. Not the names, just the arrival and departure ports. I will be adding to that major commercial meetings, conferences, fairly reliable estimates of military personnel and dependents travelling on commercial ships, and other data."

"But what do you want?" she asked tiredly.

"I told you. Patterns. Probably take years, but there should be continuing patterns. Clear ones. You develop the possibilities and send them to me. I'll test them and let you know."

"I still don't understand what you want."

His eyes flared. Then he looked away, almost as if he was afraid of hurting her, it seemed.

"Let me give you a hypothetical example. If on the second week of the second and tenth months of the Imperial year, there are always two passengers booked from New Augusta through New Glascow to Ydris, it means something-from whether that represents a regularly scheduled conference, a recurrent meeting, a regular fund transfer. It means something."

His voice softened. "The organization I am trying to locate has roughly nine hundred members on twenty planets, but ten planets are considered the key. New Augusta is the only major system not included, but remains a widely used transfer point. Therefore, anyone booked from New Augusta who belongs to this group must have come from somewhere else.

"Now, that doesn't mean I want you to exclude all others. If you can determine that the Brotherhood of Universal Peace has set patterns, let me know, and I can verify and modify. Eventually, by eliminating the obvious groups, by using the tourism stats, we should be able to eliminate everyone but the target."

Lyr shook her head. "That's at least a ten-to-fifteen-year project."

"Could be less. Maybe able to get you more and better information. Your console has the specifics, along with the beginning data base, as well as the entity to bill for the services, and the travel service for whom you will prepare the monthly report. In turn, that service will send its payment to MacGregor Corson, care of OER Foundation, and you will bill me for the balance of time and costs owed."

"What . . . that I think I finally understand, Commander. Why . . . that is another question."

"One you're probably better off not knowing." He circled around behind the swivel and picked up his privacy cloak. As he donned it, with the full-fade uniform, he transformed into a shadow, despite the clear lighting in the tech section.

"Good night."

Lyr did not shake her head. Instead she moved to the console he had vacated earlier.

"You know what he wants, don't you?" she said quietly to no one. "You'd think that even he would know better than to take on the Guild. Unless they already have taken him on."

She shivered, but her hands remained steady on the console controls.

XLV"WHUFF . . . WHUFF . . . WHUFF . . .".

The man's breath came in jerky gasps, one dragged out after the next, as he struggled to put one foot in front of the other. His head wobbled from side to side in the darkness, although he did not look over his aching shoulders.

He could hear easily enough the pad, pad, pad of his pursuer's even footsteps. He could hear, but not believe.

None of it was believable.

"Whuff . . . whuff . . . whufff. . . ."

His feet and lungs labored as he staggered along the empty- riding trail. He looked toward the heavier undergrowth beside the trail, but decided against that tactic. The searing pain that shot from his left arm every time he moved too suddenly reinforced that decision.

"Whuff . . . whuff . . . whuff . . ."

Whoever . . . whatever . . . chased him not only could see in the darkness of Haldane, but could move silently when it wanted. Whatever it was, it toyed with him.

His more rational side told him to stop, that attack had proven fruitless, and that flight was even less fruitful, but he kept putting one leg in front of the other.

"Whuff . . . whuff . . . whuff . . ."

How much longer he could move, let alone breathe, he did not know, only that each leg felt like lead, that flashes of hot light pricked behind his eyes, and that his mouth hung limply open.

Whrrr!

Crack!

The sound of the unknown weapon jolted his momentarily still legs into a shamble onward down the slight incline before him.

His pursuer was invisible, silent except for the sometime padding of feet, silent except for the occasional missile like the one that had shattered his left arm.

"Whuff . . . whuff . . . whuffff . . ."

Each breath was harder to draw, but he kept putting one foot in front of the other. In the back of his mind, the thought flared-you're being hunted, like a fox, a garbou, like a dog.

But his unseen hunter refused to let him turn, driving him with the shadowy presence, with the silent whrrr of pain.

Right after he had seen the dark figure, he had charged the unknown, had actually touched the alien, if that was what it was, for the steel muscles of the shadow figure had paralyzed his remaining good arm and tossed him aside like a doll.

"Run . . . assassin . . ." Those had been the words hissed at him.

He had not run, not him. Not then. Instead he had turned and attacked with all the skill taught by the Guild. And had been tossed aside again. Like trying to catch a shadow at night. And it had been barely night then. Now dawn was approaching.

Each of those early rushes toward the alien blackness had found him sprawled into the dirt, into the grass of the park.

"Whuff... whuff . . . whuffff. . . ."

When assault had failed, he had stood his ground. Until the terrible projectiles had whirred past his head, the second shattering his left arm.

"Run . . . assassin. . ." And the alien had hissed his terrible message again.

He had stood-until the shadow rose from nowhere next to him and had twisted his pain-wracked arm.

"Run . . . assassin . . ."

Whhrrr!

He had run-not wisely, but well, for who had ever outrun him? Who had ever outrun the Hound of the Guild?

"Whuff . . . whuff . . . whufff . . ."

His legs were shaking. The flares behind his eyes left him nearly blind to the path ahead. Staggering, he managed to catch his balance, lurching leftward, then right, until he came to the gentle slope upward, a slope that became more steep with each meter.

"Whuff . . . whuff . . . whuffff . . . whufffff . . ."

How could you fight something that struck in darkness, stronger than any man, that treated you with such contempt, that ran you down more easily than you had ever run any quarry to ground, and with seemingly less effort?

He dragged himself another step forward.

"Whuff . . . whuff . . ."

Whhrrr!

His legs balked at the uphill effort. He stood there, gasping, swaying like a tree about to crash into oblivion.

Whrrr!

Crack!

He did not feel the stone that killed him, nor see the dawn that spilled from the eastern sky of Haldane a handful of minutes after his body had slumped into an untidy heap on the viceroy's private riding trail.

XLVI.

THE HOODED MAN at the head of the table cleared his throat.

"And now, for the unsubstantiated information . . ."

"It's gossip time," whispered a uniformed admiral in the corner to his nearest colleague.

The whisper was not low enough. The hooded man, the figure known as Eye, turned and looked. While Eye's expression was hidden, the admiral wilted as if he had received a withering glare.

"Gossip, perhaps, but it has its uses. First, the Ursans are working on their own version of a jumpshift. We have a team looking into that.

"Second; an unknown group has moved against the Guild. While our sources have not been able to verify that, we have verified that there have been a number of deaths associated with individuals suspected of Guild activity. We have been able to investigate three deaths of this type and found reason to believe that the victims were also associated with the Guild."

"A question?"

"Yes."

"Why no faxnews stories?"

"The deaths have been spread over ten systems and roughly a standard year, but there is a pattern."

"Do we know who or what is involved?"

"We have a name, believed to be a code name. That name is Merhlin. Who or what it represents is unknown at this time."

"Do we want to get involved?"

"I doubt that is to our interests," answered the hooded man.

His response brought a series of low chuckles from the Imperial officers around the table. One woman shook her head slowly.

"You disagree, Admiral Storz?"

"I would only point out that if an unknown has the resources to take on the Guild, not only without being discovered, but without being stopped, what would prevent such an organization from then applying itself to our agents?"

"Good point. Discovery, however, is not the same as involvement. I should have made myself clear. We are working to discover this group or agency. We do not intend to aid either party"

Admiral Storz nodded.