"No need to except me, Isbel. That assumes I was one of the bullies in Imperial Service."

"No assumption. Fact. Your name's no more Shaik Corso than that scout's the private yacht she's registered, apparently registered, as."

Gerswin had raised his eyebrows, but said nothing.

"Scout's too old and too well rebuilt for the Impies to have done it. And they wouldn't think of using an old design. New is always better for them. You're too young to have been senior and retired. That leaves few options. You're independently wealthy, or you freelance, or both.

"You're successful, and that means experience. Wealth doesn't buy experience. Leaves age or Impie service.

"Since you're not that old, you have to have Impie service. Besides"-and her eyes twinkled-"you wear everything so properly, even shipsuits. Like uniforms."

Gerswin shrugged. "What can I say? Certainly sounds so much more impressive than my own poor background, and who am I to instruct the always correct port captain?"

He inclined his head. "But I do have a few matters. . ."

"I know. Anytime someone sends a private torp, it's urgent or Hades-fired close. You're excused. Shaik, and cleared into Ydris again. But I'd feel more comfortable calling you 'Commander."'

"You, Isbel, can call me anything you wish, even if it is not totally accurate."

"Break orbit, Commander." She smiled nonetheless as Gerswin collected the torp pack and arranged for the torp itself to be carted to the Caroljoy.

He retreated to the ship as quickly as possible.

Once back inside the scout, he dropped the torp pack into the console.

Lyr's face, straight features, and carefully combed sandy hair filled the screen.

"I still can't get used to talking to a blank screen, Commander, but I thought you ought to know what's going on. I hope you have a chance to pick up one of the torps I've sent before Baron Fugazey surprises you.

She squared her shoulders and brushed back a strand of hair.

Gerswin realized that it was gray, not silver, nor dyed, and shook his head. He thought of her as always there, and unchanging. While she might be there for a long time to come, given Imperial medical technology, she was not unchanging nor immune from the aging process. He wondered if she were the type whom a complete rejuvenation would benefit as he refocused on what she was saying .

". . . first sign was a nuisance suit charging that the foundation was employing its special status to subsidize competition to Fugar House . . . then a rather sophisticated attempt to penetrate the databanks . . . continuing shadows on me . . . taken the liberty of hiring Kirnows as antishadows. . ."

Gerswin continued to listen as Lyr rattled off the lengthy list of attempts, all of which she seemed to have brushed off with style and without calling much public attention to the foundation .

". . . That's a brief update on the situation. A more detailed chronology is speedcoded into the trailer at the end.

"For all the furor about the foundation, Fugazey could care less about OERF. Prove that I could not. But he could have tied us up in legal battle after legal battle, which would have been tremendously expensive. He didn't. Once it was clear he could not get the information he wanted with a given strategy, he immediately changed tactics. My own sources, and you suggested I cultivate a few, as I recall, indicate that Fugazey is employing a small fraction of his not inconsiderable assets to obtain the information from the only other possible source."

Gerswin knew what was coming, even before she said it.

"The baron has a number of contacts within the I.S.S., and it is a matter of time before he obtains the information necessary to prove that Commander MacGregor Corson Gerswin is the same MacGregor Corson Gerswin who is employed by the OER Foundation. After that, he will use what he can to narrow your location. Why this is so important to him I do not know, but his interest may be linked to an attachment his son, Duran, would like to form with a young lady named Helene Strackna Daeris . . ."

Gerswin shook his head. Of all the damned-fool reasons to have someone looking for him.

". . . and from what I can determine, her mother was a Major Alhenda Strackna, who was court-martialed and dismissed in disgrace from her position as Executive Officer of the cruiser Fleurdilis, then under the command of a senior commander named Gerswin."

Gerswin wondered how she had tracked down all the information as he listened to the remainder of the message.

". . . and that's it. If you wonder how I found this out, it was not that hard for the standard Kirnow ops to track the rumors from the Fugazey household. Apparently dear Helene, while attractive in visage, has not endeared herself to anyone." Lyr frowned and cleared her throat. "Someday, Commander . . . Commodore, more than one of the loose ends from your past is going to catch up with you, and since you won't give in, and neither will some of the people you've doubtlessly offended, the Empire will end up paying for it.

"Good luck on your latest. By the way, at last there's some Imperial interest in the growing commercial power represented by biologic technology. Barons Megalrie, Niniunto, Tvarik, and others are pressing for an Imperial Commission on the subject, and on firms such as Enver Limited, Corso and Associates, MCG Biologics. Thought you'd like to know. Needless to say, the foundation is opposing such a commission unless it includes an investigation of the activities of traditional firms to block biologic commercialization. I predict a stalemate, now that the Imperial Trust has endorsed the OERF position.

"In any case, now you know most of what I do."

Her image remained unspeaking, then she pursed her lips, licked them, and added, almost as an afterthought, "Attached is a databloc coded for entry and locked to your private code."

Her image vanished.

Gerswin touched the console.

"Record and store the information, visual and coded."

His fingers added the necessary codes to complete the entry, and he sat waiting before two blank screens as the AI went about its job.

The information had reached him before Baron Fugazey's agents had. If he had gone to Westmark, or Standora, or El Lido, or . . . he shook his head again.

Resourceful as she might by, Lyr was certainly not about to send torps and messages all over the Empire, and she couldn't send them outside the Empire, even though Gerswin moved there as well.

Too bad there wasn't the equivalent of a planetary communications network for intersystems communications, regardless of political jurisdictions. The jumpshift was the only way so far known to exceed light speed.

He snorted.

One day, unfortunately, with his expanding sphere of operations, as each of the operations he directed grew, he would be out of touch for too long. To be able to keep ahead of the Baron Fugazeys of the Empire, not to mention the I.S.S. and the Intelligence Service, he needed something he didn't have. Between the few cargo ships and the independents, one could reach the major systems, but it might be three days or four weeks.

He pursed his lips, then turned to the AI. He stopped and frowned.

Like it or not, he would have to have Lyr get the information . . . somehow . . . assuming he could also deal with Fugazey. But he would have to get Lyr started and hoped he could survive to finish up. He laughed, a hard barking sound. If he didn't survive, the whole point was mute.

"Message for Lyr D'Meryon. OER Foundation. Stand by."

"Awaiting message," the AI replied.

Gerswin sat up straight and squarely before the scanner.

"Thanks for the information about Baron Fugazey. Hope I can solve his problem my way rather than his.

"Brought to mind another area that might be fruitful. Need some background information first. Would you find out quietly if there are surplus I.S.S. message torps available, and at what price. If not, what would it cost to purchase or build one thousand of them from other sources? That's right. One thousand. Any support data you could dig up would be helpful.

"Let me know as soon as you can."

He touched the controls on data screens again.

"Interrogative analysis on the Fugazey data."

"Analysis incomplete."

Gerswin drummed his fingers on the edge of the control board and continued to wait, thinking about how to organize a torp-oriented message system on a commercial or public utility basis.

Finally, after he had mentally designed and discarded three schemes for a system, the AI chimed and interrupted his reflections.

"Analysis complete."

"Put on screen four."

He straightened and began to read, left index finger regulating the speed of the summary text.

When he had completed the first run-through he was frowning, pulling at his chin. He looked at the main flight controls, then at the AI panel.

He coughed and cleared his throat, then rekeyed the summary, As he ran through it again, his eyes flickered over the pages as fast as they appeared on the screen.

Then he leaned back in the control couch.

Lyr had done a good job, more than a good job, and the conclusions were clear.

Fugazey avoided confrontations whenever possible and only retaliated when his enterprises were seriously threatened or if his family appeared personally threatened. In those few cases, professionals, the closest equivalents to the now defunct Guild, were apparently employed, although no bodies ever surfaced.

The picture was that of a coldly sensible businessman who used the best tools possible and never acted primarily from emotion, except where his family was concerned.

Gerswin frowned. That meant he could not focus on the son, who had probably caused the problem, without dragging in the father. Eliminating Helene would enrage both the Fugazeys and the Daeris clan.

Theoretically, the best approach would be to convince both forge Fugazey and his son Duran that vengeance against one Commander Gerswin was neither wise nor desirable and that allowing Helene to dictate their course was particularly unwise. And he had to do so in a way that made the point clearly, but which left them able to save face.

LVII.

THE RHINOPED SNORTED, shifting its weight from left to right side, as if flexing the muscles that could propel its three ton mass at close to forty kays.

At the far end of the elongated clearing, a man, small by comparison to the beast, in turn shifted his weight, not taking his eyes off the rhinoped, as if to ensure that the red and flowing sheetmail weighed evenly across his massive shoulders.

Well over two meters tall, the giant swung his sword in prescribed arcs, waiting for the double bell, waiting for the sonic barrier to drop, that unseen wall that both held and infuriated the beast.

The combat was third on the card, more than a crowd warm-up, but still three events before the finale, where two firelizards, a blooded rhinoped, and a jackelion were pitted against a single man.

The giant in red mail did not have to accept those odds, since he entered the arena by choice, not necessity. In turn, the crowd cheered the animals rather than him, at least until the combat was over.

Just before the twin chimes sounded, he glanced upward, over the artificial terrain, over the synthetic recreation of the Alhurzian high forest toward that part of the spectator area bordered by the golden rail.

Whether he saw any mark of favor from the line of barons' tables or not, he made no acknowledgment, as he recentered his attention on the snorting rhinoped.

Cling! Cling!

Thirty meters above the purple-veined replicas of Alhurzian morloch vines, the copper-haired woman with the flowing curls that glistened and the bright green eyes that flashed with cold fire sat alone at the box rail table of a baron.

That it was the box table of at least a baron of the Empire was clear because only barons were permitted to purchase the inner line of tables along the high rail overlooking the arena. That she was recognized and belonged there was clear from the bowing and scraping accorded her by the staff, the depth of whose genuflections tended to be proportional to the wealth and position of those before whom they bowed.

That she was not the baroness herself was clear from the intensity in watching the arena, for she had not yet acquired the refined indifferent cruelty born of experience, though her carriage and manners were perfect in every ostensible sense.

Three tables down, to the left, also against the railing, sat an angular-featured young man, accompanied by a younger woman scarcely out of girlhood, and by a silver-haired and slender baroness whose veiled eyes slowly shifted from point to point, surveying everything but the action in the large arena below.

Most of the baron's tables held one or two people, though each could accommodate eight in grand style and up to twelve in a more intimate arrangement.

In the fringe area to the left and right of the baron's tables, where the status of the holders was in the undefined limbo of those greater than commercial magnates, but not officially recognized as barons, a black-haired, black-eyed man dressed in black sat alone. His hair was short, but tight-curled, and while his manners were almost indifferent, the staff tiptoed nearly as deferentially to him as to any baron.The table belonged to Fernand H'Llory, but the man who sat there was not H'Llory, for H'Llory had never attended the spectacles at the arena and had obtained the table for the convenience of his wide range of guests and associates, all of whom were at least the equal of commercial magnates, if not more. The placement of the table afforded an accommodation between shades of status satisfactory to all, particularly to H'Llory.

The man in black was obviously from the fringes of the Empire, for he wore the black with absolute authority, certainly, and flair, defying the current unspoken convention that while women might wear black, no man of worth would do so, for black had been the color of the assassins, and they had been broken, and those who remained and followed the profession independently were obviously inferior.

The copper-haired woman clapped politely, as did most of the other Imperials, as the red-mailed man in the arena dispatched the three-meter horned rhinoped. The kill had been serviceable, but little more. He had avoided injury, but taken more than the pair of normal kill strokes required to destroy the twin hearts of the beast.

The single woman let her eyes drift toward the man in black, who had not even made a gesture toward applause. As her head turned, the angular-faced young man's eyes followed hers, although he had to strain slightly to see her actions from the three table distance.

"Who is he?" asked the angular-faced man's sister.

"I don't know. He was here last night. Black then, too."

"Gauche," the girl observed.

"By current standards," noted the baroness.

"You approve, Mother?"

A wry smile crossed the baroness's face. "Whether I approve or not will affect society's judgments and fads little." She turned her head. "But the man is handsome, rather, in a dark way."

The angular-faced young man frowned, his complexion paling a shade. His sister touched his arm. He removed her fingers gently, but quickly.

"What can I do? Two agents missing, and that Commodore Gerswin has disappeared, almost as if he knew they were after him. Helene has refused to consider any contract or further contact until that's resolved. She says she is sorry, but whoever her contract-mate is will have to clear that blot."

He watched as the copper-haired woman known as Helene summoned a towering staffer in cold violet formal wear, watched as she instructed him or requested something, and watched as the tall man stepped away.

He was still watching as the functionary appeared at the table where the man in black sat.

The man in black inclined his head, then shook it firmly.

"She can't do that!" hissed the angular-faced man.

"He didn't accept, Duran," observed the sister.

"That will just intrigue her more."

"Of course."

"You are too eager, Duran, too intense, like your father, though he has come to accept that failing in himself. Watch the next combat. It might be interesting."