'Quite. That's good improvisation.'

  'Come through the front gate. Do a code O on your lights so we'll know it's you. Over and out if it's khorosho.' 'Perfectly khorosho,' Borton said--and it was. If Agents Wombat and Periwinkle told any planetary chief of SOTS to go jump in the lake he'd do it--and fast. 'Here's your green, Phyllis. Thanks.'

  It took Borton forty-five minutes to get dressed, assemble a squad of men, and get over to the castle. The d'Alemberts used that intervening time to good advantage. Even while Jules had been talking, Yvette had been quietly going about her business, injecting each of their eleven top prisoners with doses of nitrobarb. After twenty minutes, they were ready to tell everything they knew. Unfortunately, except for the Baron, all of them knew very little. This criminal organization had been built on a cell system, with people in one group not knowing anyone from any of the others except for the one person directly above them in the hier-archy.

  Even the Baron himself, the man in charge of this whole planet's underworld, only knew of one off-world contact, but that was better than nothing. Under the drug's in-fluence, the Baron told them about a certain bar near the main spaceport on the planet Aston, and about the code phrase necessary to get beyond a certain point.

  Finally Borton's party showed up at the front gate. The planetary chief blinked the headlights on his vehicle three short blinks, as agreed, and the gates opened for him. He and his men entered the estate and walked quickly to the front door of the castle.

  Jules and Yvette allowed only him to see them as they admitted him to the vestibule; the rest of his men were told to wait outside. Borton recognized them instantly. 'You!' he exclaimed, looking from one spectacular agent to the other and back again. 'You two have been driving my office staff nuts trying to get a line on you. I must admit, it is a switch. You came in with bands blaring and pennons waving.'

  'Absolutely. We figured they'd be looking for people who skulked around in dark corners.'

  'Could be... If I may ask, I suppose there's a good reason why I wasn't let in on any of this from the beginning?' 'Very good. Follow us and you'll see what it was,' Jules said.

  They led Borton into the main hall. The eleven bodies lay scattered about the floor in a drugged stupor. Borton took just a quick skim to size up the situation, then turned back to the d'Alemberts. 'You used nitrobarb,' he said. His tone was matter-of-fact, though many people could not mention the drug's name without either distaste or horror. 'And on the Baron of Osberg, yet. With nitrobarb's fatality rate, half of them will die. I think I can see now why you didn't apply for approval first,'

  'They'll all die,' Jules said grimly. 'Especially the Baron. The penalty for treason, remember, is summary execution. Those who survive the drug may live a few days longer than the others. That's all. But you don't really see yet. Keep on looking.'

  Borton gazed back into the hall. As his eyes swept over the slack jaws and glazed expressions of the drugged men, they eventually came to rest on the tall, burly figure of a blond man with a pencil-thin mustache. There they stopped, and Borton's face turned gray. The shock and surprise hit him so hard that he couldn't even think to swear.

  'That's Alf Rixton,' he managed finally. 'My first assistant. He's been with me for over ten years! Top clearance, too, with lie detector and hypnointerrogation every year. He's done splendid work.'

  'Yeah--for the other side,' Yvette said coldly. 'The only crooks and traitors he ever caught were the ones his people wanted to get rid of. It's all yours now, Borton, the whole operation. Take over. We'll have to stay on-planet for a while--some people higher up might get a tad suspicious if the Velasquezes left Algonia the instant this ring was broken--but we don't want to appear in this. Not so much as a whisper. Nobody here in the castle got a look at us--we moved a little too fast for them--and your men haven't seen us. Only you know, and you won't tell. But there are a few others you'll have to silence for a time, if not permanently.' She told him about the ambushers who were now trussed up on the Velasquezes' hideaway estate.

  Borton nodded. 'Don't worry, they'll be taken care of. But listen, how can I explain all of this? There'll be reports to fill out and the press will be asking all sorts of questions. They get very sharp whenever the nobility's involved in scandal. What can I say? They won't believe I planned this whole operation by myself.'

  'Of course not,' Jules grinned. 'Gospodin Rixton over there cooked the whole thing up and helped you pull it off. A fury with a short fuse as he waded into the thick of the fighting. Too bad the honors are posthumous, but he died upholding the glorious traditions of the Service.

  Again, Borton nodded--more slowly, this time. 'Thanks. One of our very best men, he died a hero's death, defending gallantly and so forth--sob, sob--the rat. Yeah, that'll do it. But having me take the credit for this operation when the two of you really did all the work...'

  'It really wouldn't be wise to let people know we'd been here,' Yvette said quietly.

  'Khorosho,'Borton grinned wryly. 'Undercover agents should remain under cover.'

  'Exactly,' Jules agreed. Then he looked at his sister and, in unison, they recited the Service salute: 'Here's to to-morrow, fellow and friend. May we all live to see it!' And with that, they strode out of the room, out of the castle without being seen by Borton's men--and out of Borton's life forever. One scum pit had been cleaned out--it was time for them to move onward and upward to the next.

  Borton stood motionless, staring at the door as it closed behind them. He knew what those two were--Agents Wombat and Periwinkle--but that was all he knew, or ever would know, about them. But they had given him too much to do to waste his time wool-gathering. He had to interro-gate these prisoners, find out more about their organization so that he could sweep up the pawns as well as the kings, and concoct a story that would satisfy the press.

  He let the rest of his men into the house and barked his orders. Then, shrugging his shoulders, he began questioning those of the hoodlums who were still alive.

  News of the arrests broke early the next morning. Involving as it did the treason of a rich and important baron, all the news services leapt at it. Words flashed through the subether at many times the speed of light, and soon the information was being broadcast as a major scandal on every fully settled planet of the Empire.

  In particular, the news reached a tall, angular man to whom it was more than just a piece of sensationalism. He lost no time in taking his private elevator tube to the sub-basement, where his private map of the Empire glowed. He stood there looking up at its enormous bulk, his dark eyes scanning the pinpoints of light that represented planets. At first he could not find the green dot that represented Algonia, one of his key systems--then he understood. His computers had already assimilated the data coming in from all parts of his domain, and had reassessed the situation. The dot that was Algonia no longer burned the green of one of his key planets, nor even the red that indicated he controlled it. That dot was a clear, steady blue-the blue that represented the Empire.

  A setback,the man thought as he stroked his goatee. A definite setback. But hardly a crucial one. He felt comforted as he looked upward at his three-dimensional map. There were still more than two dozen green lights, still close to a thousand red ones. His crimson tide was still growing in magnitude, still threatening to engulf the few remaining spots of blue. The loss of one green light could hardly stop his inexorable progress.

  The question remained, though, burning in the back of his brain: was the loss of Algonia a coincidence, or did it form a part of some counteroffensive against him? It would be hard to tell from this isolated incident; he would have to set his computers to looking for a pattern.

  For some unexplained reason, the late Colonel Crandon crossed his mind. The traitor had said something about a special team of two agents. Could they in some way have been responsible for this affair? It was something to cor-relate, surely.

  But he was not worried. Even if, somehow, two agents acting on their own could wipe out an entire planetary organization, they still could not begin to touch the entire structure of what he had built. Besides, he gloated, there are plenty of boobytraps along the way.

  Chapter Ten

  The Switch

  One of the most controversial provisions of the Stanley Doctrine was the one regarding marriages. Nobles were free to marry anyone they chose, whether the chosen was noble or common. Royalty did not have this freedom. (In fact, this is the only limitation placed on royalty in the entire document.) Members of the royal family were required to marry commoners. Moreover, the Stanley family name was to be retained even when a princess married; in that one case alone, the male changed his surname. This provision was considered shocking when it was announced, but the reasoning behind it was sound. Empress Stanley Three wanted to avoid the inbreeding that had absolutely de-stroyed the European monarchies by the twentieth century C.E. By absolutely forbidding marriage within a consan-guinity of one thirty-second, she insured the continuing strength of the Stanley line. (Stanhope, Elements of Empire, Reel 2, slot 411.)

  No one at the Hotel Splendide saw the Velasquezes return to the hotel that night, but that was not unusual; they had sometimes in the past come in via the garage and gone straight up to their suite on a private elevator tube. Nor did anything seem unusual when they came down to breakfast at their usual time of eleven o'clock the next morning. There was a difference, though, in that they had actually slept that late this morning--they'd earned it.

  Of course, Carmen and Carlos knew nothing of the arrests of the night before when the eager waiter hurried into the dining room with the breakfast they had punch-ordered ahead from their room. They could tell that something important had happened by the fact that he was accompanied this time by his captain, who carried both local morning newsrolls in his hand.

  'Good morning, gospodin and gospozha,' the captain said respectfully. 'You have perhaps not yet heard the extra-ordinary news on your receiver?'

  'Uh-uh.' Jules covered a yawn with his hand and shook his head. 'We're hardly awake yet.' He was dressed in gold satin pantaloons and a short purple vest; Yvette wore her fabulous headpiece and a purple-and-gold morning robe that, while opaque in a few places here and there, was practically transparent everywhere else.

  'Did something happen that concerns us?' Yvette asked languidly.

  'Most assuredly. It is something that rocks the faith of every honest citizen. The most tremendous, the most sensa-tional scandal the Empire has seen in twenty years--and it happened right here on Algonia !' He put the newsrolls down beside Yvette while he helped the waiter arrange the breakfast table most meticulously. 'But perhaps I intrude. You will read of it later, I'm sure. You will naturally now want to eat your breakfast while it is still hot. Forgive me for intruding.' The two hotel men accepted the Velasquezes' usual generous gratuities and left the pair in peace.

  After their meal, Jules and Yvette went back up to their suite and read through the story with great interest--and also with an occasional snort or giggle. The official version was, of course, new to them, but they had to admit that Borton had done a credible job in fabricating it. SOTS, under the masterly direction and leadership of its planetary chief, had been keeping this band of traitors under close and con-tinuous surveillance for over a year. They had waited until they were sure they had found every member and con-nection of the band, and then had struck at every point simultaneously. They had made a clean sweep.

  Faced with the absolute proof of their guilt, each of the traitors had confessed fully. The Service, acting in its capa-city as administrator of the Emperor's justice, promptly carried out the mandatory sentence for treason: death.

  That sentence even included the Baron of Osberg, who had been the group's ringleader. Normally he would have been entitled, as a peer of the realm, to a High Court of justice; but so overwhelming was the evidence against him that he broke down, confessed his crimes and was permitted to take the 'honorable' way out.

  The news report hastened to point out that the Baron was the only member of his family to be involved in these treasonous activities, and so his barony would not revert to the Crown. Instead, his wife became the Baroness Dowager Carlotta, and his daughter Ilse--only nineteen years old--became the new Baroness. Ilse was known as a kind, generous woman, active in sports as well as in numerous philanthropic organizations, and would give Osberg the new, dynamic leadership it needed -and so on.

  Planetary Chief Borton had had only the help of his brave assistant, Alf Rixton; none had come from Earth. No sug-gestion was made anywhere that nitrobarb had been used--and for good reason. The mere possession of that powerful drug had been made a capital offense some fifteen years earlier.

  'Nice,' Yvette said. 'That story's so tight I almost believe it myself.'

  'Yeah,' sighed Jules, leaning back on his bed. 'But now comes the roughest part of all--waiting. I'd love nothing better than to move on to Aston and follow up that lead we got from the Baron... it could dry up before we can move. But we're stuck here for a while at least because we can't draw attention to ourselves. If Carlos and Carmen left right after this raid, somebody might put two and two together to get twenty-two.'

  Yvette thought for a moment. 'I know that's what I told Borton last night, but I'm not so sure right now. The fact that we were here on Algonia--coupled with the fact that those two 'Delfians' in the Dunedin Arms could only have been a high-grav twosome--would be plenty of evidence already for people not half as smart as the ones we're up against. It won't take the enemy too long to associate the Velasquezes with the Delfians. So whether we stay here a month or leave today makes no difference--except, perhaps, as an exercise in the old guessing game.'

  'Tu as raison,as always. But, as you said, the old guessing game can be important, and I think we should take some time to set up some sleight of hand. Let's put in a call back home and see what we can arrange, shall we?'

  It was eight days later that Carlos and Carmen Velasquez bid a tearful farewell to the Hotel Splendide. Tears were plentiful on the other side of the counter as well, because the staff knew they might never again encounter such heavy tippers. True to their fashion, the dizzy pair of ex-Puritans scattered their parting largesse from the penthouse all the way to their limousine, and thence to the spaceport.

  Once there, they boarded a luxury liner bound for Lateesta via Aston. As the ship's last port of call had been DesPlaines--and as it had taken on some passengers there--sections of the vessel had been marked out for artificial gravity. Feeling what they considered to be the only honest gravitational pull after so long made Jules and Yvette con-siderably homesick; but that homesickness was at least in part alleviated in a couple of minutes when they visited the suite of the three passengers who had traveled here from DesPlaines.

  The door to the suite opened, and there stood a small, powerfully-built girl with brown hair, almond-shaped eyes and an exquisitely beautiful face. That face lit up with surprise and delight as the girl belatedly recognized the pair standing before her.

  'Jules!' she shrieked, and leaped at him so suddenly that even with his strength he had to take a step back to main-tain his balance.

  'Vonnie! Sweetheart!' His arms clasped around her solid--but decidedly feminine--body as their lips met in a passionate kiss. Time froze for them for maybe half a minute as the two young people renewed their love after a four-month separation.

  After being motionless in each other's arms for so long, Yvonne Roumenier pulled back a little, looked Jules up and down with critical eyes, and finally shook her head. 'I have got to have a picture of you like that. Both of you,' she added, seeming to notice Yvette for the first time. The two girls kissed affectionately on the cheek. 'Come on in,' Yvonne said, opening the door wider to admit them.

  The stateroom was first-class, but not the deluxe one that the 'Velasquezes' had taken, several levels away. The fur-niture was all comfortably upholstered and solidly built; it had to be to withstand the three gees of artificial gravity within the room.

  'They told me you'd disguised yourselves,' Yvonne con-tinued, 'but this is something that has to be seen to be believed. Gabby, Jacques, come on out here and see the pair of peacocks who dropped by.'

  As the two people so addressed entered the room, Yvonne continued to look at Jules. 'You always were a handsome so-and-so, Julie, but now you're simply beautiful!' She kissed him a few more times. 'But I'm not wild about that mustache--it tickles.'

  'You'll get used to it,' Jules smiled back at his fiancee. 'I did.'

  The two other people who now entered the room were both DesPlainians, with the short, stocky bodies that char-acterized inhabitants of that planet. The woman was Gab-rielle d'Alembert, sister-in-law to Jules and Yvette. Her husband was their older brother Robert, heir to the Duke's title and the man who really ran DesPlaines while the Duke was off managing the Circus. Gabrielle had an aristocratic tilt to her nose and steel-gray eyes that could be quite cold, though they seemed friendly enough right at the moment. She was slightly older than Yvette, though she kept her skin so smooth and perfect that they might have been sisters in fact as well as in law.

  The man beside her was Jacques Roumenier, Yvonne's younger brother. Both the Roumeniers were children of one of Duke Etienne's best friends, Baron Ebert Roumenier of Nouveau Calais; they themselves were lifelong friends of Jules and Yvette and had, in fact, been raised together. They were also cracking good SOTS agents.

  Jacques was a slightly horsefaced man, homely but nice. His face now sported the same type of mustache as Jules'. 'Hello, Yvette,' he said softly, gazing intently at her feet. Jacques had always had a crush on her and, while she loved him as a friend, her feelings did not extend beyond that--and he knew it. She was always warm and companionable with him, though, for she hated to hurt him any more than necessary.

  'Hello, Jacques,' she beamed back at him. 'You know, there's something about that mustache that looks familiar.' 'Of course,' said Yvonne, leaping into the conversational breach. 'He's going to be the new Carlos, and Gabby's going to replace you. I asked the Duke to let me be Carmen Velasquez--begged him, practically on my knees--but the dirty mudlug wouldn't listen. He went by the thousand point test, like always, and Gabby's nine ninety-three beat me out.'

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16