Chapter 9

The ship that had brought Jim and the Starkiens to this world was a smaller version of the space-going vessel that had brought Jim back from Alpha Centauri III. It was just big enough to hold the Ten-units of men, and required only one individual on duty watch in the ship's Power Room. It was directed by the same economical method according to which most things owned by the High-born were run. Whoever was in command of the ship merely visualized his destination and left it to the ship to pick up that visualization, resolve it, match it with the destination itself, and bring the ship to it. On their outward-bound voyage from the Throne World, it had been Harn II who had directed the ship, since Jim had no mental picture of their destination. Now, headed back to the Throne World, Jim needed no help. He needed only to visualize any spot on the surface of the Throne World—his own quarters, if need be—and the ship would take over from there. He did so, and the ship obeyed.

As they were about to land, however, he took Harn II and Adok aside.

"Adjutant," he said to Harn, "I want you to keep the men aboard ship here after we land. Don't go directly to your quarters to report back. Wait here in the ship until I send for you."

Harn stood still without saying anything for a long second.

"This is against usual practice," he said at last. "I assume it's an order?"

"It's an order," said Jim.

"In that case . . ." said Harn, "the only thing that can override it would be either orders from the Emperor or reason for us to believe that our staying aboard would be contrary to the Emperor's wishes. After what we've been through, I'm inclined not to think that these orders of yours can be contrary to the Emperor's wishes."

"You can believe me, Adjutant," said Jim slowly. "It's the Emperor's welfare I'm concerned about. And that welfare may be better served if you men stay out of sight aboard this ship instead of going back to your quarters."

"Sir!" said Harn II acknowledgingly. "You're returning to your own quarters, Sir?"

"I am," said Jim, "and I'm taking Adok with me."

He touched Adok on the arm and shifted them both back into his own quarters. They were empty. He shifted to Ro's apartment.

Ro was there, in the room with all her pets—hers and Afuan's—cutting the nails of the apelike creature. But she dropped her tools and practically tackled him in her enthusiasm at seeing him again.

"Jim!" she said. "Jim! . . ."

He let her squeeze him for a moment, and hugged her back briefly. Then, patting her head gently, he reached behind him and unlocked the grip of her hands so as to put her arms away from him.

"I'm sorry," he said gently. "But the situation's rather urgent."

She giggled, almost wickedly, ignoring the fact that he held her hands. Her eyes ran over him.

"Is that your Starkien uniform?" she asked. "How big you look in it! . . . Are those bands you're wearing still powered?"

"Yes," said Jim, not knowing quite what to make of this sudden, mad humor of hers, and hoping that a calm answer would calm her as well.

"They are?" she giggled again. "Show me! Smash that wall there down for me—"

She broke off suddenly and did sober up.

"No, no. What am I saying?" Abruptly the ridiculous humor was gone from her. She looked up at him gravely. "What is it Jim? You look worried!"

"Worried?" He let go of her wrists. "Not exactly—but there may be something going on to be worried about. Tell me, Ro. What on the Throne World here is blue?"

"Blue? You mean the color blue?" she asked. He nodded his head. "Why . . . white is the color we usually use. You know that. Occasionally, a little red. I don't think there is much blue on the Throne World nowadays, except a stray object or two that one of the High-born might've brought back from one of the Colonial Worlds."

"Think," said Jim, staring steadily at her. "Think hard."

"But, there really isn't any—oh," Ro interrupted herself, "unless you want to count the usual things. The sky here is blue. And the water is blue. Oh, and"—she paused to smile again—"there's the Emperor's Blue Beast still hidden somewhere in the palace someplace, if you want to count that."

"Blue Beast?" His question was so sharp and abrupt that she paled.

"Why, yes, Jim," she said, staring at him, "but it's nothing. It's just a toy that he used to have when he was a baby. Only he started to have nightmares about it, and they hid it from him. I don't know who hid it, or where it was hidden, and I don't think anybody knows nowadays. But it got so bad that anything blue-colored was likely to—upset him. That's why there's never anything blue left lying around where the Emperor might see it. Why is it so important to you?"

He heard the question at the end of her speech, but it was like hearing an unimportant noise far off. His mind was whirring, and he did not bother to answer her.

"I've got to see Vhotan right away," he said. "How do I find him, Ro?"

"Jim, what is it?" She was really alarmed now. "Vhotan's with the Emperor. You can't just go charging in on the Emperor. Oh, I know you did it once and got away with it. But you can't do it now. Particularly now."

"Why, particularly now?" Jim asked.

She took a small step back from him.

"Jim . . ." she said, uncertainly. "Don't . . ."

Jim made an effort to return his face to calmness.

"All right," he said. "Now tell me. Why is now so particular?"

"It's just that right now there's all this trouble going on, on the Colony Worlds," said Ro. "Vhotan's been sending out Starkiens to help the Governors of the lesser races put down the trouble, until there aren't any left here on the Throne World. He doesn't have a moment to spare to talk to anyone—"

She broke off, staring at him again. "Jim, will you tell me what it is!" 

But again he hardly heard her. His thoughts were galloping far ahead under the impetus of this new piece of information. For a moment he gazed unseeingly out the transparent window of the pets' room at the ocean shore. An ocean shore, here too? The idea that Ro must carry a sandy beach and a piece of ocean around with her to provide a view for Afuan's pets was so ridiculous that it jolted his thoughts back into effectiveness.

"I want to get in touch with Slothiel," he said, looking back at Ro. "Then, the four of us—you, I, Slothiel, and Adok—must go and find Vhotan, whether he's with the Emperor or not."

"Are you crazy, Jim?" she said. "You can't go into the Emperor's presence wearing power bands like that! No one's allowed in his presence with anything more than a rod. His Starkiens would kill you out of reflex the minute you appeared. If you have to do this wild thing, at least take those power bands off! You too, Adok!"

She glanced past him at the Starkien. Her own fingers were already busy stripping the power bands off Jim's left arm. The wisdom of what she said was undeniable, and after a second he began to assist her. A moment later he had no weapon left but the rod in its loops at his belt. Looking around, he saw that Adok had similarly rid himself of power bands.

"Now," he said to Ro. "To Slothiel's. You'll have to find him for us. I don't even know where his quarters are."

She touched his arm, and they were abruptly in a different suite of rooms.

"Slothiel!" called Jim. But no answer came back through any of the three doorways leading off from the room in which they had appeared.

"He's not here," said Ro. "And it's no use our moving all over the Throne World looking for him. He could be one jump ahead of us, and we'd never catch up with him that way. The best thing is just to wait here for him, Jim."

"Wait?" said Jim. "Waiting is the one thing we can't afford to do. Can't we—"

He broke off. For Slothiel had just appeared before them.

"Welcome home, Jim," said Slothiel. "You're the first of our conquering heroes to get back. I heard you'd landed ship, but when I went to your quarters just now, you weren't there. I tried Ro's—and all I found was a batch of discarded power bands. So I came back here to look for messages—and, here you are!"

He smiled and waved Ro and Jim graciously to hassocks. Adok he ignored.

"Sit down," Slothiel said. "How about something to eat and drink? I can get you—"

"Nothing!" interrupted Jim. "Slothiel, are you loyal to the Emperor?"

Slothiel raised his eyebrows.

"My dear ex-Wolfling," he drawled, "all High-born are loyal to the Emperor. Otherwise how could we be loyal to ourselves?"

"There's loyalty and loyalty," said Jim bluntly. "I didn't ask you if you were loyal, in the academic sense. I asked you if you were loyal in the—say—Starkien sense?"

Slothiel stiffened slightly. His white eyebrows drew together.

"What sort of catechism is this, Jim?" he asked. But the tone of his voice was no longer one of completely idle banter. Under a surface of indifference there was a note of hard interest.

"You haven't answered me, Slothiel," said Jim.

"Should I answer, then?" murmured Slothiel in the tone of voice of a man choosing between two canapes on a serving tray. But his eyes remained unmoving on Jim. "After all, I am a High-born, and this is only an ex-Wolfling, a being of the lesser races . . . yes, I will answer. I'm loyal, Jim." His voice had suddenly become hard, with none of the soft nonsense left about it. "Now, what is this? And I want a straight, direct answer!"

"My Ten-units of Starkiens on Athiya," said Jim evenly, "were baited into a military trap that would have been no trap at all, if it hadn't been equipped with an antimatter weapon."

"Antimatter?" Slothiel's face stiffened for a second in astonishment, then quickly relaxed again as his High-born mind accepted the incredible statement and ran quickly on to examine the implications of it. Within a few seconds he looked at Jim again. "Yes, you're right, Jim. We should see Vhotan about this."

"That's what I've intended to do, all along," said Jim. "I was only waiting to find you and take you along with the rest of us."

"Rest of us?" Slothiel glanced at Ro and Adok. "You and I are sufficient."

"No," said Jim. "I need Adok with me as a witness to what happened. And Ro stays with us because it's safest for her."

"Safest?" Slothiel shot a glance at Ro, who was watching both men and looking puzzled. "Oh—yes, I see what you mean. She could be taken and used as a hostage against you by whoever's behind this if we left her unprotected. All right, Starkien!"

He beckoned Adok in close, and the four of them shifted as a group to their destination.

They appeared in a room that was not the same room in which Jim had encountered Vhotan and the Emperor before. This was a larger room, something like a ballroom with a lounge area at one end. All the other walls of the ballroom except that which opened upon the lounge area were covered to the high, white ceiling with light-green draperies. In the center of the ballroom floor sat a peculiar instrument with a basketball-shaped head that was slowly rotating. In time with its rotation, various patterns in many colors other than blue flickered and played and swam around the ceiling. The Emperor was seated—almost sprawled—on the large hassock at the edge of the ballroom floor, staring raptly up at those patterns.

Nearby were three Starkiens, carrying rods and wearing power bands. Vhotan was some twenty feet away from the Emperor, standing over a table surface patterned with studs.

Except that he was not seated, his position and actions were very much like those Jim had seen in him once before.

With the appearance of the four people, the three Starkiens had automatically drawn their rods. Vhotan looked sharply up, caught sight of Slothiel, and waved the rods back into their belt loops. He turned from the table surface to face the group, scowling a little at Jim.

"I wasn't notified your Ten-units had returned to quarters," he said to Jim. "I can use those men right now."

"That's why I ordered them not to return to quarters," answered Jim.

Vhotan frowned sharply.

"What do you mean?" he said sharply. "And who gave you the authority to—"

He was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a servant—a man of the same appearance of Melness, carrying a small white box.

"This has just been delivered for you, Vhotan," the servant said. "It was sent through the Princess Afuan from the Governor of—" The servant gave the imperial name for Alpha Centauri.

"All right," scowled Vhotan. The servant disappeared. Vhotan carried the box over to his table service, felt about it for a second, and then lifted off a cover. His scowl deepened.

"What is this?" he asked. He started to swing back to face them, but at that moment a new voice interrupted him.

"Why, it's Oran," said the voice. It was the Emperor, woken from his gazing at the refulgent patterns of the ceiling, and now walking over to peer interestedly into the box. His hand went down and came up holding what looked like a chunk of granite, rough-cut, perhaps three inches in diameter. "And there's a note with it."

He picked up a card from the box and looked at it.

"It says, 'At the request of my good friend, Jim Keil,' " said the Emperor, turning to face Vhotan and the group as he read, " 'this specimen of rock from his homeland, the planet Earth, as a souvenir for the High-born, Vhotan.' " 

The Emperor, smiling delightedly, lifted his eyes to Vhotan.

"It's a present for you, Vhotan," he said cheerfully, "from our ex-Wolfling, here! Here, you'd better take it!"

The Emperor tossed the rock to the older High-born, whose long hands went up automatically to catch it in midair.

Vhotan's right hand closed about the flying object, and instantly he was covered with a brilliant blue light—an eye-baffling light in which his outlines were distorted and altered from the human into something unclear, but heavy and thick-bodied, bestial.

The Emperor screamed, stumbling backward and throwing up both long-fingered hands to shield his face from the sight.

"Nephew—" It was the voice of Vhotan, but somehow distorted and mangled into a growling bass. He raised blue-dazzling, thick, pawlike arms of light and took a step toward the Emperor, protectively.

The Emperor screamed again and stumbled backward, almost falling over a hassock, but keeping to his feet. His heels rang on the bare floor beyond the lounge area. He flung up a long arm with finger pointing.

"The Blue Beast!" he screamed to his Starkiens. "Kill it! Kill it!" 

If there was a hesitation on the part of the Starkiens, it was for less than a fraction of a second. At once the three rods were drawn and came up, and the blue-haloed figure of Vhotan, still stepping toward the Emperor with arms outstretched, was laced with white fire.

The figure slumped. The blue light went out. A small piece of reddish rock rolled unheeded across the carpeted floor of the lounge section. Silent and still, sprawled upon that same carpet, lay Vhotan, his face untouched, but his body and limbs almost dismembered by incredible burn-lines.

There was no more sound or movement in the room. The Emperor stood staring at Vhotan. He stared for a long moment before his face and eyes began to change.

"Uncle?" he said in a quavering, uncertain voice. "Uncle?" 

Slowly he began to move toward Vhotan. As he got closer, his shoulders bowed, and his face twisted like a man undergoing some process of torture. Slowly he came up to Vhotan and stood over him. He gazed down into Vhotan's untouched face. For such a violent death, Vhotan's face was strangely serene. His eyes and mouth were closed; the muscles of his features were relaxed. From the neck up he looked like someone engaged in a moment's silent meditation or thought.

"Vhotan . . ." began the Emperor on a note of anguish. But then his voice died in him, like the voice of a talking doll which had run down. He froze, unmoving, in the position in which he was, leaning over Vhotan, his arms half-reaching down toward the body of the older man. For a moment, to Jim, it seemed impossible that such a pose could be maintained. But the Emperor stayed as he was, as unmoving as a statue cast in plaster of paris.

Behind Jim, Slothiel stirred. He stepped forward toward the Emperor.

"Oran!" Slothiel said.

There was sudden amused laughter at the far end of the ballroom floor. Out of the corner of his eye, Jim caught sight of the three Starkiens spinning about swiftly, their rods coming up.

Then there were three odd, coughing sounds; and as Jim finished raising his head, he saw the three Starkiens stumble and fall. On the polished ballroom floor, they lay as still as Vhotan lay.

Jim turned to look toward the far end of the polished floor. There, just in front of one of the green curtains, stood Galyan, holding a black rod in his right hand, and a strange, handgun sort of device, with a long, twisted barrel, in his left. Behind Galyan were Melness and Afuan. As Jim caught sight of them, Galyan tossed the handgun contemptuously away from him. It skidded across the polished floor until its further progress was blocked by a leg of one of the dead Starkiens.

Followed by Melness and Afuan, Galyan walked toward the lounge end of the room. His heels rapped with a strange loudness on the polished surface of the floor. He laughed again at the small group still standing there, as he came.

"You're quite a problem, Wolfling," he said to Jim. "Not only do you come back alive, but, having come back, you force me into taking action ahead of schedule. But it's all come out all right."

He reached the end of the polished floor and stepped onto the carpet. He stopped and transferred his gaze from Jim to Slothiel.

"No, Slothiel," he said mockingly. "Not 'Oran.'—'Galyan.' We will have to teach you to say 'Galyan.' "