He realized with a start that there had only been one really reliable person in his entire life-good old Beeker, who despite his ill-concealed disapproval of Phule’s behavior on many occasions, had always been there with sound advice and an unfailing fund of practical know-how in the most surprisingly diverse areas. The real irony was that Phule was trying to find his one reliable servant-and falling on his face because he didn’t have anyone reliable to help him in the search! If only he could call on Beeker to help him find Beeker…

In fact, there was a way-or at least in theory there was a way. Unfortunately, it depended entirely on Beeker’s being willing to give up the mad pursuit and come back to his employer. Right here on the Port-a-Brain was a direct link to Beeker’s corresponding machine, which Phule could punch up to send a near-instant message to his absent employee from halfway across the galaxy.

It had one significant shortcoming: There was no way to force Beeker to pay attention to messages he didn’t want to read. In fact, Phule thought, even Beeker might be reluctant to take time on his vacation to read a message from his boss. So until Beeker decided he wanted to hear from his employer, paging him was going to be about as effective as attaching a paper note to a bird’s wings and asking it to deliver it to someone on another planet.

Phule sighed. He’d promised himself he wasn’t going to get sidetracked by pessimism. Not that it was all that easy-especially times like now, when it seemed like the only sane attitude to have…

“What’s wrong with hi- er, it?” asked Gears, looking at the Andromatic robot simulacrum of Phule. In the absence of Sushi, the company’s closest thing to a computer expert, Lieutenants Rembrandt and Armstrong had decided that Gears might be their best bet for a diagnosis of the robot’s problem. At least, Gears was good with other kinds of machines…

“Hit on the forehead with a golf ball,” said Armstrong. “There’s no visible damage, but then it started acting strangely.”

“And in this outfit, how’d you notice?” said Gears, with enough of a straight face that Armstrong nearly answered him. “Seriously, though, what’s it acting like? Maybe that’ll give me some kind of clue. Although it’d be nice to have a schematic of this baby’s brain.”

“If the captain ever had a schematic, it’s probably back at the casino offices on Lorelei,” said Rembrandt. “But to answer your question, the best way to describe the problem is, the robot’s trying to do everything by the book, the way General Blitzkrieg wants the company run. It’s acting just like that Major Botchup they sent to run the company the last time the captain was away.”

“Whoa, that’s scary,” said Gears. His face turned serious, and he said, “I hate to tell you this, Lieutenant, but I’m afraid this robot’s broke.”

“You’re kidding,” said Armstrong.

“No, really, it’s pretty messed up,” said Gears.

“All right, I believe you, Gears,” said Rembrandt. “Question is, can you fix it so the general can’t tell?-and I mean really fast?”

Gears shrugged. “Robot repair’s a real specialized field. I guess I know my way around the innards of a hoverjeep about as well as anybody in the Legion. I’m not going to tell nobody otherwise. If you want me to fix something else… well, no promises. Maybe Sushi could figure out what’s wrong with it, if he was around. But if this was my robot, I wouldn’t even open the cover. I’d send it right back to the factory. These Andromatic models are supposed to come with lifetime guarantees, I hear tell. You know Captain Jester always buys the best.“

“Yeah, too bad the factory’s a couple dozen parsecs away,” said Armstrong, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair. “How about a quick fix? It just has to keep working until the general goes away…”

“Which he isn’t showing any signs of doing, thanks to all the golf matches,” said Rembrandt. “You’d think he’d get tired of the game.”

“He enjoys beating the captain,” said Armstrong, shrugging. “The robot, really, but the general doesn’t know that. Actually, I think the general’s spent so long thinking of Captain Jester as the adversary that winning-and taking a bit of the captain’s money, as well-is a special treat, even if it’s only a game.”

“Makes sense,” admitted Rembrandt, frowning. “But wait a minute… what if the robot started winning all the time?‘

“Well, the robot has been winning, every now and then,” said Armstrong. “Just enough to keep the general from figuring out it’s letting him win the matches.” He gave the robot a long stare, then said, “I’m not sure just what it’s likely to do now. Today it started playing like a world champion. The general’s not going to appreciate that. So we’ve got to fix it…”

“Yeah,” said Rembrandt. “The question is, can we?”

It took Major Sparrowhawk about three milliseconds to notice that General Blitzkrieg was boiling mad. It didn’t take a lot of thought; he pretty much gave it away when he burst in the door, bellowed out a string of curses, and threw his golf bag halfway across the office they’d been assigned on Zenobia Base.

Sparrowhawk wasn’t upset. She’d seen her boss in that condition plenty of times before. Some might even argue that it was the general’s normal mood. Whether it was or not, he’d been in an abnormally pleasant state for nearly two weeks.

She gave a mental shrug and prepared to deal with the situation. That was really the essence of her job as Blitzkrieg’s adjutant: figuring out what to do when the general was so pissed off at the universe that nobody else wanted anything to do with him. Not surprisingly, there weren’t very many other junior Legion officers willing to take on the task. That gave her a fair measure of job security, as well as a quite decent lifestyle back at Rahnsome Base, where most of the Alliance military maintained their general staff and headquarters. Here at Zenobia Base, the lifestyle was another story-although she certainly couldn’t complain about the food.

And, in fact, she’d had more than the usual amount of downtime, with the general concentrating so totally on his golf game. She felt a certain grudging admiration for Captain Jester, who’d had the foresight to build a golf course here, and to entice Blitzkrieg into an apparently endless series of matches. It had certainly kept the general out of her hair. She hadn’t even felt the usual pressure to snoop around the base, compiling a list of the violations, screw-ups, and deficiencies every base commander tried to sweep under the rug when a staff officer came to visit. She had developed a knack for finding sore spots for the general to pounce on once he’d stopped having fun. Well, it looked as if the fun was over-for her as well as for the general. And as much as she’d come to like the people she’d been dealing with on Zenobia, she knew her job.

She reached for her digital notepad. “I think you’ll want to look at this, General,” she said, in a tone of voice carefully modulated to pique his interest rather than add to his annoyance.

“I’ll be damned if I want to look at anything,” roared Blitzkrieg, pretty much the response she’d expected. He plopped himself in the padded desk chair and bellowed, “Pour me a Scotch, damn it!”

“Yes, sir,” said Sparrowhawk, already moving toward the portable bar discreetly installed on one side of the office. She quickly fixed a drink to the general’s usual specifications and carried it over to him. As he took the drink, she set the notepad down on the desk slightly to one side of him and went back to her own desk. It wouldn’t be long before curiosity got the better of him…

In fact, he succumbed to the temptation after his second sip, picking up the notepad and staring at it for a solid minute before growling, “What the hell is this about?”

“Oh, probably nothing important,” said Sparrowhawk, brightly. She took out her laser trimmer and began evening up her fingernails, then said, “I believe it’s some sort of apparatus the Zenobians are running here on the base. I’m not certain what it does, though.”