“By hook or crook, Dominic, you’ve got to keep them unaware. That’s your job; at the same time, keep on distracting Aycharaych, keep him off my neck.”

She yawned and kissed him. “Better go to sleep now,” she said. “We’ve got a tough couple of days ahead of us.”

He couldn’t sleep. He got up when she was breathing quietly and walked over to the balcony. The knowledge was staggering. That the Empire, the bungling decadent Empire, could pull such a stroke and hope to get away with it!

Something stirred in the garden below. The moonlight was dim red on the figure that paced between two Merseian bodyguards. Aycharaych!

Flandry stiffened in dismay. The Chereionite looked up and he saw the wise smile on the telepath’s face. He knew.

In the following two days, Flandry worked as he had rarely worked before. There wasn’t much physical labor involved, but he had to maintain a web of complications such that the Sartaz would have no chance for a private audience with any Merseian and would not leave the capital on one of his capricious journeys. There was also the matter of informing such Betelgeusean traitors as were on his side to be ready, and—

It was nerve-shattering. To make matters worse, something was wrong with him: clear thought was an effort; he had a new and disastrous tendency to take everything at face value. What had happened to him?

Aycharaych excused himself on the morning after Aline’s revelation and disappeared. He was out arranging something hellish for the Terrans when they arrived, and Flandry could do nothing about it. But at least it left him and Aline free to carry on their own work.

He knew the Merseian fleet could not get near Betelgeuse before the Terrans landed. It is simply not possible to conceal the approximate whereabouts of a large fighting force from the enemy. How it had been managed for Terra, Flandry couldn’t imagine. He supposed that it would not be too large a task force which was to occupy Alfzar — but that made its mission all the more precarious.

The tension gathered, hour by slow hour. Aline went her own way, conferring with General Bronson, the human-Betelgeusean officer whom she had made her personal property. Perhaps he could disorganize the native fleet at the moment when Terra struck. The Merseian nobles plainly knew what Aycharaych had found out; they looked at the humans with frank hatred, but they made no overt attempt to warn the Sartaz. Maybe they didn’t think they could work through the wall of suborned and confused officials which Flandry had built around him — more likely, Aycharaych had suggested a better plan for them. There was none of the sense of defeat in them which slowly gathered in the human.

It was like being caught in spider webs, fighting clinging gray stuff that blinded and choked and couldn’t be pulled away. Flandry grew haggard, he shook with nervousness, and the two days dragged on.

He looked up Gunazar Valley in the atlas. It was uninhabited and desolate, the home of winds and the lair of dragons, a good place for a secret landing — only how secret was a landing that Aycharaych knew all about and was obviously ready to meet?

“We haven’t much chance, Aline,” he said to her. “Not a prayer, really.”

“We’ll just have to keep going.” She was more buoyant than he, seemed almost cheerful as time stumbled past. She stroked his hair tenderly. “Poor Dominic, it isn’t easy for you.”

The huge sun sank below the horizon — the second day, and tonight was the hour of decision. Flandry came out into the great conference hall to find it almost empty.

“Where are the Merseians, your Majesty?” he asked the Sartaz.

“They all went off on a special mission,” snapped the ruler. He was plainly ill pleased with the intriguing around him, of which he would be well aware.

A special mission — O almighty gods!

Aline and Bronson came in and gave the monarch formal greeting. “With your permission, your Majesty,” said the general, “I would like to show you something of great importance in about two hours.”

“Yes, yes,” mumbled the Sartaz and stalked out.

Flandry sat down and rested his head on one hand. Aline touched his shoulder gently. “Tired, Dominic?” she asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I feel rotten. Just can’t think these days.”

She signaled to a slave, who brought a beaker forward. “This will help,” she said. He noticed sudden tears in her eyes. What was the matter?

He drank it down without thought. It caught at him, he gasped and grabbed the chair arms for support. “What the devil—”

It spread through him with a sudden coolness that ran along his nerves toward his brain. It was like the hand that Aline had laid on his head, calming, soothing — Clearing!

Suddenly he sprang to his feet. The whole preposterous thing stood forth in its raw grotesquerie — tissue of falsehoods, monstrosity of illogic!

The Fleet couldn’t have moved a whole task force this close without the Merseian intelligence knowing of it. There couldn’t be a new energy screen that he hadn’t heard of. Fenross would never try so fantastic a scheme as the occupation of Betelgeuse before all hope was gone.

He didn’t love Aline. She was brave and beautiful, but he didn’t love her.

But he had. Three minutes ago, he had been desperately in love with her.

He looked at her through blurring eyes as the enormous truth grew on him. She nodded, gravely, not seeming to care that tears ran down her cheeks. Her lips whispered a word that he could barely catch.

“Goodbye, my dearest.”

IV

They had set up a giant televisor screen in the conference hall, with a row of seats for the great of Alfzar. Bronson had also taken the precaution of lining the walls with royal guardsmen whom he could trust — long rows of flashing steel and impassive blue faces, silent and moveless as the great pillars holding up the soaring roof.

The general paced nervously up and down before the screen, looking at his watch unnecessarily often. Sweat glistened on his forehead. Flandry sat relaxed; only one who knew him well could have read the tension that was like a coiled spring in him. Only Aline seemed remote from the scene, too wrapped in her own thoughts to care what went on.

“If this doesn’t work, you know, we’ll probably be hanged,” said Bronson.

“It ought to,” answered Flandry tonelessly. “If it doesn’t, I won’t give much of a damn whether we hang or not.”

He was prevaricating there; Flandry was most fond of living, for all the wistful half-dreams that sometimes rose in him.

A trumpet shrilled, high brassy music between the walls and up to the ringing rafters. They rose and stood at attention as the Sartaz and his court swept in.

His yellow eyes were suspicious as they raked the three humans.

“You said that there was to be a showing of an important matter,” he declared flatly. “I hope that is correct.”

“It is, your Majesty,” said Flandry easily. He was back in his element, the fencing with words, the casting of nets to entrap minds. “It is a matter of such immense importance that it should have been revealed to you weeks ago. Unfortunately, circumstances did not permit that — as the court shall presently see — so your Majesty’s loyal general was forced to act on his own discretion with what help we of Terra could give him. But if our work has gone well, the moment of revelation should also be that of salvation.”

“It had better be,” said the Sartaz ominously. “I warn you — all of you — that I am sick of the spying and corruption the empires have brought with them. It is about time to cut the evil growth from Betelgeuse.”

“Terra has never wished Betelgeuse anything but good, your Majesty,” said Flandry, “and as it happens, we can offer proof of that. If—”

Another trumpet cut off his voice, and the warder’s shout rang and boomed down the hall: “Your Majesty, the Ambassador of the Empire of Merseia asks audience.”