Teenie went into new howls of laughter.

Behind Madison was a tall bureau.

The maid was trying to kiss him.

Suddenly Madison lashed out with his fist.

He hit the maid in the jaw.

She went down with a crash.

Like an agile ape, he leaped up on the bureau, using the door handles to climb. He got to the top. He yanked the chain handle up after him to get it out of their reach. He was twelve feet above the floor. If the guard came in, he couldn't even be touched with the stinger.

The sight of him scrambling up and hanging there now had taken them all by surprise. He didn't know whether they would start to laugh again or yell for the guard to shoot him for hitting the maid.

THIS WAS HIS CHANCE!

Into the hiatus, he shouted, "Teenie! Listen to me! There's something you don't know!" Now was the time to launch his beautiful idea. Fate was trembling on the edge of the cliff. Would she listen?

Her attention was on the maid. She knelt at the woman's side to see if there was a bruise on her face. In a second, if she found a contusion or some blood, she would go berserk with fury.

"Teenie!" he screamed down at her. "Soltan Gris is here!"

Her head whipped round. She stared up at him.

"He's here!" shouted Madison in desperation. There was a little blood on the side of the woman's mouth and he MUST hold Teenie's attention.

HIS IDEA MUST BE GIVEN A CHANCE!

"He's right here on Voltar!" yelled Madison from the bureau.

Her eyes were on him. The door was also opening and the guard was alert and watching, having heard the raised voice.

"On THIS planet?" said Teenie. "Here?" She was in shock.

"Yes, that's right! Soltan Gris has taken refuge in the Royal prison, a huge castle! Nobody can get to him. He's perfectly safe! They aren't even going to try him!"

"WHAT?" cried Teenie, on her knees but straightening up.

"He's sitting there safe as can be!" cried Madison. "He's laughing at everybody! He's completely beyond reach!"

"THE (BLEEP)!" cried Teenie. Her eyes began to glare.

Madison shouted, "Unless somebody acts, he's going to go scot-free and even get a medal!"

"THE SON OF A (BLEEPCH)!" cried Teenie, leaping to her feet. "You mean after all he's done they're protecting him in safe custody?"

"Exactly!" cried Madison.

Teenie stamped her foot in fury. "Well, God (BLEEP) HIM!"

"And Teenie, if I have your help, I can get him HANGED! You know me and you know what I can accomplish if I'm turned loose! Teenie, if you back me up, then when they stretch his neck I can guarantee that I will personally put your hand on the rope!"

She looked at him: her eyes were furnaces of revenge. "It's a bargain!" she screeched. "Just tell me what you want me to DO!"

He had assured her he would prepare the plans. He had left her pacing up and down the room, pounding a fist in her palm and then shaking it in the air, swearing luridly in gutter English, vowing that if it was the last thing they ever did, they'd have to GET Gris!

The guard had been told to turn him loose and to admit him to the palace any time he called.

Madison, in the lower washroom, got into his clothes. He was trembling with relief.

Earlier, when he had been sitting in the hall, scanning through everything he had heard her say, a line from an Earth playwright had leaped up, and oh, was Madison glad that he remembered his Shakespeare. "Hell hath no fury like a woman kicked in the teeth." It had given him his SPLENDID idea and it had worked.

Tonight he had escaped death thrice! Once at the hands of Teenie; again from the threat of being unfaithful to his mother; the third and the far more important one of being wiped out by the deadly Bury.

With Teenie's influence, cleverly working step by step, he could now get on with his job.

Heller, he thought, here I come!

The universe will never again see such magnificent and skillful PR as would now occur!

He had to be clever, he had to be careful, he had to advance step by step. BUT HE WOULD GET THERE!

PR was the one weapon against which there was no defense. Oh, there were pitfalls on the way that would yawn. But, in gleeful confidence, Madison strode into the Voltar night.

Across another night, twenty-two and more light-years away, Heller was talking on a viewer-phone in his New York office to Prahd on another one in the hospital in Afyon, Turkey. There was no problem in being overheard: the viewer-phone operated on a time-skip at the topmost quiver of energy bands and Earth was far from being up to that technology.

The subject of the conversation also involved time. "You can't rush these things," said Prahd. "I've told you all this before, sir."

"But he DID speak," said Heller. "When I entered the room at the palace, as soon as he was aware someone was there, he opened his eyes and spoke. He even recognized what I was."

"When you got to him," said Prahd, "he must have been on the tag end of an amphetamine dose. It was keeping him conscious. Some time before that, the quantities of speed he was being given must have set him up for a cerebral hemorrhage, because that's what he's got. Speed wrecks the central nervous system and he has had it."

"You mean he won't recover consciousness?" said Heller.

"Look, I'm doing all I can to hold on to this sudden elevation to King's Own Physician. I'm doing all I can to rebuild the nerves and vessels, but you don't seem to understand. It's the central nervous system! It's going to take months."

"So long?" said Heller.

"I'm being optimistic. Did you know it takes a day of therapy for every day of use anyone has been on speed? I don't know how long they had him on it. Could have been years!"

"What you're telling me is that he won't come around soon."

"I think I finally got my point across, sir. Of course, I could bring him around so he'd be alert a bit with some amphetamine, but that would then kill him."

"We don't want THAT!" said Heller. "Completely aside from our duty to protect him, it would be a rotten thing to do just to get our own heads off the block with a signed order. Skip any idea of it. We'll take our chances."

"I didn't mean it as an out," said Prahd.

"Well, don't think of it at all," said Heller. "You and I are quite expendable. He isn't. So you just go on doing what you're doing. Can you switch me over to my lady?"

The face of the Countess Krak appeared on Heller's screen. She threw him a kiss and then said, "Hello, dear. It's just like Prahd said. He's just lying there in fluid, rebuilding. There's absolutely nothing going on."

"I know," said Heller.

"I told them to build up defenses here."

Heller shrugged. "All right. But I don't think anybody will come. Ghoul-face doesn't know we came here. I've been giving this some thought and it's almost funny that he'd issue a general warrant for me: they're questionable on a Royal officer-courts usually just throw them out. It would take a Royal warrant and he just plain can't get one issued. It would have to be signed by the person who's lying there unconscious. Actually, Ghoul-face must be having fits. There was no mention of His Majesty on that broadcast and I don't think Hisst will admit he's gone. If he were to do so, the whole Confederacy would go into chaos. There is no heir: the other Royal princes are dead and Mortiiy is forbidden succession for starting a revolt. The Grand Council would have to have a body before they would proclaim Cling dead. So all Lombar can do is blunder around trying to locate me. He's only got the Apparatus, a small force. The Fleet and Army won't cooperate on the basis of just a general warrant on me. The Fleet would laugh at him. The 'drunk' is on the spot. If he doesn't dare admit I have the Emperor, then I can't think of anything he could say or do to get people incensed against me. He's only got the Apparatus and I'm not afraid of 'drunks.' So I quit worrying."