"Under attack?" Suddenly Phule's adrenaline began to surge, and the focus of his attention narrowed to a pinpoint. "Attack by whom? Can you patch them through to me?"

"I couldn't hear who the attackers were," said Mother.

"All I got was a message from the team saying that somebody-or something-was attacking them. There was a lot of noise, but 1 couldn't tell exactly what was happening. The signal keeps breaking up, and 1 don't think they have a whole lot of time to chat with us, anyway. But hold on. I'll see if 1 can raise them again and put you through."

"I'll be ready," said Phule. He became aware that he was on his feet, although he had no memory of rising from his desk chair. In the corridor outside his office, he could hear the sound of running feet. "Meanwhile, sound General Quarters," he ordered. "I want every available member of the company ready to go bail them. out." He turned to Moustache and Beeker, who had both heard the entire ,conversation. "Sergeant, get a relief party together without delay. I'll give you your orders as soon as 1 know what needs to be done. Beeker grab me those stereoculars we're going out to see if we can't spot somethin'."

"Yes, sir!" said the two men, practically in unison, but Phule was already out the doorway, running at top speed. Turning to a shelf just behind the captain's desk, Beeker picked the stereoculars in their case and followed him out the door, a step behind Moustache. Somewhere down the corridor an alarm was sounding.

Outside, Beeker could see that word of the attack had already gotten out. A small pack of legionnaires was milling about on the south edge of the base; many of them carrying weapons and wearing helmets, others looking as if they'd been dragged out of the showers by the alert. Spotting them, Moustache nodded and strode off purposefully in their direction. For his part, Phule was sprinting toward a short observation tower at the center of the base.

Again, Beeker followed, attempting to make as much speed as he could without abandoning the last vestiges of dignity.

By the time the butler reached the base of the tower, Phule was already at its top, shading his eyes with one hand and staring out into the desert. Resignedly, Beeker put the strap of the stereoculars case over his shoulder and began climbing the ladder. Below, he could hear voices shouting, and a vibration in the ladder indicated that someone else was climbing up behind him. Gritting his teeth, he finished the climb and put the case in Phule's outstretched hand. Looking to the south, just over a kilometer away, he saw a small cloud of dust--or was it smoke?-along a line of native "trees," but nothing else he could clearly identify.

"What can you make out, Captain?" said Lieutenant Armstrong, who was the one who'd followed Beeker up the ladder.

"Not much, yet," said Phule, peering through the stereoculars. "Hard to see through the heat haze and dust..." He was interrupted by his communicator's buzz. "Jester here, go ahead," he said, lowering the stereoculars and boosting the volume so the others on the tower could hear clearly.

"I'm getting a signal from the desert search team, Captain," said Mother's voice, now more urgent than sultry. "Stand by..."

"Captain, do you read me?" a voice crackled through the speaker. It had the kind of mechanical inflection characteristic of an autotranslator, and Beeker thought he recognized it as Spartacus, one of the two Synthians with the company.

Sluglike aliens, they were dependent on mechanical transportation to keep up with their fellow legionnaires of other species. Phule had discovered that glide-boards, a common children's antigrav toy, gave them maximum mobility at a bargain price.

"Loud and clear, Spartacus," said Phule. "What's your situation there? Anybody hurt?"

There was a blare of noise that Phule couldn't quite identify, then Spartacus's voice came through again...has us treed. Don't... hostile sophont or..." More noise drowned out whatever Spartacus said.

"There shouldn't be this much interference over such a short distance," muttered Armstrong. "If it weren't for that damned stand of trees, and all the dust, I think we could see them directly from here."

"Spartacus, I can barely follow you," said Phule, raising the communicator to his mouth again. "If you can hear this, just hold tight. Don't fire unless fired upon. I'm sending out a rescue party. Do you read?"

"... Captain..." came the Synthian's voice, in a cloud of static.

"All right, Mr. Armstrong, I'm going to lead the relief party," said Phule, thumbing the communicator's "off" button. "With comm on the fritz, we'll have to rely on visual signals. If I fire a green flare, everything's under control. If I fire a white on, send the autodoc. A red one..." He paused...

"Yes, sir?" said Armstrong. "A red one means?"

I'm hoping I won't need a red one," said Phule. "But if you see it, come after us as fast as possible with everything you've got." He tucked the stereoculars under his arm and began climbing down the ladder, two rungs at a stride.

"Victor Phule!" said Lola, staring at the readout of the hotel room's Netlink. "That's the fellow playing the highpriced slots!" She'd run a routine IMageBase search on the stealthcam image she'd acquired of the man she'd met in the casino, but she knew better than to expect any clear result. To her surprise, it had given her an 83% positive ID almost at once-Victor Phule, munitions tycoon.

"Stuck-up-looking old bugger," muttered Ernie, lying back on the hotel bed and peering around Lola's shoulder at the computer screen.

"More to the point, he's the father of the man we're looking to grab," said Lola, pointing at the text underneath the picture. "Not to overlook the fact that he's one of the wealthiest men in the galaxy. You can think what you want about him, but he can afford to be stuck-up. And we can't afford to ignore what it must mean for him to be here."

"OK, I'll bite," said Ernie, managing to look somewhat more interested. "What do you think it means that he's here on Lorelei? Rich guys like to gamble, too-like I been telling you, Lola. If you'd give me enough money to get into a few of the big-money games..."

"Oh, encapsulate it," said Lola. "The point is, there can only be a few possible reasons why he'd be at the casino. And the most likely is that young Phule himself is out of commission somehow-in fact, that would explain why the casino had set up that robot to impersonate him."

"Maybe," said Ernie, sitting up on the edge of the bed. "But what about all those newstapes we keep seeing, of Captain Jester at the Landoor amusement park, and Captain Jester greeting those mechanical beings on some three-for-a-buck planet way the hell off the main spacelanes? Those can't all be fakes, can they?"

Lola frowned. "Well, maybe not all of them. But one thing I've learned, over the years-when you want to find out what's really going on in some racket, always look at where the money comes from and who it goes to. We all know the Fat Chance is the place where one enormous pile of money comes from. And if the people it goes to aren't right here to make sure they get what's coming to them, they're too stupid to deserve any of it. That means Willard Phule has got to be here somewhere. All we have to do is figure out where, and then make our snatch."

"Yeah, like it's that easy," said Ernie. "Why don't we snatch the old man, instead? Hell, he's got more bucks than the kid-and he ain't got the whole army gum-ding him, either." He began picking at an annoying nose hair, squinting at himself in the bedside mirror.

"Stop that," said Lola, swatting at his hand. Then, recalling her encounter with Victor Phule, she added, "And don't be sure the old man'd be so easy to snatch. When I spotted him, he had at least one obvious bodyguard with him-and I don't know how many more that I didn't spot. The man can afford the best, and he's in a business where he probably has plenty of job applicants with relevant experience. And I wouldn't bet a nickel that the Legion guards don't have special instructions about keeping an eye on their boss's father, either."