The Stars, Like Dust

"What's the matter?" Artemisia did not have to feign uneasiness. She spoke to Gillbret, who, with the captain of the guard, was at the door. Half a dozen uniformed men hovered discreetly in the background. Then, quickly, "Has anything happened to Father?"

"No, no," Gillbret reassured her, "nothing has happened that need concern you at all. Were you asleep?"

"Just about," she replied, "and my girls have been about their own affairs for hours. There was no one to answer but myself and you nearly frightened me to death."

She turned to the captain suddenly, with a stiffening attitude. "What is wanted of me, Captain? Quickly, please. This is not the time of day for a proper audience."

Gillbret broke in before the other could more than open his mouth. "A most amusing thing, Arta. The young man, whatsisname-you know-has dashed off, breaking two heads on his way. We're hunting him on even terms now. One platoon of soldiers to one fugitive. And here I am myself, hot on the trail, delighting our good captain with my zeal and courage."

Artemisia managed to look completely bewildered.

Under his breath the captain muttered a monosyllabic imprecation. His lips scarcely moved. He said then, "If you please, my lord, you are not quite plain, and we are delaying matters insufferably. My Lady, the man who calls himself the son of the ex-Rancher of Widemos has been arrested for treason. He has managed to escape and is now at large. We must search the Palace for him, room by room."

Artemisia stepped back, frowning. "Including my room?"

"If Your Ladyship permits."

"Ah, but I do not. I would certainly know if there was a strange man in my room. And the suggestion that I might be having dealings with such a man, or any strange man, at this time of night is highly improper. Please observe due respect for my position, Captain."

It worked quite well. The captain could only bow and say, "No such implication was intended, my lady. Your pardon for annoying you at this time of night. Your statement that you have not seen the fugitive is, of course, sufficient. Under the circumstances, it was necessary to assure ourselves of your safety. He is a dangerous man."

"Surely not so. dangerous that he cannot be handled by you and your company."

Gillbret's high-pitched voice interposed again. "Captain, come-come. While you exchange courtly sentiments with my niece, our man has had time to rifle the armory. I would suggest that you leave a guard at the Lady Artemisia's door, so that what remains of her sleep will not be further disturbed. Unless, my dear"-and he twinkled his fingers at Artemisia-"you would care to join us."

"I shall satisfy myself," said Artemisia coldly, "in locking my door and retiring, thank you."

"Pick a large one," cried Gillbret. "Take that one. A fine uniform our guards have, Artemisia. You can recognize a guard as far as you can see him by his uniform alone."

"My lord," said the captain impatiently, "there is no time. You delay matters."

At a gesture from him, a guard fell out of the platoon, saluted Artemisia through the closing door, then the captain. The sound of ordered footsteps fell away in both directions.

Artemisia waited, then slid the door quietly open an inch or two. The guard was there, legs apart, back rigid, right hand armed, left hand at his alarm button. He was the guard suggested by Gillbret, a tall one. As tall as Biron of Widemos, though without his breadth of shoulders.

It occurred to her, at that moment, that Biron, though young and, therefore, rather unreasonable in some of his viewpoints, was at least large and well muscled, which was convenient. It had been foolish of her to snap at him. Quite pleasant looking too.

She closed the door, and stepped toward the dressing room.

Biron tensed as the door slid away again. He held his breath and his fingers stiffened.

Artemisia stared at his whips. "Be careful!"

He puffed out his breath in relief and stuffed each into a pocket. They were very uncomfortable there, but he had no proper holsters. He said, "That was just in" case it was somebody looking for me."

"Come out. And speak in a whisper."

She was still in her night robe, woven out of a smooth fabric with which Biron was unfamiliar, adorned with little tufts of silvery fur, and clinging to the body through some faint static attraction inherent in the material, so that neither buttons, clasps, loops, or seam fields were necessary. Nor, as a consequence, did it do more than merely faintly dim the outlines of Artemisia's figure.

Biron felt his ears reddening, and liked the sensation very much.

Artemisia waited, then made a little whirling gesture with her forefinger and said, "Do you mind?"

Biron looked up at her face. "What? Oh, I'm sorry."

He turned his back to her and remained stiffly attentive to the faint rustling of the change of outer garments. It did not occur to him to wonder why she did not use the dressing room, or why, better still, she had not changed before opening the door. There are depths in feminine psychology, which, without experience, defy analysis.

She was in black when he turned, a two-piece suit which did not reach below the knee. It had that more substantial appearance that went with clothing meant for the outdoors rather than for the ballroom.

Biron said, automatically, "Are we leaving, then?"

She shook her head. "You'll have to do your part first. You'll need other clothes yourself. Get to one side of the door, and I'll have the guard in."

"What guard?"

She smiled briefly. "They left a guard at the door, at Uncle Oil's suggestion."

The door to the corridor ran smoothly along its runners an inch or two. The guard was still there, stiffly immobile.

"Guard," she whispered. "In here, quickly."

There was no reason for a common soldier to hesitate in his obedience to the Director's daughter. He entered the widening door, with a respectful, "At your service, my 1-" and then his knees buckled under the weight which came down upon his shoulders, while his words were cut off, without even an interrupting squawk, by the forearm which slammed against his larynx.

Artemisia closed the door hurriedly and watched with sensations that amounted almost to nausea. The life in the Palace of the Hinriads was mild almost to decadence, and she had never before seen a man's face congest with blood and his mouth yawn and puff futilely under the influence of asphyxia. She looked away.

Biron bared his teeth with effort as he tightened the circle of bone and muscle about the other's throat. For a minute the guard's weakening hands ripped futilely at Biron's arm, while his feet groped in aimless kicks. Biron heaved him clear of the floor without relaxing his grip.

And then the guard's hands fell to his sides, his legs hung loosely, and the convulsive and useless heavings of the chest began to subside. Biron lowered him gently to the floor. The guard sprawled out limply, as though he were a sack which had been emptied.

"Is he dead?" asked Artemisia, in a horrified whisper.

"I doubt it," said Biron. "It takes four or five minutes of it to kill a man. But he'll be out of things for a while. Do you have anything to tie him up with?"

She shook her head. For the moment, she felt quite helpless.

Biron said, "You must have some Cellite stockings. They would do fine." He had already stripped the guard of weapons and outer clothing. "And I'd like to wash up too. In fact, I have to."

It was pleasant to step through the detergent mist in Artemisia's bathroom. It left him perhaps a trifle over-scented, but the open air would take care of the fragrance, he hoped. At least he was clean, and it had required merely the momentary passage through the fine, suspended droplets that shot past him forcefully in a warm air stream. No special drying chamber was required, since he stepped out dry as well as clean. They didn't have this on Widemos, or on Earth.

The guard's uniform was a bit tight, and Biron did not like the way the somewhat ugly, conical military cap fit over his brachycephalic head. He stared at his reflection with some dissatisfaction. "How do I look?"

"Quite like a soldier," she said.

He said, "You'll have to carry one of these whips. I can't handle three."

She took it between two fingers and dropped it into her bag, which was then suspended from her wide belt by another microforce, so that her hands remained free.

"We had better go now. Don't say a word if we meet anyone, but let me do the talking. Your accent isn't right, and it would be impolite to talk in my presence unless you wore directly addressed, anyway. Remember! You're a common soldier."

The guard on the floor was beginning to wriggle a bit and roll his eyes. His wrists and ankles were securely tied in a clump at the small of his back with stockings that had the tensile strength of more than an equal amount of steel. His tongue worked futilely at his gag.

He had been shoved out of the way, so that it was not necessary to step over him to get to the door.

"This way," breathed Artemisia.

At the first turning there was a footstep behind them, and a light hand came down on Biron's shoulder.

Biron stepped to one side quickly and turned, one hand catching the other's arm, while his other snatched at his whip.

But it was Gillbret who said, "Easy, man!"

Biron loosened his grip.

Gillbret rubbed his arm. "I've been waiting for you, but that's no reason to break my bones. Let me stare admiringly at you, Farrill. Your clothes seem to have shrunk on you, but not bad-not bad at all. Nobody would look twice at you in that getup. It's the advantage of a uniform. It's taken for granted that a soldier's uniform holds a soldier and nothing else."

"Uncle Gil," whispered Artemisia urgently, "don't talk so much. Where are the other guards?"

"Everyone objects to a few words," he said pettishly. "The other guards are working their way up the tower. They've decided that our friend is on none of the lower levels, so they've just left some men at the main exits and at the ramps, with the general alarm system in operation as well. We can get past it."

"Won't they miss you, sir?" asked Biron.

"Me? Hah. The captain was glad to see me go, for all his toe scraping. They won't look for me, I assure you."

They were speaking in whispers, but now even those died away. A guard stood at the bottom of the ramp, while two others flanked the large, carved double door that led to the open air.

Gillbret called out, "Any word of the escaped prisoner, men?"

"No, my lord," said the nearest. He clicked his heels together and saluted.

"Well, keep your eyes open," and they walked past them and out, one of the guards at the door carefully neutralizing that section of the alarm as they left.

It was nighttime outside. The sky was clear and starry, the ragged mass of the Dark Nebula blotting out the specks of light near the horizon. Palace Central was a dark mass behind them, and the Palace Field was less than half a mile away.

But after five minutes of walking along the quiet path, Gillbret grew restless.

"There's something wrong," he said.

Artemisia said, "Uncle Oil, you haven't forgotten to arrange to have the ship ready?"

"Of course not," he snapped at her, as nearly as one could snap in a whisper, "but why is the Field Tower lit up? It should be dark."

He pointed up through the trees, to where the tower was a honeycomb of white light. Ordinarily, that would indicate business at the field: ships leaving for space or arriving from it.

Gillbret muttered, "Nothing was scheduled for tonight. That was definite."

They saw the answer at a distance, or Gillbret did. He stopped suddenly and spread his arms wide to hold back the others.

"That's all," he said, and giggled almost hysterically. "This time Hinrik has really messed things properly, the idiot. They're here! The Tyranni! Don't you understand? That's Aratap's private armored cruiser."

Biron saw it, gleaming faintly under the lights, standing out among the other undistinguished ships. It was smoother, thinner, more feline than the Rhodian vessels.

Gillbret said, "The captain said a 'personage' was being entertained today, and I paid no attention. There's nothing to do now. We can't fight Tyranni."

Biron felt something suddenly snap. "Why not?" he said savagely. "Why can't we fight them? They have no reason to suspect trouble, and we're armed. Let's take the Commissioner's own ship. Let's leave him with his trousers down."

He stepped forward, out of the relative obscurity of the trees and onto the bare field. The others followed. There was no reason to hide. They were two members of the royal family and an escorting soldier.

But it was the Tyranni they were fighting now.

Simok Aratap of Tyrann had been impressed the first time he had ever seen the Palace Grounds at Rhodia years earlier, but it had turned out to be only a shell that had impressed him. The interior was nothing but a musty relic. Two generations earlier Rhodia's legislative chambers had met on these grounds and most of the administrative offices had been quartered there. Palace Central had been the heartbeat of a dozen worlds.

But now the legislative chambers (still existing, for the Khan never interfered with local legalisms) met once a year to ratify the executive orders of the past twelve months. It was quite a formality. The Executive Council was still, nominally, in continuous session, but it consisted of a dozen men who remained on their estates nine weeks in ten. The various executive bureaus were still active, since one could not govern without them, whether the Director or the Khan ruled, but they were now scattered over the planet; made less dependent upon the Director, more conscious of their new masters, the Tyranni.

Which left the Palace as majestic as it had always been in stone and metal, and that only. It housed the Directorial family, a scarcely adequate corps of servants, and an entirely inadequate corps of native guards.

Aratap felt uncomfortable in the shell and was unhappy. It was late, he was tired, his eyes burned so that he longed to remove his contact lenses, and, most of all, he was disappointed.

There was no pattern! He glanced occasionally at his military aide, but the major was listening to the Director with expressionless stolidity. As for Aratap himself, he paid little attention.

"Widemos's son! Indeed?" he would say, in abstraction. Then, later, "And so you arrested him? Quite right!"

But it meant little to him, since events lacked a design. Aratap had a neat and tidy mind which could not bear the thought of individual facts loosely clumped together with no decent arrangement.

Widemos had been a traitor, and Widemos's son had attempted a meeting with the Director of Rhodia. He had attempted it first in secret, and when that had failed, such was the urgency, he had attempted it openly with his ridiculous story of an assassination plot. Surely that must have been the beginning of a pattern.

And now it fell apart. Hinrik was giving up the boy with indecent haste. He could not even wait the night, it seemed. And that did not fit at all. Or else Aratap had not yet learned all the facts.

He focused his attention on the Director again. Hinrik was beginning to repeat himself. Aratap felt a twinge of compassion. The man had been made into such a coward that even the Tyranni themselves grew impatient with him. And yet it was the only way. Only fear could insure absolute loyalty. That and nothing else.

Widemos had not been afraid, and despite the fact that his self-interest had been bound at every point with the maintenance of Tyrannian rule, he had rebelled. Hinrik was afraid and that made the difference,

And because Hinrik was afraid, he sat there, lapsing into incoherence as he struggled to obtain some gesture of approval. The major would give none, of course, Aratap knew. The man had no imagination. He sighed and wished he had none either. Politics was a filthy business.

So he said, with some air of animation, "Quite so. I commend your, quick decision and your zeal in the service of the Khan. You may be sure he will hear of it."

Hinrik brightened visibly, his relief obvious.

Aratap said, "Have him brought in, then, and let us hear what our cockerel has to say." He suppressed a desire to yawn. He had absolutely no interest in what the "cockerel" had to say.

It was Hinrik's intention at this point to signal for the captain of the guard, but there was no necessity for that, as the captain stood in the doorway, unannounced.

"Excellency," he cried and strode in without waiting for permission.

Hinrik stared hard at his hand, still inches from the signal, as though wondering whether his intention had somehow developed sufficient force to substitute for the act.

He said uncertainly, "What is it, Captain?"

The captain said, "Excellency, the prisoner has escaped."

Aratap felt some of the weariness disappear. What was this? "The details, Captain!" he ordered, and straightened in his chair.

The captain gave them with a blunt economy of words.

He concluded, "I ask your permission, Excellency, to proclaim a general alarm. They are yet but minutes away."

"Yes, by all means," stuttered Hinrik, "by all means. A general alarm, indeed. Just the thing. Quickly! Quickly! Commissioner, I cannot understand how it could have happened. Captain, put every man to work. There will be an investigation, Commissioner. If necessary, every man on the guards will be broken. Broken! Broken!"

He repeated the word in near hysteria but the captain remained standing. It was obvious that he had more to say.

Aratap said, "Why do you wait?"

"May I speak to Your Excellency in private?" said the captain abruptly.

Hinrik cast a quick, frightened look at the bland, unperturbed Commissioner. He mustered a feeble indignation. "There are no secrets from the soldiers of the Khan, our friends, our-"

"Say your say, Captain," interposed Aratap gently.

The captain brought his heels together sharply and said, "Since I am ordered to speak, Your Excellency, I regret to inform you that my Lady Artemisia and my Lord Gillbret accompanied the prisoner in his escape."

"He dared to kidnap them?" Hinrik was on his feet. "And my guards allowed it?"

"They were not kidnapped, Excellency. They accompanied him voluntarily."

"How do you know?" Aratap was delighted, and thoroughly awake. It formed a pattern now, after all. A better pattern than he could have anticipated.

The captain said, "We have the testimony of the guard they overpowered, and the guards who, unwittingly, allowed them to leave the building." He hesitated, then added grimly, "When I interviewed my Lady Artemisia at the door of her private chambers, she told me she had been on the point of sleep. It was only later that I realized that when she told me that, her face was elaborately made-up. When I returned, it was too late. I accept the blame for the mismanagement of this affair. After tonight I will request Your Excellency to accept my resignation, but first have I still your permission to sound the general alarm? Without your authority I could not interfere with members of the royal family."

But Hinrik was swaying on his feet and could only stare at him vacantly.

Aratap said, "Captain, you would do better to look to the health of your Director. I would suggest you call his physician."

"The general alarm!" repeated the captain.

"There will be no general alarm," said Aratap. "Do you understand me? No general alarm! No recapture of the prisoner! The incident is closed! Return your men to their quarters and ordinary duties and look to your Director. Come, Major."

The Tyrannian major spoke tensely once they had left the mass of Palace Central behind them.

"Aratap," he said, "I presume you know what you're doing. I kept my mouth shut in there on the basis of that presumption."

"Thank you, Major." Aratap liked the night air of a planet full of green and growing things. Tyrann was more beautiful in its way, but it was a terrible beauty of rocks and mountains. It was dry, dry!

He went on: "You cannot handle Hinrik, Major Andros. In your hands he would wilt and break. He is useful, but requires gentle treatment if he is to remain so."

The major brushed that aside. "I'm not referring to that. Why not the general alarm? Don't you want them?"

"Do you?" Aratap stopped. "Let us sit here for a moment, Andros. A bench on a pathway along a lawn. What more beautiful, and what place is safer from spy beams? Why do you want the young man, Major?"

"Why do I want any traitor and conspirator?"

"Why do you, indeed, if you only catch a few tools while leaving the source of the poison untouched? Whom would you have? A cub, a silly girl, a senile idiot?"

There was a faint splashing of an artificial waterfall nearby. A small one, but decorative. Now that was a real wonder to Aratap. Imagine water, spilling out, running to waste, pouring 1ndefinitely down the rocks and along the ground. He had never educated himself out of a certain indignation over it.

"As it is," said the major, "we have nothing."

"We have a pattern. When the young man first arrived, we connected him with Hinrik, and that bothered us, because Hinrik is-what he is. But it was the best we could do. Now we see it was not Hinrik at all; that Hinrik was a misdirection. It was Hinrik's daughter and cousin he was after, and that makes more sense."

"Why didn't he call us sooner? He waited for the middle of the night."

"Because he is the tool of whoever is the first to reach him, and Gillbret, I am sure, suggested this night meeting as a sign of great zeal on his part."

"You mean we were called here on purpose? To witness their escape?".

"No, not for that reason. Ask yourself. Where do these people intend on going?"

The major shrugged.-"Rhodia is big."

"Yes, if it were the young Farrill alone who was concerned. But where on Rhodia would two members of the royal family go unrecognized? Particularly the girl."

"They would have to leave the planet, then? Yes, I agree."

"And from where? They can reach the Palace Field in a fifteen-minute walk. Now do you see the purpose of our being here?"

The major said, "Our ship?"

"Of course. A Tyrannian ship would seem ideal to them. Otherwise, they would have to choose among freighters. Farrill has been educated on Earth, and, I'm sure, can fly a cruiser."

"Now there's a point. Why do we allow the nobility to send out their sons in all directions? What business has a subject to know more about travel than will suffice him for local trade? We bring up soldiers against us."

"Nevertheless," said Aratap, with polite indifference, "at the moment Farrill has a foreign education, and let us take that into account objectively, without growing angry about it. The fact remains that I am certain they have taken our cruiser."

"I can't believe it."

"You have your wrist caller. Make contact with the ship, if you can."

The major tried, futilely.

Aratap said, "Try the Field Tower."

The major did so, and the small voice came out of the tiny receiver, in minute agitation: "But, Excellency, I don't understand-There is some mistake. Your pilot took off ten minutes ago."

Aratap was smiling. "You see? Work out the pattern and each little event becomes inevitable. And now do you see the consequences?"

The major did. He slapped his thigh, and laughed briefly. "Of course!" he said.

"Well," said Aratap, "they couldn't know, of course, but they have ruined themselves. Had they been satisfied with the clumsiest Rhodian freighter on the field, they would surely have escaped and-what's the expression?-I would have been caught with my trousers down this night. As it is, my trousers are firmly belted, and nothing can save them. And when I pluck them back, in my own good time"-he emphasized the words with satisfaction-"I will have the rest of the conspiracy in my hands as well."

He sighed and found himself beginning to feel sleepy once more. "Well, we have been lucky, and now there is no hurry. Call Central Base, and have them send another ship after us."