Some, of course, actually were prisoners of war, which made it quasi-legal as such prisoners have no rights and are often slaughtered off. But there never were such beings anywhere except out of the vials and tubes and vats of Doctor Crobe. As some wit in the Apparatus had said, "The evil Gods invented Doctor Crobe to give the Devils some competition." There must have been some truth in it. These freak parades always made me ill. Here was a woman with her breasts where her buttocks should have been; there was a being whose legs had been interchanged with his arms; then came a female with two heads; following was a thing covered wholly with hair but in half a dozen colors; and then came a monster with eyes in the place of his privates.

While Apparatus guards drove them along with whips, old Doctor Crobe, himself, stood beyond them, looking on, beaming at his handiwork. He was a funny-looking creature himself: too long a nose, too long in the arms and legs, like some weird bird. In my opinion, every cellologist I have met is not only misshapen himself but crazy.

Lombar seemed to be quite agitated. He was fiddling with his stinger, probably to hide the shaking of his hands. He didn't seem to be paying much attention to the freak parade and so I ventured to give him some good news, thinking it would divert him.

"It's all handled now," I said, "but they had the whole Domestic Police out looking for Jettero Heller. I got a line on it and iced it and now they couldn't care less." He didn't answer but then he never does. But after a little he tapped a silver box beside him and pincers sprang out holding something. He took it.

"I knew you felt bad about losing your post," he said idly. "So I arranged this." He threw it sideways at me.

It was the gold chain and emerald insignia of a Grade Eleven Officer! It bumped me up threegrades! It made me the equivalent of an Army commander of five thousand troops!

"It's now in the data banks and legal. You'll be drawing the pay as of yesterday." I started to thank him but he wasn't listening. "That ought to bring some money," he said.

The guards had rolled a cart into the parade. Six children had been cellularly joined together so they made a ring, twisted up into pornographic positions.

The Apparatus got tons of appropriations in secret government channels but its income must be five times that in its criminal sidelines. And true, they would get a lot of money for the six children freak, probably bill it from Blito-P3 or Helvinin-P6, maybe get a hundred thousand credits.

It reminded me I had other news. "We really ought to train this Jettero Heller up in espionage," I said. Lom-bar sort of twitched at the name but he didn't look at me nor stop me. The "trained act" parade was about to begin but there was a lull while Crobe's staff cleared off and the next lot came on. I took advantage of the time.

"They put a lot of correspondence in his bag," I said. "A letter from his mother, notes from friends, fan mail. He spent the whole evening answering them – it was quite a stack.

"Of course, when he gave them to me to mail for him, I read his answers very carefully. And, Chief, he has no faintest idea of security. He simply spilled his brains all over the paper. Really stupid!

"I had to get two forgers and we spent until 2:00 a.m. rewriting his letters.

"He'll nevermake a spy, never!He'll put the whole mission at risk!" Lombar didn't say anything. The one we called Countess Krak was on now behind the glass. She was standing there in thigh-high black boots, a shabby coat and little else, twitching a long electric whip. In a dull and listless way she was bringing on the first performer of her trained act parade. She was actually a very beautiful female, statuesque, young, but she never smiled. She was an enigma even for the Apparatus. Approach her sexually and you could get killed!But she could train anything to do anything and fast.She was a genius at training. She was rumored to use electric shock and pictures but how she got her results nobody really knew.

Countess Krak had been a perfectly unsuspected government teacher, specializing in adult classes and advanced subjects. But she had a twist. There are some who say it was actually being done by the government and she just got the blame, and maybe that is true, but I think personally she just needed more money.

When the Domestic Police ran her down, she was the center of a ring of children she had recruited from the slums. These children had been taught to crack any safe and get by any alarm system. It was estimated that their total "take" was in the millions. And they might have been going yet except that she also apparently had schooled them in the techniques of silent murder with no weapons and this hallmarked their every job.

The children involved were executed but Countess Krak was simply handed over quietly to the Apparatus for their own uses. And here she had been at Spiteos for almost three years.

Her first act was a juggler who, with his feet, kept twelve objects in the air at once while spitting fire at them. The second act was two females in lepertige costumes who jetted loops of a liquid, that looked like blood, into fancy patterns in the air and appeared to catch them in their mouths. Colorful.

The third act was a fellow who could triple-somersault from a standing position and explode ban-goes at each loop. He had other tricks.

There was no danger that any of these people would ever betray Spiteos. Their tongues had been cut out and they were illiterate. They brought fancy money.

But Lombar was not paying much attention. He turned to me. "Soltan," he said, "I really don't think you actually envision the real scope of this." He shoved the stinger at some switches and a big screen on the floor in front of us began to roll off views of the hundred and ten planets of Voltar. Near views, far views. Mobs in streets. Industries. Plains geometric with farms. Plains teeming with animals.

Lombar, ignoring the remaining acts, hit another switch. Views of the manors of Lords. Views of Governors' palaces. Views of the Summer Imperial Residence. And then a long string of views of Emperors.

"Power," said Lombar. "Authority! The right of life and death over trillions of peoples." He shut the machine off. He turned to me. "In not too long a time, Soltan, all that will be ours. Ours completely and utterly! These are big stakes!

"The present rulers are decadent. Our planning and timetable cannot fail." He gestured at me with the stinger. "But there is one weak point in all this. And that weak point is Earth."He put his hand on my knee. "That is the key, the important key to everything. Soltan, when an instant invasion of Blito-P3 seemed imminent, I almost died. It would have been the end of everything.

"Soltan, you weren't raised in the slums. You don't know what a dream of power can be. You don't understand the true necessity of wiping out the riffraff from the ghettos, purifying the blood of planets, sweeping away the weak.

"These Emperors do not know what to do with their power. It takes ambition! Yes! And merciless execution of plans. They diddle with their wars, they do nothing about their own homes! Even when they conquer a planet they do not know what to do with the riffraff in the population!

"We use evil to fight and sweep away evil! And we canand willprevail!" For a moment his eyes flared. There was madness in Lombar and sometimes it showed through.

He patted my knee. "But I am counting on you, Soltan. There must be no Imperial interference on Blito-P3. We care nothing for the salvage of that planet! But we need it desperately. You mustkeep every Voltarian interest in it nullified! Do you understand?" He waited for no answer. The trained acts were through. He stabbed the stinger at a console. Flashing call lights went on in the other room. The glass wall turned black.