But if I could ever get through this and sort it out, I really had them! No wonder they would engage in a huge cover-up! Their

hands were running scarlet with innocent blood! How could a population stand for this? What an explosion my expose would make!

I was standing in front of a cabinet that was labelled Don't File. Ah, this should be interesting.

I reached in and the very first thing I picked up almost made my eyes pop out. It said:

ARREST HIGHTEE HELLER AND HOLD HER. THEN BARGAIN WITH HER BROTHER AND GET HIM TO COME IN. THEN KILL THEM BOTH.

LOMBAR HISST

My hands shook. I was on the trail! That was Jettero Heller's sister!

Wait a minute. Hightee Heller was still alive! I'd seen her being interviewed on Homeview not a month ago. She was in her later middle age now, graying but not too badly preserved. They had been having a festival to commemorate her songs. She had even sung a bar or two.

I wondered if she realized there had been a government plot against her life. A celebrity like that? Monstrous!

Maybe there were more details elsewhere. I looked at this vast, vast array of files—millions, billions of bits. The feeling came over me that it might take me years and years. Long before that they would have me shipped off to Modon or bolted to a dusty desk. Desperation took the place of hope. Abruptly, as I looked back at what I held in my hand, the solution to the whole thing hit me.

Hightee Heller would know all about her brother. She would have letters, clippings, things beyond the government reach. They obviously had never dared kidnap her.

My mind was made up. I would use this scrap of paper for an entry. I would go see Hightee Heller. I would get her help.

Oh, we would blow the cover off everything!

I had Shatter lock the place up. We went back. At the crack of dawn I told them the camping trip was ended. I told the headman to take care of the place, finish Corsa's project, and shelled out the rest of my allowance so he could.

We sped back to the city.

At two o'clock that very day, using my family connections with the manager of Homeview, I walked into the drawing room of Hightee Heller's rooftop estate at Pausch Hills.

A bit gray-haired, retaining some of her beauty and very pleasant, Hightee Heller graciously told me to sit down.

"I've come to tell you there has been a plot against your life," I said.

She looked at the paper and then at me. "What are you doing?" she said.

"I'm writing the story of Jettero Heller's life."

"A writer," she said. "Well, well, you've come to the right person, Monte Pennwell. You may have to do some travelling, for his papers are all kept in the place where he was born: Tapour, Atalanta Province, Planet Manco. I can give you a letter to the museum librarian there."

"What about this threat against your life?" I said.

She went to the window and looked across at Government City. Then she said, "Are you a good fighter, Monte Pennwell?"

"I'm not sure," I said. "I never tried."

That seemed to surprise her. Then she looked at the paper. "From this, I would say that you have somehow gotten into the files of the Coordinated Information Apparatus. Have you got more than this?"

"I've got tons and tons and tons," I said. "I even own the place they're sitting in: the old fortress of Spiteos. I just bought it."

"Good Heavens!" said Hightee. She grew very thoughtful. She looked back at Government City. Then she looked at me. "You seem a nice young man. I know your family quite well. I won't give you a letter. I'll come with you. I haven't been home for a long, long time."

And that was how, with the Apparatus files, I got all the data that permitted me to finish the confession of Soltan Gris.

I hope you appreciate it. It was an awful lot of work!

It DOES contain the cover-up of all time!

And right now, with no more ado, I will get on with it and grab that Soltan Gris by the neck in midflight and tell you what really happened after that fatal day he rushed into the Royal Prison hoping to be executed quickly!

The REAL story is a stunner!

Jettero Heller, Royal officer of the Fleet, Grade X, and member of the Corps of Combat Engineers, tried to counter the eagerness of his lady, the Countess Krak.

He did not like the idea of approaching Spiteos, heavily defended as it was, in an unarmed and unarmored tug.

Just returning from what he supposed to be the completion of Mission Earth after an absence from Voltar of ten months, he did not like the look of things.

He was still travelling on his own orders, those of a combat engineer, and these gave him very wide latitude. He didn't have to report in to the Apparatus and he had no slightest intention of doing so.

Ten months before, after he had been kidnapped by Lombar Hisst and thrown into the dungeon at Spiteos, he had found himself being pushed into a mission under the Exterior Division. His mission handler was supposed to be an Apparatus officer named Soltan Gris. What Gris didn't know was that Jet had never once supposed himself to be directed by the Apparatus.

Before they left, while outfitting the mission vessel Prince Caucalsia, a space tug, Jet had had a chance to talk to Bis of Fleet Intelligence.

"The 'drunks' are up to something," young Bis had said. "We can't do anything direct because we do not have the cooperation of the Lord of the Fleet. He's on the Grand Council; he's a nobleman but not a Royal officer. What it's going to take is massive evidence.

With that we can force the issue. So I wish you would undertake the mission and keep your eyes open. But stay alert. Even at the best of times the Apparatus is dangerous. So stay alive and be nimble and maybe the Fleet will have the 'drunks' dead to rights."

The mission had been dangerous enough to please even the most suicidal soul and he'd almost lost his darling, the Countess Krak.

On Voltar Homeview news, the bit that the Chief of the Apparatus, Lombar Hisst, was now the spokesman for His Majesty, Cling the Lofty, rang an alarm bell in Jet.

If, however, he reported in to Bis, his mission would be over, his orders cancelled and he would not have solved the situation of the Countess Krak.

If she continued on as a nonperson, he could not marry her. Worse, she could be picked up by the Apparatus at any time and slammed back into Spiteos or even executed.

There were these so-called Royal proclamations Gris had given her. As yet not fully validated by the signature of the Emperor, they offered an out for her. But he didn't care so much about the other one commending himself—he had them by the bale already.

Gris had given them to her to secure her cooperation in getting the mission launched. Jet didn't trust anything connected with Gris.

They had not found the duplicates in Gris' office. Gris was apparently dead now. She said she had hidden the originals at Spiteos. Dangerous!

Well, a few more hours before reporting in would make no difference. He was still operating under his own cognizance. He decided to take a chance. So he said "All right." It was a fateful decision: Even though it showed no sign of it on the surface, it was going to change the course of hundreds of billions of lives.

In the dark outside of Gris' office in Government City, they loaded up the cartons of blackmail material they had found and the two marines drove them back to Emergency Fleet Reserve.

Commander Crup met them by the parked tug. "You deliver the prisoner all right?"

"Committed suicide," said the Countess Krak.

"Well, that saves the government expense," said Crup. "I wish that could be arranged for all the 'drunks.'"

"Maybe somebody is working on it," said Jet. "Could you please see that these boxes are delivered to Fleet Intelligence Officer Bis? They were the prisoner's personal blackmail files. Tell him I'll report in a bit later when I've attended to one last detail."