Her hands tore loose!

Something had her by the wrist!

With a mighty yank, Jet snapped her into the airlock!

With two kicks of his feet he freed the ladder hooks. The ladder fell away.

"Rise maximum!" he shouted at the tug, now on automatic.

He slammed the airlock door and spun its wheel.

They were rising violently fast.

He bent for an instant over the Countess Krak. She grinned at him. "That was a great trapeze act. But I don't think we ought to keep it in the show. I got them. But what was that?"

"A flying cannon," said Jet. "It must have been hidden somewhere. Its fire directors centered on the ladder. Your boots are scorched. Are your feet all right?"

"A bit warm."

"I hope their fire control followed the ladder down, what there was left of it."

The Countess Krak was picking herself up. "We got what we came for. Let's get out of here."

"We can't. We can outmaneuver that thing but we can't outrun it. I can't open up the Will-be Was main drives or he'd zero in on the turbulence before we were out of range." He yelled to the tug. "Where is he now?"

"We're just passing a hundred miles altitude, sir. His detectors are lashing about much lower. But that's a two-hundred-mile-range gun, sir."

"Blast," said Heller.

"I don't have any guns, sir," said the tug. "I can't blast."

"Shut up," said Heller and pushed the switch off automatic.

He settled into the local-pilot seat. "Hold on," he yelled back to the Countess Krak.

He dived the tug like a plummet. He was watching his screens. He was locating the exact position of the lethal ship and keeping his own silhouette away from its view of the moon.

He had the flying cannon dead ahead. He was jinking, to confuse its fire direction.

Suddenly he spun the tug exactly backwards to bis assailant.

He hit the lever for traction towing beams.

The flying cannon was in his grip. He began to swing it like a pebble in a sling. It helped out by gunning its own engines in the same direction.

Round and round the other ship swung in a huge circle.

Suddenly Heller let it go.

He reversed the tug.

The flying cannon plummeted to the desert floor.

Sand flew, a crash resounded and the distant scream of rending metal faded away.

Heller's hand seized the local radio and turned it on.

A bedlam of voices was coming over it on battle frequency. He

listening to see if any more defense craft would be launched.

Then suddenly a voice rang out: "That was the Chief! All available rescue units, head for that crash! Urgent! Urgent! Lombar Hisst is wrecked three miles south of Camp Kill! Urgent! Urgent!"

"Well, what do you know!" said Heller. And then he looked sadly at the Countess Krak. "We're for it. I've slammed down the mighty Lombar Hisst."

"Oh, good!" cried the Countess Krak. "Hurray!"

"No, dear," said Jet. "It didn't burn and he probably isn't dead. As he is spokesman to the Emperor, our chances of getting those documents signed now are exactly zilch."

They were vaulting again into the sky, too fast and too far for any retaliation from the ground. Heller anxiously watched his screens to see if turbulence foretold any intercepting spacevessels in sight.

The Countess Krak fished the proclamations out of her shirt. She opened the envelope and looked at them. The one would honor Jettero for his successful conclusion of the mission and promised him safe employment on Royal staff hereafter: He had already lived three times as long as the normal life expectancy of a combat engineer. It was time to get him into a safer post while he was still alive. The other restored her citizenship and rights: Without it she would remain a nonperson, subject to execution at a whim and with no penalty; without it she could not hope to marry. It even restored the Krak estates on Manco, once so vast but long since lost by legal chicanery.

They looked so beautiful with all their scrolls and seals and, on one, even the signature of Cling the Lofty. She did not know they were forgeries done by Gris' office. But no matter how clever they were, they would not appear in the Royal log at Palace City and anyone presenting them would be seized and executed instantly. Gris had covered his own tracks well: he had even ordered the forgers executed.

"Look at these," said the Countess Krak. "Aren't they worth some risk?"

Jet turned from his screens. He read the papers and looked them over carefully. He saw nothing wrong. But still, they had come from Gris. "Very nice," he said. "We can hang them on the wall of a cave while we hide out."

"Oh, Jettero, our whole future depends on our bringing this off. I must insist we make an effort to get them signed."

"WHAT?" he said. "After crashing Lombar Hisst? Right this minute he must be turning the planet upside down to find us!"

"Jettero, he had no slightest way of knowing it was us. To him it was just a strange ship."

"I doubt it. The illusion I used was of a tug."

"But he doesn't even know you're home. Gris is dead. How could he guess?"

"I'll bet there's an alarm out right this instant."

"I doubt it very much," said the Countess Krak. "And an alarm of that kind wouldn't reach the palace. The guards there are Royal. They have no traffic with ordinary police matters."

"Wait a minute!" said Heller. "You are suggesting I go straight to the palace?"

"While I was in that cell, I had time to read the Compendium on protocol. A Royal officer always has the right of audience with the Emperor."

"Lady, it may say so but I doubt a Royal officer has called on His Majesty in the last ten thousand years."

"But it's right in the regulations. You could tell them to look it up."

"You mean I simply walk in there," said Heller, "and say 'Here, Your Majesty. Wake up! Sign on the dotted line'?"

"You've got your dress uniform. You wore it the day you left Voltar for Earth. You've even got your Fifty Volunteer Star."

"Oh, no! Look at the time of night!"

"People are always rushing up to an Emperor with bad news. You have a perfect right to rush in and say, 'Hello, hello! Good news! I knew Your Majesty was personally interested in Mission Earth. Well, ho, ho, it's all done. Sign here!" And even if the word is out for us, if we move awfully fast we can get it done before Palace City hears. And we'd be safe."

"Wow!" said Heller. "You're crazier than a combat engineer! Forget it!"

"Jettero, as your future dutiful and obedient wife, I must put my foot down firmly and insist we go ahead!"

"Oh, Lords, Gods and Devils!" said Heller. "If this is obedience, I'll take a tyrant any time!" He laughed. "But I'll show you I'm not a male chauvinistic pig. If you're willing to take the risk, I'll give it a try. But I want it entered in the log: 'I'm only doing this because I want desperately to marry the girl I love.'"

"Oh, Jettero." She threw her arms about his neck and kissed him.

The tug said, "Sir, Red Warning. You're in a power dive."

Palace City lies just south of a mountain. The mountain contains a black hole of undetermined age. The black hole gives power to the palaces and defenses. It also puts the city, because it warps the space, thirteen minutes in the future.

Looking down on it all, especially at night, there was exactly nothing to be seen but a sort of mist.

In all the ages since it had been built, Palace City had never fallen to outside attack. Although sometimes it had changed hands due to a palace coup, it was considered impregnable, impervious to being breached.

Emperors and courtiers were used to living with the time stress: the compensation was that the place could never fall, even from riots and civil commotion. The only danger that existed was the faint chance that someday the black hole itself might suddenly reach term and itself explode with unthinkable violence. But they could live with this: the topmost government was so safe, the Emperor was so secure that only a madman would contemplate an overthrow of the realm. Revolutionaries were doomed from the start. People like Prince Mortiiy were rightly, by normal standards, looked upon as insane: Even if they won a planet or two, they could never overthrow the whole government so long as Palace City held.