He glanced once more at the hall entrance door. Nobody yet.

He stepped into the Emperor's bedchamber and bolted the door shut behind him.

He had had no real idea what he had expected to see: probably Cling the Lofty lying asleep on a huge bed all in silver and gold. But that wasn't what he saw.

The place looked like a hospital!

The Emperor was lying on a narrow metal cot!

The place was filthy! 

It stank!

There was a huddled form under a sheet. Heller stepped forward and lifted up the cloth.

Cling the Lofty, in all his public portraits, was a tall, well-formed monarch of middle age, perhaps ninety or a hundred, imperious, arrogant.

This creature here was so far from that that Heller thought for a moment he might have come into the wrong room.

There was a side table and a glowplate. Heller turned it up.

Yes, this was the same man. But he must be at least 180. He was shrunken and gray. Only wisps of disordered hair remained. The face was covered with age mottles but they were not what gave the impression: It was that he looked like someone who had starved to death: Even the outline of the few remaining teeth could be seen through the skin of the face. As Heller peered, the man's eyes fluttered open. They were bloodshot in the extreme. A palsied hand came up. Then fear was replaced by some sort of recognition.

The voice quavered, "Are you a Royal officer?"

"Your Majesty," said Heller and was instantly on one knee.

The skeletal hand reached out, feebly raking at Heller's chest. "A real Royal officer," he said, as though it was too much for him to believe.

"At your service, Your Majesty."

"Oh, thank the Gods. At last! In the name of all my lineage, get me out of here before Hisst has me killed!"

Heller was about to speak. There was a sound of boots in the antechamber. Many! One of the officers had hit an alarm.

Jet gripped his radio. "NOW!" he said.

The door was bulging inward!

Apparatus guards were shouting outside.

Somewhere a siren moaned and then began to climb toward a shriek. Other signals joined it.

Heller was at the door. It burst wide!

The first guard in received the slash of the baton across his face. He flinched and his blastrifle was in Heller's hands. Its butt smashed the guard's chest in.

Heller dropped on one knee.

His finger hit the firing lever.

The bucking rifle sprayed an arc into the rushing patrol. Flame erupted in their place.

Fragments of the patrol spattered through the room. Heller stood up. A guard was moving. He fired once more.

There was only smoke and dismembered bodies in the antechamber.

The scream of gongs and sirens was deafening.

The clamor in the building increased.

Heller stepped back into the room.

He grabbed a covering and wrapped it around the Emperor. The man was desperately clawing the air and Heller suddenly realized he was making grabbing motions at a cabinet over at the side.

Heller grabbed at the cabinet and swung the doors open. It contained the crown and chains of office and a carved diamond seal. Heller swept them all into a bag that lay beside them. Cling was nodding now.

Heller picked the Emperor up, adjusted the blanket to hide the bag and ran through the antechamber.

Heller carried his burdens covered up so no one could see what they were. Streams of people were tearing out of the building, trampling one another, eyes wild.

He went down the broad stairway, carried like a chip in a storm.

Sirens and gongs were ripping the air to bits.

He tried to turn but the running mob was pressing him forward.

With great trouble he forged sideways to his left. He was suddenly out of the panicked, racing throng.

The Emperor and the symbols of state weighed close to 150 pounds and with this increased gravity after so long on Earth, he found it difficult to run. But he headed north toward the mountain.

As he turned around a building he was hit with another screaming mob, fleeing south and east. He had to back up to the wall and brace himself against their buffeting passage.

It was clear again. He began to run. He headed across a park.

Another compact mob was coming like a battering ram. He crouched down in the lee of a statue and let them tear by.

Then he was up and running again. He went around the northernmost building and spotted the conduit path. He raced up it toward the tower.

His heart was pounding and his breath was getting short. His arms were beginning to ache. Yet he still had a half a mile of uphill running to go and it lay through rocks.

Stumbling, narrowly avoiding boulders, leaping across pits, he raced upward toward the tug. He thought his lungs were going to catch fire.

The last hundred yards were agony.

He reached the airlock. The Countess Krak had it open. Her strained face was a blur in the dark.

Heller put his burdens in the airlock.

With his last breath, he shouted, "Maximum rise!"

The tug vaulted skyward.

The Countess got the airlock outer door shut. She spun its lock. She turned on a light.

"Your hands!" she cried. "They're blistered!"

Heller, slumped on the floor, nodded. "Yes," he panted, "things were pretty warm."

The nauseating twist of going through the time barrier gripped them. They went through it and the tug continued to claw for sky.

The Countess got some false skin from her bag and spread it on his hands.

"I heard your 'Now!' said the Countess, "and I pushed the firing button. Nothing happened!"

"Plenty happened," said Heller, holding his chest and trying to get his breath. "You sent a stream of false gamma straight at their alert system. It set off the alarms that tell them the mountain's black hole is about to blow up. I almost got killed in the stampede! They're probably jammed a thousand deep at the exit gates of Palace City. You did fine."

He took a couple more deep breaths. "Oh, am I out of condition."

He struggled up and got to the pilot panel, yanked out the identification of Survey Ship Wave, fumbled in a bag and plugged in Cruiser Vanguard, Routine Patrol. "Where are we?" he yelled at the tug.

"Entering lower range of outer defense perimeter," said the tug.

"Three hundred and forty-four miles altitude. Speed accelerating to fifty miles a second. No beams on us."

"We may have made it," said Heller. "But that doesn't mean much. We have no place to go."

The Countess Krak followed him back into the airlock. He was picking up the burdens he had put aboard. "Did you get them signed?"

Heller didn't answer. He made his way to the small medical room. He dropped the bag in the corner and laid the blanket-wrapped body on the table.

The Countess Krak watched noncomprehending. "I said, did you get them signed?"

Heller was strapping the body down securely and covering the wasted limbs. "No," he said.

"Oh," moaned the Countess Krak.

"Other duties got in the way," said Heller. He was feeling the aged wrist for a pulse.

"What other possible duties could be more important?" she said.

Heller pointed at the man on the table. "Him. This is His Majesty, Cling the Lofty."

"WHAT?" she peered more closely. "Oh, good Heavens! It IS!" Then she said, "He can still sign them!"

Heller shook his head. "I don't know," he said. "I didn't bring him out for that. Hisst had him a prisoner and he ordered me to rescue him." He shook his head again. "But I don't think that that was any use. He looks like he is dying."

"Oh, NO!" cried the Countess Krak.

"I'm afraid so," said Heller. "That's an awfully shallow pulse."

"Oh, nothing could be worse!" cried the Countess.

"Yes, it could," said Jet. "There's no record of his order. And when they wake up back there and find the mountain didn't blow up and it was just false gamma, they'll think I kidnapped him."