Heller and the Countess Krak stood watch-and-watch over the Emperor. The situation was not good. Cling the Lofty was bordering close to coma and communication with him was difficult.

The danger was not only to Cling's life: If he did not give evidence that he was there by his own orders, then Heller could be charged with kidnapping him. But all due respect to Heller, he was not thinking of that: His concern was concentrated on trying to save the monarch's life.

There was something else that was amiss, both Heller and Krak were sure of that. The man could barely swallow and trying to get food and fluid down him was almost impossible. His veins were so collapsed that intravenous feeding was beyond their skill. The Countess Krak sponged the aged body with water and kept the cracked lips wet. She wished she knew of some way to get nutrition into him.

Every three to six hours, when he would begin to thresh about, they would give him another pressure shot of heroin: It seemed that that was all that kept his bean going.

Haggard and worried, they came at last to the point above Afyon, Turkey, and that evening in the dark they slid downward through the mountaintop illusion and into the Earth base.

Faht Bey was there on the hangar floor, worried to see them. They had left only seven days earlier and he had supposed that all would go smoothly on Voltar. But Heller had told him that if there was trouble, Heller would bail him out. This must mean trouble.

Heller opened the airlock and shouted down, "Get me Prahd and get an ambulance and get it fast!"

Faht Bey rushed off and grabbed a phone and called. When he came back they had a ladder to the side of the tug. Heller was coming down it carrying a burden wrapped in a blanket.

"Who is this?" said Faht Bey as Heller reached the ground. "Are we in trouble?"

"Later, later," said Heller. He carried the burden up the tunnel, Faht Bey running beside him.

"Where's Gris?" said Faht Bey.

"Dead, so far as I know." "Bless Heavens!" cried Faht Bey. "I hope it was a nasty death."

"I think so," said Heller. "Where's that ambulance?"

"Coming, coming," said Faht Bey.

When they got to the workmen's barracks, the ambulance was already there. So was Prahd. They put Heller's burden on a stretcher and soon were screaming up the road to the hospital.

"What's wrong with him?" said Prahd, pulling back the blanket.

"If I knew, I wouldn't be here," said Heller. "It's heroin addiction bordering on coma but he doesn't seem to recover. I don't think his heart will stand up to withdrawal. But there's something else."

Prahd looked at the sunken face and withered arms. "Dehydration. Extreme."

"He can't seem to swallow. His veins are all collapsed. Listen:

you've got to put him in a totally secure room and let nobody near hin,"

"Why?"

"Just do it," said Heller.

"I'll put him in the basement out of public view. The guard! are all deaf-mutes there. Where's Gris?"

"He's evidently dead."

"Praise Allah, from whom all blessings avalanche," cried Prahd. "Thats wonderful news. We're all right, then."

"Not quite. If this man dies, I'm afraid we're all in trouble." '

"Who is he?"

"Never mind," said Heller.

They unloaded at the basement entrance. Nurse Bildirjin came down and with hand signs they got a tub rigged and put the sick man in it.

Prahd started working with meters and then began inserting tubes. The work was fast and furious and Heller stood by.

At length Prahd had done all he immediately could do. He came over to the worried Heller. "He's a crashed speed freak. Amphetamines."

"Then I was giving him the wrong drug!" said Heller.

"No, no," said Prahd. "He was also a heroin addict. By keeping that going you kept him out of its withdrawal, and that would have killed him, as his heart is shot. He was doing an upper-downer routine: feel low, use speed; feel too high, use heroin. You got him here alive."

"Not very," said Heller.

"He must have been nearly dead when you found him," said Prahd. "He was already pretty old and the amphetamine caused premature aging. That stuff can cause years of aging in just a few months. If he had his teeth when he started it, they're mostly gone now, too. And every gland in his body has been practically atrophied. Who is he?"

Heller didn't answer. He didn't want to load Prahd with the shock of it.

But Prahd read something from that. He went back and looked at his blood test and other readings. He fixed his bright green eyes on Heller. "This man is not just a commoner. He's a member of the nobility, the product of very selective breeding for thousands, tens of thousands of years."

"Can you bring him around?"

"I don't know. At the very least his mind will be clouded; his vocabulary will have dropped to a few hundred words. It takes years to recover from amphetamines and he's already so old it's doubtful if he can make it."

"Can you keep him going?"

"I don't know," said Prahd.

"Basically," said Heller, "the reason he is here is humanitarian. He couldn't be left to be killed. But it's also important that he be able to talk and write."

Prahd's eyes narrowed. He went back and looked at the unconscious old man now suspended in fluid. Something seemed to tug at his memory. Suddenly he lifted the cover of the tub and turned the top of the old man's shoulder to him. He took a brush, dipped it in a liquid and drew it across the skin.

The symbol of a comet appeared.

Prahd stepped back, eyes wide with shock. "The mark they put on Royal babies!" He stared at Heller. "This is Cling the Lofty, Emperor of Voltar!"

"Yes," said Heller, "and unless you can bring him around so that he can provide evidence it was at his orders he was removed from Palace City, we'll all be executed for hiding a kidnapped Emperor."

Prahd collapsed upon a bench. He mopped his forehead with his gown tail. "What a way to become the King's Own Physician!"

Back aboard the tug, the Countess Krak met Heller at the airlock. "Will he live?"

"I don't know," said Heller.

"Poor old man," said the Countess. "When will we know?"

"Not for several days. We may be in the soup but at least I can make sure this planet is all right."

"You think we may need it?"

"I doubt that. But Izzy was our friend and I better see if he is all right. I wasn't all that happy about leaving when we did and I wouldn't have except that I thought we would get home in time to alert Fleet Intelligence. We didn't."

He got out the viewer-phone and took it down into the hangar where it wouldn't be smothered by the tug. He buzzed it.

Nothing happened!

The viewer stayed blank.

It was only the end of the afternoon in New York. Izzy should be there.

In the next two hours, he tried several times again.

No result!

He went up the tunnel to Faht Bey's office and put in a longdistance call and got into a snarl through the Turkish telephone exchange. For reasons he could not make out, they could not connect him.

Heller turned to the base communication system with the base office in New York. The printouts showed they were on the job. When they realized who was on the machine they got quite excited and polite: they were very happy to be Fleet. Heller gave them the numbers in the Empire State Building and asked them to at least call on some subterfuge and ask Izzy to go into his office and respond on the viewer-phone.

He waited. Suddenly the printout began to roll.

THE NEW YORK INFORMATION OPERATOR SAYS THAT ALL THE NUMBERS YOU LISTED, SIR, ARE OUT OF SERVICE.

Heller typed back:

IS RAHT THERE?

He got a response:

NO, SIR, HE IS AT THE BASE.

Heller thanked them and turned off the machine. He went out and found Raht in the hangar crew's quarters. "Do you know of anything wrong?" he asked when greetings were over.