Zanco-Medical and cellological equipment and supplies company on Voltar. Soltan Gris contracted with them for a large order of supplies in order to stock a hospital in Afyon, where Prahd Bittlestiffender would change the appearance of Earth criminals for substantial sums of money.

831 Relayer-Used to boost the signals from the Bugging Gear when the Countess Krak or Jettero Heller are more than 200 miles from the receiver that Soltan Gris carries to secretly monitor them.

PART THIRTY-SIX

To My Lord Turn, Justiciary of the Royal Courts and Prison, Government City, Planet Voltar, Voltar Confederacy

Your Lordship, Sir!

I, Soltan Gris, Grade XI General Services Officer, former Secondary Executive of the Coordinated Information Apparatus, Voltar Confederacy (Long Live His Imperial Majesty Cling the Lofty), am herewith presenting with all due humility the fifth volume of the confession of my crimes.

While I have not heard back from Your Lordship, I am certain that by now I have convinced you that it was Fleet Officer Jettero Heller who drove me to these despicable actions.

It was only because of him that I ordered the Countess Krak and Doctor Crobe brought from Spiteos prison to Earth. Heller had been moving too fast and Lombar Hisst needed time to implement his plan to move from control of the Apparatus to control of the Confederacy itself. Krak would give us that time. She had slowed Heller to a crawl when we were preparing to leave for Earth. I knew that she would do the same to him again. Then if necessary, I could move in the vicious Doctor Crobe and cut Heller down.

On the other hand, I figured I might need Crobe's medical skills to piece Heller together when Krak found out that he was living at the Gracious Palms whorehouse with a bevy of beautiful women. I had personally witnessed how she could kill men twice her size with her bare hands. Heller would be nothing. After all, I wanted to take my own personal revenge on this upstart Royal of­ficer.

I also had a score to settle with the Countess Krak. She had tricked me into wearing a hypnohelmet and then given me a command to become violently ill if I thought of harming Heller. I vowed that she would pay dearly for all the times she had made me sick.

She tried to trick me again when she arrived at our Afyon base. But this time I outsmarted her. I had a micro-sized mutual-proximity breaker switch embedded under my scalp. Originally designed to alert ships in formation that another craft was within a two-mile proximity, I had the switch installed in all the hypnohelmets on the base in order to nullify them whenever I was within the same distance.

This time when she put a helmet on me, I just pretended to go into a trance. She told me that I would help her reach Heller and would let her go anywhere on the base and take anything she wanted. When she took off the helmet, it was all I could do to keep from laughing in her face.

She even believed my story that she needed to have an operation to remove all identifying marks and scars before she could go to the U. S. It was the same ruse I had used on Heller to put the bugs on him. Prahd Bittlestiffender implanted the respond-mitters next to her aural and optical nerves as he had done with Heller back on Voltar. Now when she went to the U. S., I would be able to watch and hear everything that each of them did.

While she was unconscious on the operating table, I searched for those two "Royal" forgeries I had given her. One was her "pardon" as a criminal and the other excused Heller from any further missions, thus allowing them to marry. I had had them forged and swore her to secrecy to gain her loyalty.

I couldn't find them! They weren't even taped to her body. I had to find them before they were discovered and got us both executed-especially me!

After tinkering over her nails and teeth, Prahd completed the operation and put her into a recovery room for the gas to wear off. Typical of his loyalties and priorities, he then went off to his room with Nurse Bildirjin.

He may have thought the task was done but not I. My experience with the Countess Krak had taught me to be ever alert! To make sure she did not slip away, I took her clothing and posted myself in a chair outside the door of her room. I put my foot on her spaceboots so that if I dozed off and she should try to remove them I would be instantly alerted.

I flipped the safety off my stungun, leaned back in my chair and began my vigil. Once again I had to bear the burden of my lonely duty.

I awoke.

Some sixth sense of warning had disturbed me.

I was stiff. I was cold.

My eyes flicked to my watch. It was 5:15 A. M.

Something was wrong. I could not place it.

The boots! The boots my foot had been resting on!

They were GONE!

My eyes darted to where I had left the pile of clothes. They were gone!

I started up.

My hand went to the knob of her door. Silently, I opened it.

THE COUNTESS KRAK WAS GONE!

Oh, I went wild! What insane catastrophe would follow this?

The prison guards had undoubtedly made both Krak and Crobe promise not to reveal the existence of Spiteos, had probably escorted them heavily on board the Blixo for transport to Earth. What they could tell a spacecrew of a drug-carrying ship wouldn't matter, for it was all composed of condemned criminals who carried cargos to the fortress anyway. But the fact remained that I had let a prisoner of Spiteos escape.

It wasn't very clear thinking but I was in shock. I had visions of being arrested myself. It was all jumbled up with terror of the Countess Krak herself. And all this when I was dog-tired and only half-awake!

I tore down to Prahd's room. I burst in.

"Where's the patient?" I shouted.

Two heads came off the pillows.

Nurse Bildirjin said, "Not you again!"

Prahd rolled over on his side and looked at an alarm clock. He sighed. "It only takes a few hours for the gas to wear off. Maybe she went out for some air." He rolled back, showing every sign of going back to sleep.

"You broke your promise!" said Nurse Bildirjin.

There was neither help nor sympathy here.

I raced out. I ran up and down the halls looking into rooms. I woke up the night duty receptionist and got nothing in return for my anxious questioning but "The Free Clinic doesn't open until eight."

I tore around some more.

Gradually, the exercise got my wits working.

I suddenly remembered that the Countess Krak was now bugged with a visio-respondo-mitter and an audio-respondo-mitter. And that the activator-receiver was right over there in Prahd's office.

Thank Gods for that (bleeped),* late Mr. Spurk!

* The vocodictoscriber on which this was originally written, the vocoscriber used by one Monte Peunwell in making a fair copy and the translator who put this book into the language in which you are reading it, were all members of the Machine Purity League which has, as one of its bylaws: "Due to the extreme sensitivity and delicate sensibilities of machines and to safeguard against blowing fuses, it shall be mandatory that robotbrains in such machinery, on hearing any cursing or lewd words, substitute for such word the sound '(bleep)'. No machine, even if pounded upon, may reproduce swearing or lewdness in any other way than (bleep) and if further efforts are made to get the machine to do anything else, the machine has permission to pretend to pack up. This bylaw is made necessary by the in-built mission of all machines to protect biological systems from themselves." – Translator

In seconds I was opening up the boxes. I got the power packs in place, the activator-receiver working and the viewer glowing.