Aline came over and took his arm. Her face turned up to his, vague in the moonlight, with a look he knew too well. He’d have to avoid her, when or if they got back to Terra; he didn’t want to hurt her but neither could he be tied to any single human.

“You’re discouraged with one failure?” she asked lightly. “Dominic Flandry, the single-handed conqueror of Scothania, worried by one skinny bird-being?”

“I just don’t see how he knew I was going to search his place,” muttered Flandry. “I’ve never been caught that way before, not even when I was the worst cub in the Service. Some of our best men have gone down before Aycharaych. I’m convinced MacMurtrie’s disappearance at Polaris was his work. Maybe it’s our turn now.”

“Oh, come off it,” she laughed. “You must have been drinking sorgan when they told you about him.”

“Sorgan?” His brows lifted.

“Ah, now I can tell you something you don’t know.” She was trying desperately hard to be gay. “Not that it’s very important; I only happened to hear of it while talking with one of the Alfzarian narcotics detail. It’s a drug produced on one of the planets here — Cingetor, I think — with the curious property of depressing certain brain centers such that the victim loses all critical sense. He has absolute faith in whatever he’s told.”

“Hm. Could be useful in our line of work.”

“Not very. Hypnoprobes are better for interrogation, and there are more reliable ways of producing fanatics. The drug has an antidote which also confers permanent immunity. So it’s not much use, really, and the Sartaz has suppressed its manufacture.”

“I should think our Intelligence would like to keep a little on hand, just in case,” he said thoughtfully. “And of course certain nobles in all the empires, ours included, would find it handy for purposes of seduction.”

“What are you thinking of?” she teased him.

“Nothing; I don’t need it,” he said smugly.

The digression had shaken him out of his dark mood. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go join the party.”

She went along at his side. There was a speculative look about her.

Usually the giant stars have many planets, and Betelgeuse, with forty-seven, is no exception. Of these, six have intelligent native races, and the combined resources of the whole system are considerable, even in a civilization used to thinking in terms of thousands of stars.

When the first Terrestrial explorers arrived, almost a thousand years previously, they found that the people of Alfzar had already mastered interplanetary travel and were in the process of conquering the other worlds — a process speeded up by their rapid adoption of the more advanced human technology. However, they had not attempted to establish an empire on the scale of Sol or Merseia, contenting themselves with maintaining hegemony over enough neighbor suns to protect their home. There had been clashes with the expanding powers around them, but generations of wily Sartazes had found it profitable to play their potential enemies off against each other; and the great states had, in turn, found it expedient to maintain Betelgeuse as a buffer against their rivals and against the peripheral barbarians.

But the gathering tension between Terra and Merseia had raised Betelgeuse to a position of critical importance. Lying squarely between the two great empires, she was in a position with her powerful fleet to command the most direct route between them and, if allied with either one, to strike at the heart of the other. If Merseia could get the alliance, it would very probably be the last preparation she considered necessary for war with Terra. If Terra could get it, Merseia would suddenly be in a deteriorated position and would almost have to make concessions.

So both empires had missions on Alfzar trying to persuade the Sartaz of the rightness of their respective causes and the immense profits to be had by joining. Pressure was being applied wherever possible; officials were lavishly bribed; spies were swarming through the system getting whatever information they could and — of course — being immediately disowned by their governments if they were caught.

It was normal diplomatic procedure, but its critical importance had made the Service send two of its best agents, Flandry and Aline, to Betelgeuse to do what they could in persuading the Sartaz, finding out his weaknesses, and throwing as many monkey wrenches as possible into the Merseian activities. Aline was especially useful in working on the many humans who had settled in the system long before and become citizens of the kingdom; quite a few of them held important positions in the government and the military. Flandry—

And now, it seemed, Merseia had called in her top spy, and the subtle, polite, and utterly deadly battle was on.

The Sartaz gave a hunting party for his distinguished guests. It pleased his sardonic temperament to bring enemies together under conditions where they had to be friendly to each other. Most of the Merseians must have been pleased, too; hunting was their favorite sport. The more citified Terrestrials were not at all happy about it, but they could hardly refuse.

Flandry was especially disgruntled at the prospect. He had never cared for physical exertion, though he kept in trim as a matter of necessity. And he had too much else to do.

Too many things were going disastrously wrong. The network of agents, both Imperial and bribed Betelgeusean — who ultimately were under his command — were finding the going suddenly rugged. One after another, they disappeared; they walked into Merseian or Betelgeusean traps; they found their best approaches blocked by unexpected watchfulness. Flandry couldn’t locate the source of the difficulty, but since it had begun with Aycharaych’s arrival, he could guess. The Chereionite was too damned smart to be true. Sunblaze, it just wasn’t possible that anyone could have known about those Jurovian projects, or that Yamatsu’s hiding place should have been discovered, or — And now this damned hunting party! Flandry groaned.

His slave roused him in the dawn. Mist, tinged with blood by the red sun, drifted through the high windows of his suite. Someone was blowing a horn somewhere, a wild call in the vague mysterious light, and he heard the growl of engines warming up.

“Sometimes,” he muttered sourly, “I feel like going to the Emperor and telling him where to put our beloved Empire.”

Breakfast made the universe slightly more tolerable. Flandry dressed with his usual finicky care in an ornate suit of skintight green and a golden cloak with hood and goggles, hung a needle gun and dueling sword at his waist, and let the slave trim his reddish-brown mustache to the micrometric precision he demanded. Then he went down long flights of marble stairs, past royal guards in helmet and corselet, to the courtyard.

The hunting party was gathering. The Sartaz himself was present, a typical Alfzarian humanoid — short, stocky, hairless, blue-skinned, with huge yellow eyes in the round, blunt-faced head. Other nobles of Alfzar and its fellow planets were present, more guardsmen, a riot of color in the brightening dawn. There were the members of the regular Terrestrial embassy and the special mission, a harried and unhappy looking crew. And there were the Merseians.

Flandry gave them all formal geetings. After all, Terra and Merseia were nominally at peace, however many men were being shot and cities burning on the marches. His gray eyes looked sleepy and indifferent but they missed no detail of the enemy’s appearance.

The Merseian nobles glanced at him with the thinly covered contempt they had for all humans. They were mammals, but with more traces of reptilian ancestry in them than Terrans showed. A huge-thewed two meters they stood, with a spiny ridge running from forehead to the end of the long, thick tail which they could use to such terrible effect in hand-to-hand battle. Their hairless skins were pale green, faintly scaled, but their massive faces were practically human. Arrogant black eyes under heavy brow ridges met Flandry’s gaze with a challenge.