Katrina pushed aside the curtain and glanced at Ardan. He had his eyes closed, remained totally relaxed, breathing deeply. His body was asleep; it was his mind that was still alert.

"When you study military history, you come up with many strange matters. Once, a very long while ago, there was a war on Old Earth. The Commander of one side—I believe his name was Montgomery or something similar—reviewed troops and traveled about the battle areas, misleading the enemy totally. That man was a double. The real Field Marshal was helping to plan a major attack, which succeeded partially because of that ploy. Such things have happened more than once," she said.

"Well, this cannot be such an instance," said the doctor. "The time for such play-acting is surely in the distant past, not in our civilized present."

Another voice chimed in, deeper, assured. Doctor Karns. "He is deeply troubled by that vision. But it's hard to tell whether he really ever left his bed at all. It is quite possible the entire sequence of events was an hallucination. Yet he repeats it with utter consistency. That is unusual with a true hallucination. It is a troublesome problem."

"We shall remove him from any reminder of such matters," said the Archon. "Melissa will entertain him. We shall take his mind off anything painful or distressing."

"That should be of great help. He is most fortunate to have the friendship of the ruler of the Lyran Commonwealth," said the woman doctor. Her sycophantic tone disgusted Ardan.

He twitched his hand, trying to move, but the drug carried him away, deeper and deeper. The voices were silent, or perhaps the speakers had moved away. It was just as wed. He needed sleep.

But as he sank into that darkness, he saw the face of that other Hanse before him. Still. Uncommunicative. Unused.

20

Outside the double-glazed and insulated windows, framed in the graceful arch, a snowstorm was doing its worst. Melissa Steiner sat on the cushioned windowseat, gazing out into the blizzard. From time to time, a wayward gust would sweep the curtains of snow aside, giving a brief glimpse of the deeps below the crag where stood the favorite seat of House Steiner.

Melissa enjoyed the violent climate of her homeworld. The distant glimpses of Tharkad's snowswept crags and peaks, the tumbles of lesser eminences with their heavy wigs of white, filled her with a sort of fierce joy. She hoped Ardan was awake to look from the window beside his bed. He liked this world, too, she recalled.

At the thought of their guest, her face grew sober. From her first glimpse of the trim young officer in charge of Hanse Davion's personal Guard, she had liked him. He had always treated her with respect, but the two of them had also developed a conspiratorial pleasure in hatching practical jokes for which they were never blamed.

That was probably because nobody ever suspected that the bookworm Melissa would indulge in such pranks. Ardan Sortek was the first person ever to tap the repressed mischief in her nature. Remembering all that now, she smiled and subdued a sudden urge to do something silly.

She was fifteen now, almost a grown woman, too old to indulge in foolishness. But she was happy, indeed, that Ardan had returned. Winter could be very long and boring on Tharkad. It would be diverting to pass the time with him.

That reminded her of what she had meant to check in her Reader. Ardan's insistence that he hadseen a double for Hanse had reminded her so much of that ancient novel she had read. Melissa rose and went over to the Reader, intending to review the computer records for anything similar.

She keyed in Impersonations' and touched the command key. The monitor asked: Historical? Social? Literary? Economic?

That surprised her. The computer's response seemed to indicate that history was full of such things. She decided to start with the literary references, as it was The Prisoner of Zendathat had set off her train of thought in the first place. A list of tides and authors began to scroll down the screen.

She printed out those she thought might be most interesting. There was The Prince and the Pauper, The Man in the Iron Mask,as well as a number of others that were unfamiliar to her. Next, Melissa asked for the historical data.

Those results astounded her, too. It was not only in ancient history that such things had occurred. In 2381, a double had succeeded in impersonating the Elazar of Trimerrion so successfully that his world was plunged into a war that almost destroyed it.The true Elazar had not been able to win free of his captors until it was too late to prevent the catastrophe.

Melissa's gray eyes narrowed. The situation among the ruling Houses of the Successor States was now unstable, making a treaty between Davion and Steiner a major irritation to both Kurita and Liao. Therefore, anything that disrupted the planned union of the Lyran and Federated Suns systems would be of great benefit to the Draconis Combine and the Capellan Confederation.

She read further. In 2738, one of the pivotal allies of the Lord of the Star League had suddenly changed his policies so drastically that it affected the decisions of several of the other states later involved in the Succession Wars. Only later, after the man's death, was it learned that he had not been Faillol Esteren at all. His fingerprints had been altered to match, of course, and his retinal patterns were sufficiently similar to trigger various security devices. What they found, however, was that the false Esteren had broken some bones in his youth, but his appendix was in place. The true Faillol had undergone an appendectomy at age 15, but had never broken a bone.

The mystery of who had been the imposter was never solved. Nor was it ever learned who was behind the substitution, nor how it had been done.

She read closely the detailed history of that era, learning that the false ruler's decisions had furthered two different interests. Neither appeared to be involved in the plot, but it was strange that the two closest friends of Faillol had vanished from the scene at about the same time. One had suddenly become so ill that his mental processes were affected. He was hospitalized and later institutionalized, but never recovered.

"Drugs," said Melissa. "No doubt of it."

The other was accused of treason when certain state secrets were leaked. What must have been the false Faillol had spoken half-heartedly in his behalf, making matters worse, not better, for the unfortunate man. Eventually, he was tried and found guilty. The fact that an innocent man had been dishonored and executed came out only after the imposter's death, years later. The dead man had been so completely in the real Esteren's confidence that he would have immediately detected an imposter.

Ardan, too, was the close confidante of his Prince, Hanse Davion. Could there be some devious reason for his sudden recovery at just the right moment to see that shape in the laboratory?

For the next week, Melissa read everything she could find. The novels, the historical records, even the accounts of social substitutions. This only reinforced her first impression that impersonators were not and never had been rare. It was more that they were seldom uncovered. How many more had been totally successful, so that the imposter had gone to his grave without being detected?

When she had absorbed as much of this background as her mind could hold, Melissa went to see her mother. Katrina was, as usual, immersed in the affairs of her worlds and those of her allies and enemies. But she swept a clear spot on the carpet beside her, always glad to make time for her daughter.

"And what have you been doing all week, my dear? Is Ardan able to be up and about, yet?"