home world; even in peak physical condition as he was now, he would be largely
incapacitated. In ten, twenty, thirty years he would become a hopeless cripple.
Yvette would be able to tolerate the low gravity of other worlds much better, but there
would still be complications. People from high-grav worlds tended to develop bone
diseases when they moved permanently to smaller ones. She herself could wind up an
arthritic cripple-a fate she didn’t relish. Plus, she would have to go into a self-imposed
exile from all the friends and family she felt closest to.
There was the question, too, of relative strength. She had had to be very careful thus far
in their relationship not to use her full strength. Even in the midst of their most passionate
embrace she had had to hold off using her power, for fear of cracking several of his ribs.
If they were to be married she would be living with that fear constantly, afraid to let
herself go completely because she might hurt or even kill him. It was this collection of
doubts that tempered her ecstasy as she fished in her purse to find her key.
But I do love him, she realized.
As she pulled the magnetic key from her purse and was about to run it over the surface
of the door’s lock, she noticed a light shining out from under the doorframe. She distinctly
remembered turning out the lights as she’d left her room four hours ago . . . and these
lights were not automatically timed to go on by themselves.
Instantly all thoughts of Dak Lehman were banished from her mind and she was once
again Yvette d’Alembert, top agent for the Service of the Empire. Business was at hand.
Some person or persons had broken into her room, had turned on a light and had left it
on. It could be a simple burglary and the thief may have departed hours ago, but she
could not afford to take that chance. Searching back through her memory, she suddenly
realized one reason why this evening had seemed so carefree–her two menacing
shadows had not been following her. It had perplexed her slightly at first, but she had
forgotten it in the delightful evening that followed. Now it was all suddenly clear. They had
not followed her because they were setting an ambush in her own room. Yvette was glad
she had not accepted Dak’s proposition. She’d been getting very nervous about these
two faceless ones for some time now but had been unable to initiate action. Now it was
finally they who were starting something, and Yvette resolved to be the one to finish it.
Her analytical mind raced, deciding what strategy she should take. The hall was normally
quiet and she had made no attempt to silence her footsteps, so Gaspard and
Murgatroyd would know she was presently standing outside the door. They would be
taking no chances-their guns would be trained on the door to shoot her the instant she
opened it. Blasters or stunners, it would make no difference; they would be trying to
incapacitate her somehow.
But they would be aiming at a target standing in the doorway, because that was the
normal way people entered a room. They would probably aim fairly low, waist height or
lower-to ensure a hit. But there might be another way to enter a room. . . .
Looking quickly around, Yvette spotted what she wanted. All starliners were equipped
with series of handholds for emergency use in case their artificial gravity failed. These
had been made to blend in with the decor, but they were there and would be sturdy
enough for what she had in mind. She fixed in her mind the position of the one just above
her door and braced herself for action.
She rubbed the magnetic key across the surface of the lock, but did not stick around to
await the results. Instead, she leaped for the handhold above her door. As the door slid
silently open, she could hear the low buzzing of stun-guns discharging, firing at the spot
where she should by all rights have been standing. Instead, the beams passed
harmlessly through the air and vibrated against the opposite wall of the corridor.
Yvette grabbed the handhold firmly and used it as a pivot point. Taking advantage of the
forward momentum of her leap, she swung her legs forward and to the side, through the
upper half of the portal, and landed out of the line of fire next to a chair. As she was
descending, she noted that her ambushers had turned the gravity in her room back down
to one gee, obviously for their own convenience. What they did not realize was that the
lower gravity would also make it easier for her to fight them.
The two men had stationed themselves three meters apart against the far wall and were
aiming at the doorway to catch her in a vee crossfire. Yvette’s brain assimilated that
knowledge in a fraction of a second and plotted her next move accordingly. She did not
pause as she landed, but instead bent her legs under her as springs, using the force of
her impact as the impetus for another leap. She flew across the room toward the man
she’d name Murgatroyd, twisting catlike in midair as she did so; by the time she reached
him, her feet were in front of her to cushion her landing. At the same time her right hand
lashed out sideways and the edge of it delivered a vicious blow to the side of the man’s
neck. Had she not deliberately pulled the punch at the last second the neck would have
snapped; as it was, Murgatroyd reeled and fell unconscious to the floor while Yvette, in
one fluid motion, spun herself around and launched herself at the other gunman.
This fellow was the one she’d called Gaspard, and his reflexes were good. Yvette’s
attack on his companion had given him the split second he needed to recover from the
surprise of her entrance and begin to turn in her direction. Even so, his reflexes were no
match for those of a DesPlainian in peak condition.
Just as he swiveled and brought his gun up level to fire, Yvette was on top of him,
seventy kilograms of infuriated mass. The impact of her body knocked them both to the
ground, and a quick jab of her stiffened fingers just under his ribcage knocked the air out
of his lungs and the fight out of his spirit.
As the second man went limp, Yvette breathed a small sigh of relief and got to her feet.
A sudden motion caught her eye at the very limit of her peripheral vision, but before she
could turn to see what it was she heard the buzzing of a stun-gun. Paralysis numbed her
body and she fell, limp-boned, face forward onto the carpeting. The hidden gunman must
have used a number one setting on his stunner, the minimum possible, because Yvette
did not lose consciousness. All that happened was that her voluntary muscles refused to
obey her strenuous demands to act, leaving her lying helpless in the middle of the floor.
The fact that her assailant had used so low a setting was encouraging-he could just as
easily have killed her-but it was little consolation to her at this particular moment.
Yvette was furious at herself for having been so stupid. Just because she had only seen
two followers before didn’t mean that there only were two. She had allowed her own
self-confidence to lure her into a false assumption; she should never have relaxed her
guard until she’d checked the room thoroughly to make sure there were no other
attackers hiding in it. In the deadly game of espionage, a player was usually allowed only
one mistake, because one was usually fatal. Yvette was praying that would not be the
case this time, and ‘she swore she would never make such a stupid blunder again.
As she lay there she could hear the approaching footsteps of the person who’d shot her.
She could not turn her head to see, but soon a pair of men’s shoes stepped into her field
of vision. “You are to be congratulated, Gospozha Velasquez; you fought better than
anyone would have expected. We underestimated you, and that’s something I hate to do.
Rest assured, that will not happen again.
“I should begin, I suppose, by telling you that we mean you no harm personally. That
sounds ludicrous in view of our ambush, I know, but all our stunners were set on one. We
merely wanted to have a talk with you without your interrupting or objecting. We are
reasonable men.
The voice paused as the stranger took one step backwards and sat down on the edge of
her bed. “We’ve noticed, in the last couple of days, that you’ve taken an inordinate
interest in Gospodin Lehman. As it turns out, we also have an interest in Gospodin