by the guards, then gagged the men and tied them to a tree. The d’Alemberts took their
blasters and felt a little more relieved now that they were again armed with modern
weapons. Jules also took one of the guards’ pocket phones and, leaving the visual
transmitter turned off, called back to the station. “The damned thing’s empty,” he
reported, cupping his hands over his mouth to disguise his voice slightly. “We’ll bring it in
for a more thorough inspection.”
He and Vonnie got back in the sleigh and drove openly toward the boulder that concealed
the guard station. The one guard left in the station would see only the two warm figures
sitting in the front of the sleigh, and would assume they were his compatriots.
He paid for that assumption-with a solid blow to his head a few minutes later. The
d’Alemberts were in sole possession of the guard station-and not a shot had been fired
to warn the occupants of the house that they were under attack.
“From now on it gets risky,” Jules said. “We can’t just walk in the front door, and I have
no way of knowing whether the windows are wired for alarms or not.”
“We’ll just have to chance it, then. We’ve played slash and-grab before, if it comes to
that. It might help if we could grab Lady A as a hostage; they wouldn’t shoot at us if we
had her for a shield. Where do you think she’d be?”
“Third floor, more than likely,” Jules surmised. “On a world without copters, the top story
is naturally the safest.”
Under cover of darkness, the two agents crept up the steep hill until they stood beside
the large house. Silently they walked around it, observing its construction with a
professional’s eye for detail. When they reached the back-a part Jules had not seen
before-they found both the copter pad and the small launching site for Lady A’s
spaceship. Both copter and ship were waiting there, for which the d’Alemberts were
grateful; they would have their choice of transportation out of here.
Finally spotting an ascent route that looked a little more promising than the others, Jules
started his slow climb up the outer wall of the house. The mixed construction materials of
brick, stone and timber gave him narrow finger- and toeholds; even so, he needed every
scrap of his circus training to cling to the building and make his way up three stories to a
perch beside a darkened window.
Yvonne stood by on the ground below, blaster in hand. If Jules’s attempt to open the
window should set off an alarm, she was prepared to race into the house from the
ground floor while Jules was entering from the top, creating havoc from two directions at
once and hopefully confusing the occupants . enough to let the DesPlainians triumph. But
she was hoping such heroics would not be necessary.
Jules inspected the window carefully. A gentle touch proved it was locked, but the lock
was merely a mechanical latch, not an electronic mechanism. He saw no wires or
electrical connections of any kind around the window -a hopeful sign. With a sigh, he
braced himself for the worst and, using the full strength of his DesPlainian muscles, he
gave a sudden intense push against the latch.
The latch snapped with a light spring and the window gave the meagerest of creaks as it
opened, but other than that there was no sound. The alarm may have been a silent one,
keyed to go off only at one specific location, but after waiting at his position for another
minute Jules could hear no indication of hurried activity within the house. Maybe they had
been lucky after all; maybe Lady A had felt that no one could get past the infrared
detectors without special equipment unavailable on Gastonia, and had not bothered with
alarms on the house itself. Jules slipped inside the room and looked around.
He found himself in an auxiliary bedroom, currently unoccupied. Crossing to the hall door,
he opened it and looked out. The corridor beyond was well-lit but deserted. Jules closed
the door again and locked it temporarily, assuring himself some momentary privacy in
here.
Stripping the sheets and blankets off the bed, he fastened them together into a long rope
that he lowered out the window to his waiting wife below. She tucked her blaster into her
parka and scrambled up the makeshift cord; within seconds she was standing beside her
husband, who then pulled the rope up after her to avoid leaving telltale signs of their
entrance.
Unlocking the bedroom door once more, the d’Alemberts checked to make sure the
hallway was still deserted, then slipped out of their bedroom and along the corridor. They
went in separate directions, trying doors along the corridor as they went. Most of the
doors were locked, and they chose for the moment not to force their way in; if someone
was inside, the SOTE agents might not be able to silence him before he gave the alarm
to the rest of the house. They would try the unlocked doors first.
Vonnie found an unlocked door and signaled her success to Jules, who came over to join
her. There was no light coming from under the sill, so they quietly opened the door and
slipped into the room beyond.
As their eyes grew accustomed to the dark they could see that they’d found an office of
some sort, with a desk and computer files standing about the room. With the door closed
behind them, shutting off the light from the hallway, the only illumination in the room came
from the double windows, where dim starlight filtered in. There’d been no pocket flashes
available in the village, of course, and working in this darkness was impossible. “We’ll
have to risk turning on a light,” Jules whispered.
Both agents squinted against the glare as Jules palmed the wall switch and the room
was suddenly alive with light. The DesPlainians stood motionless for over a minute,
listening for any sign that the light had betrayed them, but when there was none they
breathed a little easier. By unspoken agreement, Jules began a quick search of one side
of the room while Yvonne concentrated on the other.
Jules’s area had a telecom unit and a computer file. Turning on the computer memory, he
started playing with it, cuing it almost at random in the hopes of finding some important
clue. He had no way of knowing in advance under what headings Lady A and Tanya
Boros filed their information, but he could check a few references. He asked the
computer for information about Gastonia’s Governor, and was rewarded with a long
personal file detailing not only the Governor’s life and background, but also his
involvement with the conspiracy. To Jules’s chagrin it dated back more than a decade,
almost from the day he was assigned here. Checking some of the listed
cross-references, Jules learned which of the Governor’s aides were also involved. It
turned out to be nearly a third of the garrison’s total staff-a dismaying thought indeed.
Yvonne, meanwhile, was searching through the drawers of the desk, and found an item
of interest-a small vial of nitrobarb, the most potent truth serum in the Galaxy. Lady A
probably kept it on hand in case one of her trusted servants turned out to be a spy from
SOTE and she needed to question him. In any case, Vonnie pocketed the vial against
possible future need and moved around the desk to a spot behind the door.
Just as she did so, the door flew suddenly open and Lady A stood in the threshold. She
had a stun-gun drawn and pointed at Jules before he could reach for his own weapon-but
Vonnie was behind the door and out of the woman’s sight.
“So,” Lady A said coldly, “we have a visitor after all. When Tanya told me about her
uninvited guest of a few weeks ago, I thought it might be someone from SOTE, so I set
a little trap. I knew you’d be here eventually. I’ve got a vial of nitrobarb ready for you.”
Lady A stepped forward, past the edge of the door. As she did so, Vonnie reached out
quickly and knocked the gun from her hand. The instant his wife made her move, Jules
made his. Racing forward, he grabbed his adversary, spun her around and gripped her
neck in a hammerlock. At the same time Vonnie closed the door once more and locked it.
Lady A apparently had been alone, and they wanted to make sure no one else joined the
party.
“I’ve got a few questions I’d like to ask you, too,” Jules said. He held his blaster with its
nozzle up against Lady A’s throat.
Lady A held her nerve. With a voice carved from glacial ice she said, “You know you
don’t dare use that on me. I know too much that you want to find out.”