wondered aloud.
“I was bragging on your behalf, too,” Jules said. “But other than our codenames, the
conspiracy doesn’t seem to know any more about us than anyone else does. As far as
we know, the doubles have never shown themselves; at least they’ve never left a living
witness. They may be afraid their descriptions won’t jibe. That may work to our
advantage; if they don’t know what we look like, we may be able to fool them somehow.”
“Lady A certainly knows what you and I look like,” Vonnie pointed out. “She got a good
enough look at us on Gastonia, and since we’re not listed on SOTE’s regular roster,
she’s smart enough to figure that at least one of us is a member of the legendary team.
And didn’t Tanya Boros meet Yvette while you were tracking down BanionT,
“I don’t think she’d remember much about me,” Yvette said. “Jules was the one in the
spotlight as duClos; I stayed pretty much in the background. Besides, I was heavily
disguised to look middle-aged and frumpy. No, I’ll bet I’m pretty much of an unknown to
them-and Pias will be totally unknown.”
“It looks, then,” Jules said, “as though we should break up into our usual pairings. If
anything requires movement on the outside, Vonnie and I will handle it since we’re known
anyway. You two should work behind the scenes, so we can keep your identities secret
as long as possible. ”
“The question still remains,” said Pias, “of what we are going to do to stop the slaughter
of SOTE agents.” “If they keep to their pattern,” Yvette said, “we know exactly when and
where they’ll strike. The line of their advance points straight to the planet Floreata, and
the timetable they’ve established makes it twenty-three days from now. That gives us
plenty of time to get there and plan our next move.”
“But how accurately can we plan that next move?” Pias wondered. “The impostors pick
the spot of the ambush, and they only give a few hours’ notice. We won’t be able to work
up anything too elaborate until we know the details, and then we might not have enough
time.”
“We also have to find a way of warning the local Service people not to fall into the trap,”
Vonnie said. Pias shrugged his shoulders. “That, at least, seems simple enough. We go
in there the day before and tell them what the conspiracy is doing, so they won’t go to
the ambush spot. ”
“I don’t think that will work, mon cher,” Yvette said, shaking her head. “The impostors
won’t show themselves unless the SOTE squad. turns up.”
“Or something that looks like the SOTE squad,” Jules murmured.
All eyes turned to him, and his sister grinned. “I recognize that expression on your face,
mon cher frere. There are times I think even Lady A can’t match you in sneakiness, and
this is one of them. Would you care to share that idea with the rest of us?”
“A thought did occur to me,” Jules admitted. “On Gastonia, when Lady A wanted to set
an irresistible trap, she used herself as live bait, knowing we’d never pass up a chance to
get our hands on her. Now she wants us; this whole scheme has been designed to draw
us in. We ought to be able to use her own trick on her.”
“The difference,” Vonnie pointed out, “is that we wanted her alive to question her about
the conspiracy. They already seem to know a lot about the Service; all she may want of
us is our heads on a plate.”
“I’m not so sure,” Jules said. “They know a lot more about us than we know about them,
that’s true. But they don’t know everything, or they wouldn’t have set up this trap this
way. I’m willing to bet they don’t know anything about the Circus, for instance. Only a few
people outside the family have ever known about it; there’s been nothing in writing,
nothing entered into the files. The conspiracy must know there’s something missing from
their information; we’ve spoiled their plans a few too many times for it to be random
chance. There’s something they’re not taking into account, and they’ll want to know what
it is.
“Remember when Lady A let us capture her and inject her with what we thought was
nitrobarb? She was actually criticizing us for not knowing how to operate, and for
squandering such a potential resource. I think she was showing some of her true
personality there-and I think if she got her hands on Agents Wombat and Periwinkle she
wouldn’t just kill them outright. She’d want to interrogate them to find out what pieces of
the SOTE puzzle were missing. She’d be confident she could kill us later, after she found
out what she needed to know.”
“In other words,” Vonnie said slowly, “you’re proposing that we be the live bait in this
trap.”
Her husband nodded. “We’ll have to take the risk. We want to go a step beyond the
obvious. It’s not just enough to capture or kill the impostors; the conspiracy could just
start playing the game again somewhere else with a new team and we’d end up
spending all our time tracking down phony Wombats and Periwinkles. We have to get
behind the game and show them it won’t work. They’ll abandon a tactic if it proves
unprofitable-we’ve seen that. We just have to make this damned unprofitable for them.”
“I just hope the cost isn’t too high for our side, too,” Yvette said-and her sentiment met
with no opposition from the others.
The planet Floreata was a hot world, orbiting much closer to its central star than Earth
did to its primary. The polar ice caps in both hemispheres were barely noticeable, and
disappeared altogether in summer. Much of the water vapor that would have otherwise
condensed at the poles remained in the atmosphere, with the result that large portions of
the planet’s surface were perpetually overcast. The air was thick and steamy, and mists
rose constantly from the top of the oceans.
There were no deserts on Floreata. Most of the planet was soggy with swampland, and
warm rains were a perennial feature everywhere but the extreme northern and southern
latitudes. The winds usually tended to be mild, so there were no fierce hurricanes or
monsoons. There were even times when the sun broke through the cloud cover and
steamed the swamps for a short while before the mists and drizzles claimed them again.
Floreata was not an easy place for humans to dwell, but people are stubborn and, once
they have set their minds on living in a certain place, they will go to extremes to protect
their homes. Plants of many sorts grew well in Floreata’s moist heat, making the planet a
rich source of agricultural products. With that as an incentive, people lived there despite
the oppressive climate.
The major cities tended to be in the higher latitudes, where temperatures were more
moderate by human standards. The swamps had been cleared away and enormous
transparent domes had been erected to protect the cities from the worst of the rain.
Little could be done about the all-pervasive humidity, however. Mildew and rotting were
constant problems, and special building materials and fabrics were needed to keep
civilization from falling apart after only a few years.
Despite the problems, more than six hundred million people made Floreata their home.
They were dedicated and proud of their existence, and few would have moved away
even if offered an alternative.
The very nature of the planet, though, offered the quartet of SOTE agents special
difficulties. There were large sections of the planet still uninhabited, much of it in dismal,
mucky swamps. If the impostors stayed true to form, they could set their ambush in any
number of distasteful settings. “We have to let them pick the battlefield,” Jules admitted
during the planning sessions, “but we can provide a few surprises of our own.”
Twelve hours before the impostors were due to appear, the real Agent Wombat called
Service headquarters on Floreata and spoke with Colonel Josephine Reede. “We think
we’ve located a rebel base on the far side of the fourth planet in this system. The
nearest naval station of any size is a couple of days away, and by the time they could
get here our birds may have flown. Can you give us a hand?”
“I’d be honored,” the colonel said. “What do you need?”
“I need your entire contingent in space armor, waiting in a ship just above that planet.
How many people have you got here?”
“Twelve. ”
“Good, that should be enough.” Jules proceeded to give the colonel instructions. She and
her people were to rendezvous above the fourth planet in twelve hours, and were to wait
there until they received further instructions from Wombat. If they received no instructions
within an additional twelve hours, it was an indication that the rebels had moved and the