“So?”
“Then who will take over leadership of the goverment? One of Kanus’ underlings, of course. Would you like to see Greber in power? Or Kor?”
Romis visibly shuddered. “Of course not.”
“Then put the idea of personally performing the execution out of your head. It’s suicide.”
“But Kanus must be stopped. I’m certain he means to ttack Acquatainia before the month is out.” Romis walked over to the fireplace and stared into the flames. “I suppose we will have to ask for Odal’s return. Even if it means giving back the Watchman and having Spencer poised to invade us.”
“Are you sure?”
“What else can we do? If we can pull off the assassination quickly enough, we can keep Spencer out of Kerak. But if we hesitate much longer, we’ll be at war with Acquatainia.”
“We can beat the Acquatainians.”
“I know,” Romis replied. “But once we do, Kanus will be so popular among the people that we wouldn’t dare touch him. And then the madman will attack the Terrans. That will pull the house down on all of us.”
“Hmmm.”
Romis turned to face the captain. “We must return the Watchman and get Odal back here. At once.”
“Good,” said the captain. “Frankly, the Watchman has been a royal nuisance aboard my ship. He’s disrupting everything.”
“How can one man disrupt an entire star ship?”
The captain took a fast final gulp of his drink. “You don’t know this one man.”
As the captain approached his star ship in his personal shuttle craft, he could sense something was wrong.
It was nothing he could see, but the ship simply did not seem right. His worries were confirmed when the shuttle docked inside one of the giant star ship’s air locks. The emergency lights were on, and they were very dim at that. The outer hatch was cranked shut by two spacesuited deck hands, and it took nearly fifteen minutes to bring the lock up to normal air pressure, using the auxiliary air pumps.