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Or, if only eight, all eight would have fired simultaneously at them and on sight, instead of burning the
contact man first. That shows that they were more afraid of the Service here than of the supposed
Delfian
agents - a fatal error.'
'Oh, I see - excuse me, please, for interrupting.'
'That's quite all right. It's part of your education, Girl Friday.'
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'But even if they didn't know exactly about us,' Yvette pointed out, 'they did know that something was
supposed to happen. There was a leak and we have to plug it - fast.' 'Right,' Jules said. 'Who knew
about
the meeting?'
The Head began checking them off on his fingers. 'There's me; I rule out that possibility. There's the two
of you; you weren't too likely to set yourselves up to be killed. There's your father, the Duke; if he
wanted
to kill you, he could have done it at the Circus and made it look like an accident, without tipping his hand
in this clumsy a manner. There's Sarbatte, the agent who was to contact you; I suppose he's a possibility,
even though they killed him. He might have told them about the meeting thinking they would just kill you,
and they decided to kill him too to make it look good. It's unlikely, but possible.'
'What about her?' Jules calmly pointed at Helena with the hand holding his glass.
The Girl Friday blushed and shook her head. Her father took the accusation in stride. Not possible. She
knew that the Circus was somehow involved, but I never told her about either you or the meeting. I only
enlisted her help the instant we heard about the mini-riot at the Dunedin Arms, because I knew I could
trust her.'
'Anyone else know?' Yvette prodded.
The Head frowned. 'Sarbatte's superior, Colonel Grandon. He's the chief of our entire Internal Security
division. I wanted the building on alert just in case the opposition tried something.'
'Isn't he the one you sent up to the roof to pick up our two prisoners?' Jules asked.
The entire scene froze as each of the four people in that room realized what might be happening.
Decisively, the Head stabbed out a finger and activated a TV monitor on his desk. An adjustment of a
dial
brought an infrared view of the rooftop onto the screen.
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There were now two cars on the roof. A man - it could only be Colonel Grandon - was dragging an
unconscious body from the d'Alembert vehicle to the other. 'Grandon !' the Head barked into a
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microphone. 'Put that body down and report to my office immediately.'
Grandon jumped as the Head's voice blared out at him from speakers on the rooftop. He looked around
wildly for a moment; then, realizing he was still alone but being
watched, he panicked. Moving quickly, he hauled the unconscious assassin over to the edge of the roof
and pushed him out into air. Then, without waiting to watch the man fall ninety-three floors to his death,
he ran back to his car, jumped in and fled at top speed.
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CHAPTER FIVE
THE CHASE
Evenbefore Oliver Fenton Arnold invented the subetherdrive that made galactic exploration possible, all
of Earthexcept the N.A.L. was under Communism - and North America itself was being infiltrated and
undermined. The real explosion of mankind into space, however, did not begin until 2013, when John
Copeland discovered the uranium-rich planet Urania Four, thus assuring all mankind ofcheap and
virtually unlimited power. In 2016 the American anti-Communists, disgusted and alarmed by the success
of the 'do-nothings' and' do-gooders'in blocking all effective action, left Earth en masse for the promising
-
and aptly named- planet, Newhope. Whereupon Communism took control of all Earth without firing a
shot
or launching a missile. (vanMees,History of Civilization,Reel 21, slot 1281 .)
The d'Alemberts had not waited to see what Colonel Grandon's reaction to being discovered would be.
Even as the Head was reaching for the button that turned on the rooftop speakers, their lightning reflexes
had catapulted them out of their chairs and into instant action. Their common thought was to get up to
the
roof as quickly as they could and stop this traitor before he could do any more damage. Both of them
raced across the room to the elevator tube, which they reached simultaneously.
The air cushions materialized as expected under their feet, but the ride up the tube seemed interminable.
Indeed, it was nearly a minute and a half before the lift brought them to their destination - a timespan
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impossibly long to people who were used to measuring their movements in milliseconds.
Colonel Crandon had taken off in his own car by the time Jules and Yvette burst out of the elevator
doorway. As they rushed across the open rooftop to their own vehicle, though, they heard a telltale
whooshdirectly over their heads. 'Split!' Yvette shouted, and they did- just as a blaster beam from the
airborne car burned a trail directly through the spots where they'd been. The searing ray scorched the
edges of Jules' clothing just a trifle as he drove forward, rolled, and got back onto his feet in one
continuous motion. He never stopped running.
Colonel Crandon hesitated a moment longer above them, wondering whether to try another shot to kill -
or
at least delay - his pursuers. But then he realized that every second counted. Each instant he spent in
target practice would mean that much more time the Head would have to mobilize the forces of SOTE -
and Colonel Crandon knew precisely how vast those forces were. He would need every nanosecond to
effect his escape.
While he took off into the darkness of night, Yvette and Jules scrambled across the flat roof to their car.
It
took them a full fifteen seconds to reach it, another five to jump in and close the doors, five seconds to
start the engines, and five more to convert the craft to aerial flight. Thirty seconds in all, and another
thirty
added on because Grandon's vehicle had gotten a flying start. The traitor was a full minute ahead of
them.
With Jules in control, the d'Alembert car shot off the edge of the roof, accelerating as it went. Yvette
was
watching the sensors, trying to pick up a reading on the fugitive. 'Got him!' she cried at last. 'Bearing
twenty-six degrees northwest and running like a swifter with its tail on fire. We'll have a hell of a time
catching him.'
Jules grunted as he brought the craft up into the higher levels of atmosphere, so that there would be less
air resistance to impair their speed. There wasn't any planet bound vehicle faster than a Mark Forty-One
Service Special - but Colonel Crandon had one, just as they did. All things being equal, the two cars
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should maintain their hundred and seventy kilometer gap until one or the other of them ran out of fuel.
'Why doesn't headquarters fire on him?' Yvette wondered. 'They've got enough firepower to down a
battleship.' 'They're not shooting for the same reason we won't,' Jules said. 'We have to get Grandon
alive. Killing him won't incapacitate the people he's working for - we have to assume he's already told
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them everything he knows. On the other hand, we'd like to know some of his secrets, like who he's
working for. Killing him would lose us some valuable information.'
'Then we'll have one advantage in this chase,' Yvette said. 'His own side isn't going to help him against
us. I was a little worried they might come to his rescue.'
But the d'Alemberts were not the only ones capable of reasoning this way. Apparently, Colonel
Grandon
too knew that he was expendable to his side, and that he was on his own. He had to keep his distance
from his pursuers; if it looked as though they were gaining on him, he was pretty sure his allies would
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