Smith, E E 'Doc' - d'Alembert 04 - Getaway world

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GETAWAY WORLD
Volume four of The classic Family d'Alembert series
By E.E. 'Doc' Smith
With Stephen Goldin
CHAPTER 1
A Chat with Lady A
The young woman looked vastly out of place standing in the line of people waiting to file
through the debarkation gate and receive billeting assignments. Tall and lithe, beautiful
and dignified, she looked like a tulip growing in a cactus garden. The rest of her queue
mates were the scum of a dozen worlds; virtually all of them, male and female alike,
were graduates of the roughest schools in the Galaxy-the imperial prison system. They
were tough and, for the most part, ill educated; one could tell their planets of origin by
the brand of slang they spoke and the choice of obscenities with which they peppered
their conversation.
In contrast, the young woman was striking in her cleanliness. Her clothing fitted her with
fidelity, and had been fashioned by one of Earth's finest designers. Her eyes had a deep
look of intelligence to them, and her long black hair was neatly trimmed. Her stance, the
way she tilted her head, the expression of cool self-assurance-all testified to the fact that
this woman was something special, born to wealth if not to the nobility itself.
She stood patiently in the corridor that had once been painted white, but was now
scratched and faded to a dismal shade of gray. Her eyes stared straight ahead at the
tables where the computer programmers were feeding the information on people's cards
into their quietly humming machines. She seemed totally unaware of the lecherous
glances from the men around her, or of the envious stares from the women. When the
person at the front of the line was finished, she moved forward with the rest; but as for
any other interaction with her queue mates, she might as well have been a statue.
Finally her turn came. She handed over her cards to the woman at the front table, who
took them routinely without looking up and began typing them into the computer. "Name?"
the clerk asked in a bored tone.
"Hazel Whiting," the young lady replied. "It's on the card, if you'd bother to look."
The cultured timbre of that voice made the clerk look up. She was obviously startled; she
wasn't used to seeing people of such obvious quality in this place. "What's someone like
you doing here?" she asked involuntarily.
"The same as everyone else-looking for sanctuary." The clerk was doubtful. This young
lady looked too clean, too innocent and too intelligent to be needing this planet's
specialized services. Her left foot reached out and pushed the hidden button that would
notify the boss that something was not quite right here; the trivision cameras in the
corners would beam the scene to his office, where he could make a decision without the
applicant's being aware of it. In the meantime, the clerk would carry on with her work.
"What did you ever do to need sanctuary?"
"Again., it's on the card," said the woman who called herself Hazel Whiting. "Jewel
robberies, mostly, with a few swindles along the way." She paused, then added as a
sarcastic afterthought, "It helps to look sophisticated; it gets you into the swanker circles
where the real loot is."
The clerk shrugged and continued typing silently for several seconds. Then she produced
a retinascope, and Hazel Whiting leaned forward to have her identity checked. When the
clerk was satisfied, she handed Gospozha Whiting a plastic key card, a pamphlet and a
bookreel. "You'll live solely on your past earnings as long as you're on Sanctuary," she
said routinely. It was clearly a speech she'd made many times before. "We don't steal
from each other here. Report to Room J-5 down the hall for temporary quarters until you
decide where in the city you want to live."
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Hazel Whiting took the proffered materials from the clerk and started away. As she
moved past the line, one. of the men grabbed her arm. "Hey, Hazel Whiting," he said in a
raspy voice. "How'd you like to move in with me when you get the chance?"
The girl looked him up and down skeptically. The man was a burly sort with more muscle
than brains; he smelled as though he'd missed his bath three months in a row, and his
beard looked to have been trimmed with pinking shears. "I think," she replied coolly, "I'd
prefer to drink vacuum through a short straw."
The man gave a coarse laugh and pulled her closer to him. "I'll teach you not to be so
damned snooty."
Hazel Whiting let herself be pulled until she stood right next to the man. Then, in a series
of rapid movements, she acted. Her left foot came down hard on her assailant's right
instep, causing him to howl with pain and let go of her right arm. Her right hand lashed
out, fingers stiff and extended, and jabbed the man just under his ribs. It could have been
a killing blow if she had chosen, but that was not her intention. The man doubled over far
enough for her to lift her right knee and hit him on the chin with it. He went out like a
candle in a gale.
To an accompaniment of whistles and cheers from other men in the line, Hazel Whiting
walked off to Room J-5 to obtain her temporary billeting assignment.
Garst was understandably nervous. Seated across from him was the woman he knew
only as Lady A, the person most responsible for his being in this position right now. She
was easily the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen; the lines of her face had the classic
arrangement of eternal beauty. Her creamy complexion was flawless and her calm green
eyes took in everything worth seeing in the room. Her body was sensuality incarnate, and
her delicate perfume exuded femininity. There was an eternal quality about her. She
could have been any age between thirty and sixty; it was impossible to tell, and Garst did
not dare ask.
She was dressed in a wide-sleeved panne velvet jumpsuit with flared pant legs. The suit
was green, diagonally slashed with black-the left leg and sleeve were black, with thin
lines of emeralds along the edges. A tight green hood-attached to the jumpsuit by a gold
metal collar-covered most of her jet black hair. A pearl dangled over her forehead from
the center of the hood and around her neck she wore an integrated circuit chip on a
golden chain.
Yet despite her physical perfection, there was a coldness emanating from her that made
her seem terribly inhuman. Her manner was brisk, her speech sarcastic and stem. Garst
could not recall ever having seen her laugh in the several months of their acquaintance. It
was as though, being possessed of an ideal body, she had relinquished the option on her
soul.
Lady A sat in the comfortable chair across from his desk, her right leg crossed over her
left and her hands folded neatly into her lap. She stared with piercing intensity at Garst
as she spoke.
"I'm very happy with the operation as you've redefined it," she said. "In only slightly over
three months you've taken a marginally working system and turned it into a full-fledged
organization. Our `colony' is growing by leaps and bounds; we should soon have enough
talent here to launch our recruiting drive effectively."
Garst nodded his head in acknowledgment of the praise. Though Lady A's words were
laudatory, her tone of voice had not altered perceptibly; she was still as passionless as
an asteroid. "Thank you. As I told you at our first meeting, organization is my forte. The
system I had built on Vesa worked perfectly for two decades before bad luck destroyed
it last year-and that was working almost entirely on my own. With your backing, there
should be no limit to the things I can accomplish."
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He leaned back in his chair, daring to relax a little. "In fact," he continued, half joking,
"with my talents and your connections, I wouldn't be surprised if the two of us were ruling
the Empire within a couple of years."
The woman snorted. "I doubt it. That particular plum has been within my reach before,
but it's a harder fruit to pick than it appears. We'll need a little more time and a lot more
background work completed before that goal is attained."
Garst did his best not to overreact to Lady A's statement. His own remark had been
intended in jest; her answer was dead serious. She did have her eyes set on the Throne;
but what did she mean that it had been within her reach before?
A light began flashing on his desk, startling him out of this reverie. Lady A noticed it, too.
"What's that about?" she asked.
Garst reached across the desktop and punched some computer key buttons. "It's a
signal from Admissions," he announced after a moment.
"Trouble?"
"Probably nothing. We're just having a new shipload coming in today, and I usually get at
least one checkup per ship. I've left standing orders that anything in the least bit
suspicious is to be referred to me, so that I can make a decision personally. I like to
keep on top of my entire organization-it's what makes me so successful." He neglected
to add that, since the breakup of his robbery and murder ring on Vesa, he was extremely
paranoid about detection. He wanted to stop problems before they had a chance to
start.
Flipping a couple more switches, Garst turned on the monitors so that he could view the
scene at the admitting gate. Out of courtesy to his visitor, he swivelled the set around so
that she could see, too.
Both of them watched and listened in silence as Hazel Whiting had her interview with the
clerk. They noted the brief but vicious fight in the line with the overzealous male, and
Garst gave a low whistle of appreciation at the woman's talent for self-defense. "That
Hazel Whiting can certainly handle herself well," he said as the subject moved down the
corridor and out of the camera's view.
"That she can," acknowledged Lady A icily. "Except her name is not Hazel Whiting-it's
Helena von Wilmenhorst."
There was a pause as she let Garst digest that morsel. "Any relation to the Grand
Duke?" he asked at last. "Only his daughter," replied Lady A from the heights of cold
sarcasm. "And his heir."
Garst was both impressed and puzzled. The von Wilmenhorst family owned Sector Four,
one of the richest areas of human-occupied space. One day, Helena von Wilmenhorst
would control the destinies of over a hundred planets, subject only to the orders of the
Throne. "But how did she get here and what does she want?" he mused aloud.
"As to the first," Lady A drawled, "I imagine it must be some flaw in this vaunted
organization you've been telling me about. She is hardly the sort of character we should
be catering to, and I suspect someone along the way was bribed to let her come. As to
the second . . ." She paused to consider something, and finally decided to trust Garst
enough to say it.
"As to the second, you will have to know one additional fact about her father: Zander von
Wilmenhorst is the Head of the Service of the Empire."
Garst stared at her in disbelief. The Service of the Empire, or SOTE, was virtually the
right arm of the Emperor himself. It was the most elite intelligence gathering network
ever assembled by mankind, dedicated to enforcing Imperial policies and staffed only by
the most loyal, most talented agents in the Galaxy.
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Lady A saw his confusion and, for the first time since he'd known her, she smiled. It was
a smile that offered no warmth or comfort. "That fact is not generally known," she added,
"and it would not be wise to spread it beyond these walls."
"SOTE." Garst's mind raced as he considered the possibilities. "That means she's here
to investigate us." "The lightning swiftness of your mind never fails to astonish me."
He ignored Lady A's irony as he hurriedly punched out an order on his desk computer.
Within seconds, a printout of the Hazel Whiting file issued from the tiny slot at the side of
his desk. He gave it a careful perusal while his companion eyed him with patient curiosity.
"According to our records, `Hazel Whiting' first applied to us on the planet Kiesel in
Sector Five. She approached one of our agents, claiming to be a jewel thief and
swindler. Her reason for asking to come to Sanctuary was that her partner was killed
during their last job, and that there were enough clues pointing to her involvement in
some seventy capers that she was sure SOTE would be on her trail as well as the
regular police. She claims to have attended some of Sector Five's better schools, and
she's obviously several levels above the usual rank of people we get here." Garst
scrutinized the record a little more carefully. "I don't see much corroboration of her story
here-my man seems to have taken a great deal of it on faith. Or perhaps he took a great
deal of it on credit. In any event, I shall have him replaced immediately."
Garst stood up and began to pace around slowly behind his desk. He was quite
conscious now of Lady A's eyes focused on him. She was observing him like a specimen
under a microscope, and he had the feeling that his future employment would hinge
largely on how he chose to cope with this latest development.
"Putting aside for the moment the question of how she got here," he said carefully, "we
still face the problem of what to do with her now that she's here."
"Indeed." Lady A's brusque comment implied that she wanted to see how he would react
to the threat. Garst suddenly found himself perspiring heavily, even though his office was
comfortably cool.
He decided to enumerate the possibilities. "We could kill her, we could take her in and
give her a shot of nitrobarb to see what she knows, or we could let her wander around,
keeping her under close observation to see what she does and whom she contacts.
"I'm opposed to the first alternative for aesthetic reasons. Killing is a last resort, because
all the information she has would be lost. It's a move of panic and desperation; so far,
the threat she poses is not that serious. Killing her is the safest thing we could do, but
not necessarily the smartest.
"The second alternative is very attractive. There's no way anyone can lie under nitrobarb;
she would tell us everything we needed to know about how she discovered us, how she
managed to get here, what her plans are and how SOTE plans to deal with us. Even if
she died under questioning, we would still benefit."
"Yet I seem to detect a note of hesitation in your voice," Lady A observed. "If giving her
nitrobarb has all those advantages, why not do it and get it over with?"
"Several reasons. Suppose she's here to contact someone else, someone whom she
doesn't know, but who will get in touch with her using a code phrase of some sort. It
wouldn't do us any good to pick her up in that case, since it would only scare off her
contact. By letting her play on our leash, we may make a bigger haul of infiltrators. Then
too, by keeping her alive, we may be able to use her as a bargaining point later, should
any trouble arise. The longer we're able to string her out, the more we may learn."
"This method is the least secure of your three alternatives," Lady A pointed out.
"Yes, but potentially the most rewarding. And the threat she poses is still minimal.
There's no way she can broadcast a message off this planet using our equipment without
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our knowledge, and I'll have her belongings screened thoroughly-and discreetly-to make
sure she has no transmitters on her. The only way to get off planet is aboard our ships,
and I'll quadruple the guard on the spaceport to make sure she doesn't sneak by us that
way."
"What's to stop any of her offworld friends from landing one of their own ships secretly
and meeting her?"
Garst smiled. "This planet is well off the main trade lanes, and as you know is listed in
the Empire's files as having been explored and passed over for settlement. The only
ships that should be coming anywhere near here are our own, and we know the
schedule. Anything else that comes within the boundaries of this solar system is blasted
instantly out of the skies. We control all access in and out--of that much, I'm sure."
Lady A was silent for a moment. Garst scanned her impassive face, trying to read
approval or disapproval in her eyes. Had he passed the test and retained her confidence,
or had he made some error in logic that would brand him as incompetent?
At last the woman spoke. "Very well, Garst, I agree with your reasoning. Putting Helena
von Wilmenhorst under nitrobarb would gain us very little, in the long run. We already
have our own access to most of the information she could tell us about SOTE's
operations in general; and in regard to the specific mission she's on now, you can do just
as well by keeping her under tight surveillance. But you'd better make sure that surveil-
lance is tight-no holes, no leaks, no way for her to escape." The or else implied in her
tone of voice was entirely too obvious.
"No need to worry about that. Every room in her apartment will be thoroughly searched
and monitored around the clock by my best security people. Beepers will be placed in all
her clothing. Wherever she goes, there will be two people on her tail. We'll keep lists of
everyone she contacts, under what circumstances the contacts were made, and we'll
have tails put on all those contacts who look even the faintest bit suspicious. I'll
personally review the progress of the investigation at least once a day, to make sure
there are no slip-ups. Gospozha von Wilmenhorst will be given more surveillance than the
entire Imperial family. Nothing will slip by us, I'll stake my life on that."
"Yes," said Lady A, "you very well may."
After his visitor had gone and he had ordered the implementation of his surveillance
tactics, Garst sat alone in his office, deep in thought. What have I gotten myself into? he
wondered. Exactly whom have I allied myself with?
He reached across his desk and fiddled with the controls of his recorder. As a matter of
routine he taped every meeting held in this office, so that they could be played back to
refresh his memory. Now, as he sat behind the desk with the lights dimmed, be watched
the ghostly images come to life and repeat the performance of earlier that afternoon.
Certain phrases haunted him. "That particular plum has been within my reach before,"
referring to the Throne. And again, "we already have our own access to most of the
information she could tell us about SOTE's operations in general."
After his faked death and hasty departure from the gambling moon Vesa, Garst had
desperately utilized all the contacts he knew in the Galaxy's underworld until, through the
friend of a friend of a friend, he had gotten in touch with this Lady A and asked for a job.
He had expected to be integrated into a criminal organization and allowed to use his
talents there; but Lady A's conversation left him little doubt that he was actually con-
nected to an Empire-wide conspiracy of infinitely vaster proportions. The thought of what
this could mean filled him with both terror and eager anticipation.
Garst was a particularly ambitious man. Until recently, his ambitions had been thwarted
by being confined to a single small satellite; but now, the prospect of true power was
blossoming before him. He found its aroma intoxicating.
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He got up and walked around to the front of his desk, fingering gently the small medallion
he had been given when he joined the organization. It was a membership badge, he had
been told then, a form of identification. In form, it was quite simple: a tiny integrated
circuit chip on a thin golden chain, almost invisible unless someone looked closely. But it
made him part of something that obviously spanned the Galaxy and had as its goal
supreme control of the human race.
Garst knew he would never be content to be a cog in someone else's wheel. He would
have to find the stepladder to the top of this power structure and climb it rapidly. He
might not wind up as the big boss of the machine, but he knew lie was capable of greater
things than this.
There would be obstacles, of course. Although he'd been put in charge of this entire
planet, not a single member of his staff was personally loyal to him. They'd all been
picked by Lady A; even Jinda Rawling, his security chief and top aide, would probably
throw her lot in with Lady A if her devotion should ever be put to the test. That meant
Garst would have to work alone. No one else could be completely trusted if lie were to
achieve his aims. But still, he knew he could do it.
Helena von Wilinenhorst could prove the key to his upward mobility. Although he had
been careful to mention nothing about it to Lady A, that was another of his motives for
keeping that young lady alive and under close scrutiny. He wasn't sure how yet, but the
young duchess might prove useful to hire in his upward climb. The thought was
exhilarating.
CHAPTER 2
Mission on Mellisande
The planet Mellisande had five moons that danced an elaborate waltz through its
nighttime skies. The largest was more than half the size of Earth's own moon, and two of
the others were almost as big, which meant that the nights on Mellisande were seldom
dark. A silvery glow pervaded the atmosphere, lending a fairy tale aura to even the most
mundane of settings. When all the moons were up at once, the night could be nearly half
as bright as the day.
At present, though, only one large and one small moon were above the horizon, for which
the two shadow-shapes currently creeping through the bushes were extremely grateful.
Their job would be difficult enough without having to run the risk of being spotted in
excessively bright moonlight.
The scene below them was a tranquil one: a large manor house set out in the country
more than two kilometers from its neighbors, with open land surrounding it on three
sides. Its back was built against a cliff face that rose fifty meters into the air. The cliff
front was so smooth that it was judged unclimbable, leaving the occupants of the house
secure in the knowledge that they could not be attacked from that direction.
The two shadows hoped the inhabitants felt very secure; it would help them immensely.
They lay prone side by side for several minutes on top of the cliff, studying the layout
below them. Ten cars were parked in front of the manor house. As they watched, an
eleventh car made its appearance, driving up the narrow dirt road from the main highway
and pulling to a stop beside the others. Two people got out and walked to the front door
of the house. After a few moments of waiting on the doorstep, they were permitted to
enter.
"That should be all of them," said one of the shadows in a deep, masculine voice.
The other shadow, a female, nodded in response. "Alors, let's stop lolling about and get
to work."
The man stood up and lifted a device that looked very much like a harpoon gun. As he
hefted it and focused its sights, his companion took a length of carlon rope from her utility
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belt and tied it onto a stake that had been driven securely into the ground near the edge
of the cliff. "Ready," she said.
The man took aim with his weapon and fired. The harpoon shot out of the gun and flew
downward toward the roof of the house. Its plastic-bulbed tip shattered in the cranny
between the chimney and the sloping roof, releasing a gummy white liquid that solidified
immediately upon contact with the air. The instaweld formed a permanent bond between
the rooftop and the spear; only the use of a special solvent would remove the harpoon
from its new resting place.
The only sound so far had been the small but unavoidable pop of the harpoon's tip as it
came in contact with the building. The two people at the top of the cliff waited
breathlessly to see whether there was any reaction from inside the house. When none
came after three minutes, they let out silent sighs of relief; the rest of their mission could
be accomplished much more quietly.
With rapid efficiency, the man pulled the slack out of the line attached to the harpoon.
Then, with the merest of nods to his companion, he grabbed hold of the rope and began
lowering himself in a quick hand-over-hand motion to the roof of the house so far below
them.
The woman stood patiently at the top, watching her comrade make his descent and
staying ever alert for trouble. While the man was traveling down the rope, he would be
an exposed target, and she would have to guard him. As soon as he reached his
destination, he signaled up to her and she began her own descent, while he returned the
favor and kept watch for her.
The total transfer time to the rooftop was less than five minutes. The instant they were
both together, they wasted no time setting their attack plans into motion. They had
preselected one window as their primary point of entrance; moving swiftly and silently to
the east side of the steeply slanting roof, the man lay prone holding another, shorter
length of carlon rope. The woman took hold of the free end and began lowering herself
over the edge to determine whether the window was unlocked or guarded by alarms.
All this work with ropes and climbing was hardly new to these two people; indeed, their
familiarity with the equipment was almost inbred. The woman was Yvette d'Alembert,
and the man was her brother Jules, and until slightly over a year ago they had been the
premier aerialists in the entire Empire. As the star performers of the Circus of the
Galaxy, they had been dangling from ropes and swinging on trapezes since babyhood.
But the job they were engaged in this night had nothing to do with trivial entertainment.
Their real employment was as the top secret agents in the Service of the Empire. They
and their entire circus family were among the ablest and most loyal servants the Crown
could wish for; they had proven their worth repeatedly, and asked for little more than the
honor of serving again in the future.
As Yvette dangled alongside the window they had chosen, she examined it carefully. It
was locked by a simple turnbolt from the inside, and there were no alarms on it that her
sophisticated pocket sensors could detect. Pulling herself tightly against the wall, she
managed to slide the bolt and pry the window open. From that point, it was a simple
matter to grab onto the sill and pull herself into the room. The inside of this chamber was
dark and still. It appeared to be a guest bedroom, but was not in use at the moment. As
soon as her preliminary check indicated that it was safe, she gave a single sharp tug on
the rope to let her brother know it was all right to follow.
Up on the roof, Jules secured the rope by the simple expedient of breaking another small
vial of instaweld at the spot where the line dangled over the eaves. As soon as he
ascertained that the material had done its job, he scrambled down the rope and, within a
minute, was standing beside his sister. Both agents had their stunguns out and ready for
action.
Moving with superlative stealth, they padded over to the doorway, opened it a crack and
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gazed out into the hallway beyond. The hall was unfortunately well lit, but at least was
deserted. At the far end of the corridor they could see the staircase that they would have
to use to go downstairs where their quarries awaited. Between their present location and
the stairs were three closed and two open doors.
The first two rooms they came to were empty. In the third, they encountered a couple of
servants engaged in amorous pursuits; Yvette felt like a terrible spoilsport as she gave
them number four stuns that would knock them out for two solid hours, but she knew her
action was necessary. They could not afford to leave anyone behind them to sound the
alarm; they could fight more effectively on only one front. Whispering an apology that the
unconscious couple would never hear, she closed the door on them once more to restore
their privacy.
In the fourth room a man sat at a desk with his back to the door, engaged in writing. The
two shadows crossing the doorway startled him and he turned quickly to see who his
visitors were-but that was the last action he took for several hours. Jules's lightning
reflexes stunned the man down where he was sitting without allowing him the chance to
cry out in alarm.
The fifth room was again empty, and they came at last to the stairway. The two
d'Alemberts exchanged brief, encouraging glances. So far, all had gone smoothly; but
from this point onward, they could expect trouble at any second. As nearly as they could
figure it, there were at least two dozen people still occupying the lower floors of the
house. The odds against the agents' catching all of them off guard were pretty high. They
would have a fight on their hands before they were done this evening-but they had
expected that and were prepared for it. Their enemies were not.
The time for stealth had passed; speed would now be their best weapon. At the tiniest
nod from Jules, both of them took off down the stairs side-by-side at top speed, streaks
of fury moving at a rate that would have seemed impossible for normal human beings to
attain.
But then, the d'Alemberts were not exactly normal human beings. For more than ten
generations their family had resided on the planet DesPlaines, a world of heavy metals
and forbidding mountains with a surface gravity three times higher than that of Earth.
Weaklings were weeded out in the first two generations by the planet's harsh conditions.
The current inhabitants of DesPlaines were all superstrong and superfast. They had to
be-merely standing up and walking around in such a gravitational field would tax the
energies of normal people, not to mention the fact that, on a world where objects would
fall at three times the terrestrial rate of acceleration, a survivor had to have lightning re-
flexes. There was hardly any such thing as a "minor" accident on DesPlaines. Those who
survived were definitely the fittest.
But their genetic background was shared by more than seven million other inhabitants of
their home world. What made Jules and Yvette stand out even further was the family
heritage of the d'Alemberts, the long line of circus performers that traced all the way
back to the founding of the Circus of the Galaxy. Physical training and agility had been
the keynote of their education from the moment of their birth; now, at the very peak of
their careers, Jules and Yvette were the most perfect physical specimens humanity could
hope to produce.
Little wonder, then, that the two SOTS agents came flying down the stairs at speeds
calculated to dazzle the unsuspecting people they were hunting. The middle floor of the
house was populated by the servants, who were banished to this level to be out of the
way of the bigwigs conferring on the ground floor. They were small fry being caught in
the d'Alemberts' net, of no strategic value, but they had to be stunned anyway; they
would otherwise fight to protect the safety of the house, and a fight was the last thing the
DesPlainian siblings wanted.
As Jules raced into the final room on this floor, he spotted a servant standing beside a
basin. He fired his stunner on pure reflex, realizing at the instant he shot that the woman
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was drinking a glass of water. The glass fell from the woman's hand and, quick as
Jules's reflexes were, he still could not catch it before it hit the floor. The glass shattered
with a sound that seemed to fill the entire universe with its noise.
There was no help for it-the alarm was out now. The people downstairs would have
heard the sound and would be on edge until some explanation was forthcoming. Even
though they would not be expecting a fullscale assault, they would be on the defensive
and not nearly such easy pickings as the servants had been.
As Yvette and Jules rushed back to the stairway to continue their descent into the house,
neither said a word. They didn't have to; the two had worked together as a team for so
many years, with their lives literally depending on their split-second precision, that their
minds functioned as a single unit. They both knew what had to be done, and each knew
precisely how the other would react to any conceivable circumstance.
As they raced down the stairs in tandem, twin blurs against the powder blue wallpaper, a
bead peered out from a doorway, obviously curious about the crashing noise from
upstairs. The man's eyes widened at the sight of the two forms dashing down the steps,
and he let out a yelp of astonishment. Yvette fired her stunner, but the man was just able
to duck back out of sight, and begin sounding the alarm in earnest. The battle royal had
begun.
The stairs ended at the front of a hallway, with a large living room to the left and a
slightly smaller salon to the right. Jules turned without hesitation toward the living room,
leaving the other side of the house to the capable hands of his sister.
As he entered the room, Jules looked an imposing foe indeed. His body was short, as
was typical of DesPlainians-only 173 centimeters tall-but he was solidly muscled and not
a man to be regarded casually. He was dressed in a gray jumpsuit (he and Yvette having
decided that gray would offer better camouflage under the moons of Mellisande than
dead black) and the tight cut of the clinging fabric emphasized all the bulging muscles of
his hundred kilogram body. He turned his head back and forth quickly, further ruffling his
short brown hair, as his steel gray eyes scanned the room to size up the situation.
There were seven people in the living room, five men and two women. All of them were
familiar to him from pictures he had studied. They were the major leaders of this world's
criminal underground; a list of the offenses committed by just these seven people would
have been taller than Jules, and each of them represented an organization that multiplied
their powers manyfold.
The closest person to the doorway was a man seated in a great chair. As Jules's fleeting
form burst into the room, this man started to rise from his seat, one hand reaching into
his coat pocket for a weapon. It was a move he never completed. Jules grabbed the
man's hand before it could reach the holster; using his own forward momentum and the
man's rising movement, he yanked the hapless gangster to his feet. That pull helped slow
Jules down and, expert athlete that he was, he used that to his advantage. With his
unwilling accomplice as an axis, Jules whirled around once, then planted his feet and
swung the man around instead. The man was lifted off his feet and flew heavily through
the air, colliding with another man and woman across the room and knocking them all to
the ground, unconscious. Jules was not specifically a weightlifter-his cousin Rick could
have performed the same feat a lot more effortlessly-but his powerful DesPlainian body
could still put a lot of force behind his movements, and the result was most gratifying.
By this time, though, the other four people in the room had been alerted enough to draw
their own weapons-blusters, Jules noted quickly. These people did not play around with
halfway measures. They would rather scorch some of the wallpaper than let him get
away with the effrontery of this invasion.
Jules's reflexes were faster, though. Stun-gun in hand, he downed two of the men across
the room before having to duck to avoid the blaster beam that sizzled the air above his
head. He turned his dodging motion into a low flat dive and a roll that brought him into
collision with the knees of the last remaining male. The fellow was knocked off his feet
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and tumbled over Jules's body, thereby receiving a blaster bolt intended for Jules. There
was only one foe left, a middle-aged woman with a steely glint in her eyes and a burning
blaster in her hand.
Under the proper circumstances, Jules could be as chivalrous as the most gallant
courtier. But niceties such as not shooting a woman did not apply when that woman was
trying to kill him. Raising his stunner once more, he squeezed off a shot that dropped the
woman in her tracks. before she had a chance to correct her aim. He looked around
quickly, making sure there were no other foes in the vicinity, then got to his feet and
raced out to see if his sister needed any help.
As she ran into the salon, Yvette d'Alembert looked hardly less formidable than her
brother. Though ten centimeters shorter and thirty kilos lighter, her body was still of the
sturdy DesPlainian stock. The gray jumpsuit that she, too, wore emphasized all the best
aspects of her feminine form. She was a sight that would be pleasing to the eyes of any
man-except one who had to come up against her in combat.
She found five antagonists waiting for her as she entered the room, all men. Two of them
she was able to dispose of immediately with her own stun-gun before she had to start
dodging the blaster beams that the other three were employing liberally.
She dived behind one large, overstuffed chair to avoid a beam that would otherwise have
hit her at chest level. Taking advantage of her cover, she shot down another of her foes,
and the remaining pair bolted. One of them tried to make it out the door, but Yvette was
not going to allow that. Lifting the massive chair off the ground, she threw it with all her
strength at the fleeing criminal. The man's blaster burned a hole through the upholstery,
but couldn't slow the heavy object in its flight path. The impact of its weight knocked him
hard against the wall, where he crumpled to the floor, unconscious.
Throwing the chair left Yvette devoid of cover against the beams of the final gangster.
She twisted away frantically as one bolt went by. It caught the edge of her gun, heating
the stunner so much that Yvette could not hold onto it. She dropped the gun and fell
behind a low coffee table, on top of which were several items of bric-a-brac.
The last man, thinking his opponent disarmed and helpless, stood up and aimed his
blaster carefully; he would take no chances on missing his shot this time. But he
reckoned without knowledge of Yvette's resourcefulness and skill. Grabbing a small
emerald statuette from the tabletop, the SOTE operative hurled it with all her DesPlainian
strength and aerialist's accuracy straight at the face of her enemy. The object hit him in
the jaw with a resounding crack of shattered bone, and the man fell backwards onto the
floor, out cold.
Yvette was just picking herself up off the floor as her brother raced into the room. He
glanced around the room quickly, viewing the carnage, and asked, "Need any help?"
Yvette shook her head. "All smooth. Routine, actually. We'd better check to make sure
this is the entire haul."
The two siblings roamed through the rest of the house, but could find no further
opponents to face. They went upstairs and devoted the next half hour to tying up the
servants securely, in case they should come out of stun while the interrogation was still
going on downstairs. Then they returned to the living room and salon and tied up all those
captives. After that, there was still almost an hour's wait until the effects of their stunners
wore off and the interrogation could begin.
During their last assignment, traces of a widespread conspiracy against the Throne had
come to light, with implications that were positively chilling. Duke Fyodor Paskoi, ruler of
the planet Kolokov, and his assistant, Dr. Immanuel Rustin, had apparently been creating
robots that looked and acted exactly like real people. One of these robots had been
used in a plot against Crown Princess Edna, but those plans had been foiled by quick
action on the part of the d'Alemberts and their friends.
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