Royal Road

Success and failure are the same;

One thing beneath a double name.

That piece of Arkadian doggerel-philosophy had never much impressed Duke Harald; not, that is, until he came to Terra as a student.

The situation was itself a paradox of sorts. There was his very presence on the mother world; he, Lord of the Outer Marches, premier duke of Arkady, a scarred and dark-faced soldier among a crowd of boys. And then, he had allowed himself but two months to achieve what others won with hardship in a full two years.

Two months on Terra—and scant progress yet!

“There must be a faster way,” he said aloud, running heavy fingers through close-cropped hair.

The slim and elegant Terran who was his sole companion in the study cell looked up and threw a brief smile across the low partition of the double lectern. For a moment, Duke Harald ignored the unspoken question; then:

“You know why I’m here on Terra, young Melton?”

“To learn telepathy—why else?”

“I don’t mean that. I mean, what use is this telepathy to me, that I should come a thousand parsecs just to gain the knack of it?”

“Why… well, you’re a soldier, I’m told, and I suppose that esper skills must have some place in warfare—” The Terran’s voice trailed off in silence. For generations war had been unknown on Terra, and the mental frame of reference that was needed had all but faded from the planet’s culture.

“On the contrary.” Indeed, Duke Harald thought with sudden insight, the broad intimacy of telepathic contact might prove unhandy to a soldier. Efficiency demanded an abstract, an impersonal attitude towards the enemy of the moment. Was that, perhaps, why Terra didn’t make war too readily these days?

“Of course,” the Arkadian went on, “for military intelligence—finding out what the other side’s planning to do, so you can do it sooner and better—it might be useful. But even so, wars have been won before, and will be won again, without the esper skill.”

“What then?” asked Melton. “If the skill is of no use—”

“No use,” said Duke Harald, “only if we of Arkady were faced with the usual war against the usual human enemy. But we’re not. We’re up against that galactic rarity, an alien species that’s as ready and willing to fight, almost, as any of human stock.”

“Terrans don’t fight.” Melton’s tone held a shade of self-satisfied condescension.

“No. I suppose not. But out there”—Duke Harald made a sweeping ges-ture that took in the far reaches of the universe—“we haven’t the time or the leisure to grow soft! Particularly on the newer worlds, like Arkady. On and off, we’ve had to trade blasters and bombs with aliens ever since my grandfather brought the first starship in from Old Altair.”

Looking down at the papers on his desk, the Terran murmured dryly, “That would be, I presume, at the time of the revolution on Altair?”

“Aye,” said Duke Harald, curtly. And paused to regain composure. Even after two generations, any mention of the fall of the old dynasty of Altair could prick the touchy pride of an Arkadian nobleman. But he had learned that it was futile to argue the point with a Terran. Their histories taught such a queerly twisted version of the Great Exile.

“Well! Right now there’s a truce—of sorts. Great Khrom alone knows how long it will last! But to get to the bones and marrow of the problem: our nonhuman opponents are also natural telepalhs. Pure telepaths,” the Arkadian repeated, stressing the adjective pointedly.

“Pure telepaths?” Melton was interested, puzzled, and faintly skeptical. “You can’t mean—no language, no sensory communication at all?”

“I mean just that,” said Duke Harald flatly. “You see the problem? It’s not a question of screening off a few special operators. Any man of theirs—if you want to call them men!—is a potential spy, once he’s within esper range. And we can’t learn their plans, at least not soon enough or in sufficient detail. Why,” his voice grew harsh, “we don’t even bother to take prisoners any morel What use, when that prisoner can’t be questioned; when he just squats there, dumb and insolent, picks your brains, and relays the information back to his home base?”

“And so, they have an edge?”

“A slight one,” Duke Harald admitted. “Just enough to match our superiority in technical skill, and in sheer fighting ability. Otherwise they wouldn’t have lasted six months—old Homo sapiens is still the fightingest animal of them all!”

And then Duke Harald grinned suddenly, at the look of shocked surprise that crossed the Terran’s face.

“Yes,” he said, still smiling, “I know that’s almost an indecent remark, here on Terra. But it’s still a fact of nature out among the stars. How else do you suppose people from old Nerra managed to grab off so many of the choicest worlds of the galaxy? By sweet reasonableness?”

“But surely,” asked Melton, fascinated despite himself, “if you have no telepaths of your own, you could have had the services of an esper adept from Terra? Would that not have been faster than this lengthy training?”

“Faster, sure.” And almost certainly fatal to his own plans, and perhaps even to the whole present culture of Arkady. For he had not forgotten—if the other had—the rumor that a Terran adept had been in part responsible for the fall of the old kings of Altair. And Arkady, its throne long vacant, ruled by a divided and quarrelsome Council of Peers, was ripe at last to herald a new dynasty. No, this was decidedly not the time to let Terran ideas of “democracy” loose among the commoners.

“Yes, it would be faster,” Duke Harald said again, choosing his words with care. He could not, he reminded himself, afford to become embroiled in political arguments. “But we of Arkady have always tried to make our own way in the universe. And,” he paused briefly, “would any Terran, adept though he might be, either enjoy or be particularly good at military problems?”

Melton said nothing; made only a silent gesture of distaste.

“And so,” Duke Harald finished, “here am I, a somewhat reluctant student at your Esper Institute, while the aliens are up to Khrom knows what! Again I say, I wish there were something faster. Surely your scientists ought to have come up with something new by now! Some wonder drug or other?”

That last was a fishing expedition; a search for confirmation, however slight, of the rumor that had first reached him on distant Arkady. Would Melton rise to the bait?

“Well,” said the Terran slowly, poker-faced, “so far there’s only TPH.”

“TPH? What’s that?”

“Telepathic hormone. But,” Melton’s smile seemed as much for himself as for the Arkadian’s ill-concealed glare of interest, “unfortunately it’s just a myth. No, wait,” as Duke Harald began to voice protest, “I apologize for taking advantage of you; I realize only too well how you must feel. But did you think you were the only one who was ever impatient to acquire esper skill? You should have been born a Terran, then; brought up in the conviction that knowledge of the mind is the highest human knowledge. And yet, we Terrans have our share of laziness. Hence the common dream—so common that we’ve even given it a name!—the fantasied wish-fulfillment of a magic potion that will shortcircuit all this work and study. I’m afraid,” his tones were apologetic, “that our early training is not perhaps so reality-centered as we sometimes like to think.”

So the pattern had repeated itself; the same tale told, with the same disclaimer of its truth! But Melton was speaking again.

“To be blunt,” he was saying with an air of finality, “there really does not seem to be any easy way—any royal road to telepathy.”

Nevertheless Duke Harald’s sense of urgency remained. There was still the problem of the aliens. And, a part of that problem, and yet peculiarly distinct, was his own private plan, now working so slowly towards fruition. As premier duke of Arkady, he had been able to persuade the Council to send him on this quest. But he was not naive enough to think that grudging consent meant an end to opposition. For he had rivals in the Council—Duke Charles, for one. And if those rivals came to realize how near completion were his plans—attainment of the esper skill was all that he now needed—then the noble weather vanes would change their minds, vote for his recall, and bring in a Terran adept. The more fools they, to risk another Altair!

The feeling of impatience was still with him as the hour drew on for another grueling session with his robot therapist. Of all the training at the Institute, these daily sessions seemed least relevant. And yet the adept-masters were without exception firm in their insistence on this aspect of the lengthy course. With slow reluctance Duke Harald made his way to the Hall of Therapy, and to the quiet windowless room where the robot waited.

The machine that faced him as he sank into the relaxing embrace of the special chair was, he knew, but an extension of the great computer banks buried bedrock deep in vaults beneath the Central Library. Yet he tended to endow it with an austere personality of its own.

Pressing his hands lightly to the glowing sensiplate that registered his personal pattern, he relaxed deeply and allowed the silent mechanisms to carry out their wonted ministrations. Deft mechanical hands swabbed his skin with pungent ether, massaged it with astringent conducting jellies, strapped on, taped on and otherwise affixed the spongy plastoid cubes that detected the electric potentials from the muscles underneath. A cunningly shaped helmet settled down about his ears, to hold against his skull the multiple probes of an electroencephalograph. A flat and hollow band coiled snakelike about one arm and was inflated; a pressure gauge nestled snugly against his diaphragm—recorders of blood pressure and breathing.

At early sessions these fittings had bothered the Arkadian; had kept him tense with vague discomfort. But apprehension had passed away with use. He now “wore” his instruments easily, like a suit of clothes.

As ever, the session started with semantic training. Similar but non-identical pairs of images appeared and flowed across the robot’s “face,” while a clear and smoothly modulated voice repeated, over and over, the ancient formula: “This is not this, this is not—”

More and more alike became the pictures; faster and faster they moved; until at length they blended in a vaguely shimmering band of light. The band steadied, brightened, and narrowed abruptly into the restlessly weaving pattern of the hypnagogic light. Duke Harald concentrated—he could not have done otherwise—as the pattern surged in complex synchrony with the slow rhythm of his breathing and the staccato beat of his heart. And as he concentrated, memory pictures came, to fuse with and displace the changing tapestry of light. To sharpen, as his eyelids flickered shut, into the full brilliance of the eidetic recall.

He was jouncing along a shadowed forest road in Arkady. The wheel of a scout car shook between his hands; the springs groaned audibly; and, in the right-hand bucket-seat his ser-geant-squire—who should by rights have driven—groaned beneath his breath. For Duke Harald, impatient of the slowness of ground transport, was noted as a demon-driver, and the ride was rough! Yet rough and slow as it was, anachronistic as it seemed, on a forest planet surface travel had its role and had been cultivated. For alien eyes watched out of space; alien raiders swooped hawklike from the lofty skies; and the mazelike forest paths gave secrecy.

But it was slow. Duke Harald pushed the car a trifle harder. His squire almost—not quite, but almost!—muttered protest. And then ducked involuntarily, as a red-winged pheasant flushed noisily from the roadside brush and rocketed low above them, the whir of its wings and its raucous cry quite clear above the hum of the electric motors.

Ahead the trees were starting to thin out, yielding place to narrow open fields cross-hatched with vineyards. The road sloped gently down to a broad and curving river, where a colorful huddle of little dwellings lay cupped in the bend between trees and water.

They broke from the forest. Both men, from long habit, raised their eyes to the thin cloud cover that the early sun had not yet burned away. Lifted their eyes—and on the instant became desperately busy!

Duke Harald crashed his right foot to the floor. The motor hum became an angry snarl; the cleated tires scrabbled at the dusty surface of the road. The car lurched forward into speed.

The sergeant-squire forgot his worries. One finger stabbed at a button on the dash, and an automatic sender began to shout its “Red Alert” along a microbeam. A gyro-mounted blaster rose smoothly from his housing. And the squire, bracing himself against the hard sway of the car, collapsed the half-screen in front of him and started to hurl bolt upon bolt of blue-white flame into the misty sky above the village.

Three slim, black, delta-winged spacecraft whirled there in a light circle. A fourth, slipping and fish-tailing, rode its flaming under-jets down to the village green. Smoke trails of tracer and of guided missiles wove a lacy net of death across the sky; eyes accustomed to the cool morning light, of the dim forest trails were dazzled by the sudden hot brilliance of energy beams; ears which had heard nothing louder than a bird’s startled cry were assaulted by a shrieking, chattering din. And already, on the outskirts of the village, a gayly painted house had crumpled into crazy shards.

“Raiders!” groaned Duke Harald. “And the local baron is away! They’ll have only hand weapons in the village.”

Not that those were to be despised. Weight for weight they were more potent than anything the aliens had to offer, depending as they did on bombs and rockets and other packaged high explosive. But still, hand blasters against spacecraft!

“One away!” yelled the squire suddenly, without looking up from his compensating gunsight. The beams of the handguns, reinforced now by heavier fire from the scout car’s weapon, had met in fortuitous but deadly focus. And at that point of meeting there blossomed an expanding ball of flame—above it a black shape, driving a hasty and erratic course for outer space.

“He’ll not be back!” said Duke Harald, blasting the scout car down the last slope and into the final turn in a screaming power skid.

And then, ahead—too near by several score of feet—a free-ball bomb sheered the corner from the closest red-roofed house, skipped to the road before its fuse let go, and exploded in a cloud of flame and dust and flying debris. The sergeant-squire screamed once, wordlessly. Moving with deceptive slowness, a jagged rocky missile crushed his gun and made a bloody ruin of his face. He sagged limply in his safety harness. Duke Harald cursed, pumped his brakes and fought to keep his vehicle under control. Too late! Lurching, whipsawing, the car plunged broadside into the swirling cloud of dust. It bounced once, and then a second time on broken paving stone—and flipped over on its back.

(At this point, Duke Harald almost backed away from the memory. And the eidetic images began to fade. Sternly he fought them back again.)

Long minutes later, he remembered, he had dragged himself from beneath the shattered car. Dragged out his squire’s body too, useless gesture though that act was. The crater which had wrecked them had also, oddly, spared his life. For the scout car had alighted squarely within it, bridging the narrow bottom of the cone. And into that small space he dropped, when shaking fingers and dazed intelligence at last found strength and wit to release his safety belt.

Then, leaning against crumpled metal, breathing shallowly as knife-edge pain stabbed through his chest, Duke Harald squinted along the barrel of his handgun and poured useless flame and futile hatred after the black ships, departing now as swiftly as they had come.

Three grimy, smoke-stained commoners found him there. They were wrestling a red handcart laden with chemical extinguishers to the site of the nearest blaze. Suddenly deferential at seeing the blood-smeared silver-gray of his tunic and the shining crested helmet, one of them left his comrades and led Duke Harald to the community first-aid post. There, a sullen but outwardly polite medico taped up his ribs—unnecessarily tight, Duke Harald thought. And that attitude pointed up another facet of the situation that his fellows of the Council preferred to ignore: the restlessness, the growing discontent among the commoners. A military aristocracy’s chief—and only—claim to leadership stemmed from the protection that its battle skills afforded. If that protection failed, what then? Another Altair?

Duke Harald stood up, resumed his wrinkled shirt and tunic, and touched a lighter to a cigarette. The white-garbed medico was cleaning up. There were no more patients; Duke Harald had waived treatment until the last of the villagers’ wounds had been attended.

At length he spoke, impatient of the other’s fussy, back-turned puttering with his instruments.

“What prisoners?” he asked. It did not occur to him—nor would it have to any other Arkadian—to doubt that the raiders had made off with some.

“Two, your grace.” The medico’s voice shook. “Old Jonas Borrow and his small grandson, sunning themselves on the bench before the Red Lion.”

Duke Harald grunted, outwardly impassive. He had heard these tales, seen these sights too often before. His hatred for the aliens was as marrow-deep as the other’s. Only it was colder—save perhaps in the immediate red flame of battle.

“This Jonas Borrow—who was he?” The local baron was, he knew, in King’s Town. The old man then, was probably—

“Our village clan leader,” said the other, confirming the thought. Always, always the telepathic aliens took people who were in a position to know something. How much had Jonas Borrow known of the projected troop levies? Well, that plan, too, would now have to be changed.

“Has he a successor, hereditary or appointed?” he went on.

“Not on Arkady, your grace. His son—the child’s father—is off-planet somewhere.”

“Very well.” Duke Harald decided swiftly. As ruler of the Outer Marches, his was the final authority in these forest villages. “You are clan leader, as of now. Your baron will confirm when he gets back.” The medico, he could see, was torn between an idea of declining, and the glamour of the proffered post. Duke Harald gave him no time to hesitate.

“Now, summon your clan. And find me a recordograph. Mine lies shattered in the wreck of my car, and I need the observations of the people before lime and idle chatter can distort them.”

A poor substitute this, interrogating one’s own people instead of enemy prisoners. But such observations, and the subsequent logical analysis, paid dividends in knowledge of the battle tactics of the enemy.

He had learned nothing new that time, he remembered; just confirmation of previous reports. But—this had been the time when his idea of seeking telepathic skill on Terra had hardened into decision. The reports from Godfrey’s agents had come later, and—

He blanked the thought. He dared not give the sensitive robot even a hint of that plan. Not when it involved what must be the galaxy’s best-kept secret!

All this passed through his consciousness as a single flash of thought, and was as swiftly replaced by innocuous surface images. Not swiftly enough, though. Something—perhaps he had caught his breath, perhaps a momentary tensing of a muscle—had caused a deviant flicker on a recording needle, had sent an impulse to a comparator circuit somewhere in the depths of the great computer bank.

“The sequence is unfinished.” said the robot, in smooth, unhuman tones.

“Possibly not,” Duke Harald admitted, bringing latent feelings of hunger to the fore—and the hour was getting late! “Yet it faded out.”

“Run it again,” said the robot, and backed the suggestion with the hypnagogic pattern. And the sequence was repeated; once and then again, and again until a dozen repetitions had been counted, and both the memory and Duke Harald were exhausted. Then and then only did the machine accept the hunger explanation, and dismiss him.

Dinner at the Arkadian embassy that night.

Duke Harald dressed carefully but informally in the small three-room bachelor apartment he had taken near the Institute, and, scorning mechanical transport, set out on foot. A soldier, somehow, had to keep in training—and he had little use for the gracefully formalized and ballet like patterns that were Terran calisthenics!

His three-mile march took him down broad, tree-shadowed University Avenue to where it intersected at an angle the glitter of the fabled Martian Way. Despite himself, he paused there; fascinated anew by the brilliant, glowing spectacle of the most famous street in all the galaxy. And as he stared—like any provincial!—a stranger stepped from the colorful throng and stood before him. An out-spacer apparently, by his garb; and apparently lost, by the bewildered way in which he extended a tiny map case. Duke Harald saw—and to outward seeming ignored—the recognition signal which the other flashed to him in the Arkadian hand-language.

“Your pardon, sir,” said the stranger with a flustered smile, “but my feet seem to have been leading me in circles. I look for Kinseth Boulevard. Could you direct me?”

“Well,” said Duke Harald, taking and opening the map case, “I have but lately come to Terra myself. But perhaps I can help.”

Frowning, he studied the controls of the map’s tiny electro indexer; then reached into his belt pouch and brought forth a map case of his own.

“Your indexer is of unfamiliar make,” he grunted, comparing the two intently. “Ah yes, here we have it.”

He returned his own case to his pouch, set the pointers of the stranger’s map upon the named location, and handed it back.

“Ten thousand thanks!” exclaimed the outspacer, to which Duke Harald only inclined his head slightly in acknowledgement. They parted. Duke Harald, the perfect picture of the haughty nobleman, marched off in brisk, uncompromising silence; while the stranger, half-embarrassed, called effusive gratitude after him. Nevertheless, within Duke Harald’s pouch there now rested a tiny plastic spool, wound with turn upon silvery turn of hair-fine wire!

The meal was good but informal. Apart from Duke Harald and old Count Godfrey, the ambassador, only two others were present : Terrans both, minor co-ordinators in the loosely organized government of Terra.

“Window dressing,” Count Godfrey called them afterwards, when the two Arkadians were alone. Studying the amber fluid that swirled in the bottom of a balloon-shaped glass, his wrinkled face broke into a sly but gentle smile. “When you’re planning something the other side won’t like, do it under their noses if it’s possible.”

Duke Harald grinned. He and Count Godfrey were, despite the difference in age and rank, old friends. The count had been his military tutor, when he was young in knighthood; now, he was Duke Harald’s chief supporter, confidant, and almost elder brother.

“Well,” said Count Godfrey, “out with it. What progress, after another month among the bright lights and brighter brains of Terra?”

“Little that is definite—much indefinite, unproven,” was the sober answer. “However… well, at risk of boring you with what you already know, I’m going to think out loud for a bit. This constant feeling of having to be on guard against telepathy,” Duke Harald added wryly, “is more than a trifle wearying. Or do I need to tell you that?”

“No,” said the other, sipping his brandy. “Think away.”

“Right. First, then, the aliens. We are agreed that to settle that problem Arkady needs both telepathy and a unified royal government. The present Council of Peers is too unwieldy and too divided to function effectively in any all-out war.”

“Agreed.”

“However, the only candidate for the crown who would have a chance of gaining solid majority support in the Council—thus avoiding civil war—must be able to convince the other peers that he can do what they cannot. The esper skill could supply that conviction.

“And, finally, Terra is the only human world where such skills can be learned. Unfortunately, the minimum training • period is two years. And, Council politics being what they are, our so-far hypothetical aspirant to the throne would be bold indeed to absent himself from Arkady for more than two or three months, at most.”

“Yet you are here.”

“Aye, I am here. Because of a rumor, a report—furnished initially by you—that the long training course demanded by the Terran adepts is unnecessary. That it is a screen, designed to cover Terra’s secret monopoly of certain drugs, hormones or what-have-you, which are the real and only road to esper power.”

Duke Harald paused and leaned forward in his chair.

“So,” he went on, “I decided I could gamble a few months absence from Arkady, to check that story in the only place where it can be checked. Inside the Esper Institute itself.”

“And?”

“And I have found certain curious, but on the surface negative evidence. For example; only today one of the senior Terran students, who is due to stand his vigil shortly, joked with me about something he called TPH. And then proceeded to explain it away as a sort of planetary myth, which no one should take seriously. That,” said Duke Harald, “is a tale which I have run into at least twice before, in almost the same terms.”

“Still—” Count Godfrey sounded doubtful.

“Oh, it’s slim enough, I admit. However—” Duke Harald’s voice trailed off. He rose to his feet and crossed to the long polished table where he had placed his military crossbelt. From the pouch he extracted the small wire-wound spool.

“Have you a playback that will handle this?”

“In the desk yonder.” The old ambassador nodded to the corner of the room. “Second drawer on the right—it’s built in.”

“Good.” Duke Harald strode over and began to insert the spool. “This,” he said, fingers busy threading wire between magnets, “may hold the answer—I hope. There, that does it.”

He straightened. Finger on the starting button, he paused and glanced around the quiet, spacious room.

“Three days ago,” he said, “I at last managed to conceal the transmitting unit of a Sonotec in the inner office of my course tutor, Master Elwyn. I delayed this long, I might add, mainly because I had to test unobtrusively the truth of something I heard when I enrolled. That the esper Prime Rule—the Rule of Privacy—extends to students as well as to outsiders; that no one’s thoughts will be invaded by an adept, save by prior voluntary consent.

“Well, then, I planted the Sonotec. The receiver and recorder I had given already to one of your best agents—who, by the way, must, be rewarded—so that if, by chance, the microbeam should be detected, it would not point to one of us directly. And tonight, your agent passed me this—a three-day record of Master Elwyn’s most secret conferences.”

“Does he—the agent, that is—know what’s on that wire?”

“Well, hardly.” Duke Harald looked quizzically at his old friend. “D’you think I’m that new at the game? No, the stuff went out—and was recorded—scrambled. My own code, too. I’ve set it up on your unit, so we’ll hear it in clear. That is,” he added with a grin, “if you feel up to it. It may well be an all-night job, even running it at fast scan.”

“Humph!” The old count, who had been leaning back with half-shut eyes, snorted and sat bolt upright. “It won’t be the first time I’ve missed a night’s sleep. Nor, I hope, the last.” He poured fresh brandy, turned on a waiting coffee maker and, thus prepared, settled back and closed his eyes once more. “Turn on your Master Elwyn; let’s hear what he has to say.”

It was a difficult wire to listen to; and most oddly garbled at times. In addition to the distortion inevitable to the use of pick-up elements measurable in millimeters, and the further loss of information imposed by the scrambling circuits, there were periods of peculiar fade-out, when the recorded voices dropped away to mere whispers despite all that the automatic volume control could do, and the talkers sounded as though their voices were filled with thin mush.

“An added precaution against them tracing the beam, if they do detect it,” said Duke Harald softly in explanation. “The receiver and recorder are portable; built into a brief case. Its location is shifted at least once an hour, following a random pattern.”

Time wore on. Time during which the coffee cups were emptied and refilled and emptied again; time during which only the sharp rustling of papers, or Master Elwyn’s voice discussing matters of pure and unimportant routine, reached the ears of the intently listening Arkadians. Duke Harald began to frown. And then, just as the little spool was beginning to show traces of empty core, it came.

“…Should know, as a senior, that the esper drug is not a subject for idle jests,” Master Elwyn’s voice came through with sudden clarity. “Not, certainly, where an outspacer is concerned.”

“Your pardon, master,” said a voice that Duke Harald recognized as belonging to his Terran acquaintance, Melton. “But I assumed… I believed, rather, just what I told our Arkadian friend. That TPH was nothing but a story.”

“In a sense, you were right. In another sense, however, the drug is… but hold! That would seem to be my call.”

The Arkadians could hear in the background a soft musical ringing; followed by a lengthy spell of silence.

“What’s wrong?” Count Godfrey asked in a whisper. “Did your transmitter go out? Now, of all times?”

“No—the carrier’s still on. Hear it?” There was a faint hissing sound coming from the machine, punctuated at that moment by a startling twang. “And that,” said Duke Harald, with a wry smile for his own momentary startle, “is Melton, getting restless. The only place I could hide the Sonotec was behind a leg of the visitor’s chair. And it sounds as though the springs creak!

“By the galaxy, I don’t know… yes, I do! Master Elwyn’s en rapport with another adept. They don’t use voice between themselves, you know.”

“Now, Melton,” the adept’s voice came in again, slowly and deliberately, “as I was saying, in a sense you are right. However, and in view of the fact that your initiation into the Esper Guild is almost upon you—your vigil is set for tomorrow night—there are some things that you now should know. To which end, I would suggest that you study these—”

An abrupt and thunderous crashing from the speaker, and all sound went out; even to the thin hiss of the carrier. The two noble conspirators stared at each other with a wild surprise. And Duke Harald reached out to cut the playback. Suddenly the speaker burst into a senseless gabble.

“What? Oh, sure,” said Duke Harald, and he deftly changed the scramble setting.

“Your grace,” a voice was saying, in purest Arkadian accents, “the Sonotec transmission went out at 0435 hours. From the nature of the readings at the time of the break, destruction of the sender is most likely. I shall try to pass this spool to you at the assigned time and place. I am now abandoning this location.”

“Good lad!” Duke Harald commented. “I guess they didn’t trace him.”

“You think, then, that your Sonotec was discovered?”

“And smashed. Well, I guess it served its purpose. I don’t suppose trying to plant another would be wise?”

“Most unwise.” Count Godfrey was emphatic.

“You’re probably right,” Duke Harald conceded. “But I would have liked to hear some more. However, we have something. Let’s pool our wits and see just what that something is.” Brief discussion found them in agreement on two points. That the rumor of a telepathic drug seemed now to have some sure foundation. And that Duke Harald would have to contrive to be present at the often mentioned but still mysterious “vigil.”

“But how?” Count Godfrey wondered.

“Oh, I’ve got a few things in my lock-box that may help.”

“Such as?”

“Oh, gadgets.” Duke Harald was deliberately vague. Then, as the old ambassador half-opened his mouth in protest, “No, I don’t know yet just what I’ll use, or how I’ll work it. And even if I did, you know my thoughts : share a plan in detail, and you’re psychologically committed to trying to make it work in just that way, even when the situation changes.” He yawned, and set the silvery wire to spinning through the erasing coils. Instinctively he wished to be rid of that piece of tangible evidence.

The nightly “one o’clock rain” was still misting gently down over the streets and towers of the city, when Duke Harald emerged from the embassy. The Terran weather machines, he thought, were marvels of efficiency. But their unvarying regularity made the climate seem a little dull to anyone born and bred on a more primitive, storm-tossed world. A closed three-wheeler bore the Arkadian nobleman home through streets temporarily deserted for the hour-long duration of the rain.

Morning brought a disturbing reminder of Arkadian politics, in the shape of a coded spacegram from the Council of Peers.

“Recall!” said Duke Harald blankly, staring at the yellow message slip. Now, of all times! He translated the order again, and this time noted the signature: Duke Charles, President-Elect. Enlightenment came. Obviously he had stayed away too long. There had been one of those swift realignments of power to which the Council was all too prone. And it had for the moment left control in the hands of his arch-rival.

“And the next step, I suppose, will be to call on Terra for an adept! Well, back I go—but not before I get what I came after.”

Even as he said this, Duke Harald crossed the simply furnished sitting room of his apartment to the alcove where his visiphone was placed. He started to set up a calling-pattern ; and just as swiftly canceled it.

“Tapped!” said Duke Harald, watching a tiny spot of amber light fade slowly from the screen. The secret, unofficial changes he had made within the instrument had detected interference from a tapping circuit. Someone was set to monitor his calls; And he could make a reasonably accurate guess as to who and why. This, and the finding of his Sonotec in Master Elwyn’s office—the two events trod much too closely on each other’s heels to be called sheer coincidence.

But were the Terran adepts just suspicious, or—something more?

“There’s one way to find out,” he muttered, and donned his newest scarlet tunic. No dull student garb today!

His hand was on the door switch, when a soft chiming stopped the movement of his fingers. Flicking on the scanner, he looked at the call-plate; to see, in the outside corridor a Terran in part-uniform.

“Yes?” he queried softly.

“Duke Harald of Arkady?” the other asked in turn.

“Here,” said the Arkadian, half regretting that he wore no weapon. If this man were of the police—but no! Events could not have marched that fast. “What is it?”

“Your pardon, Duke Harald. I am Cam Hardy. A public runner, in the service of the Esper Institute. My number,” he touched his cap badge, “is 4063. I have an urgent message for you from the adept, Master Elwyn.”

“Oh,” said Duke Harald flatty. “Right—come in.” And the door slid back into its recess as he released the force lock. He took the folded slip of heavy paper, read it with expressionless features.

“No answer,” he said then, signing the message book. Then waited while the runner disappeared along the corridor.

Did this change anything, he wondered; this sudden summons to a meeting he had decided to request? To beard the lion in his den was one thing. But if the lion asked you in, what then?

There was one precaution he could take. Closing the door again, he folded Master Elwyn’s message into the smallest possible compass, and sealed it—together with the coded spacegram—into a tamper-proof capsule which he marked with the address of the Arkadian embassy. That would be sufficient information for Count Godfrey’s alert old brain, he thought, as he dropped the metal egg into the automatic pneumo-tube. Slower, but surer and more private than the phones, the controls of the tube system could hardly have been altered over night.

And now—Master Elwyn!

“Please be seated, your grace,” said the adept, when Duke Harald had presented himself. Master Elwyn was, the Arkadian had noticed, always studiously careful about the use of titles and terms of courtesy.

“Thank you, Master Elwyn.” Duke Harald was as courteous in his turn; although he could not altogether bring himself to do as Terrans did, and address the other simply as “Master.”

“You have faced me with a problem of some delicacy,” the white-haired adept remarked without preamble. His intelligent old eyes glowed solemnly at Duke Harald. From apparently nowhere he produced—and with something of the air of a conjuror—a battered little plastic cube. Less than half an inch it measured on its sole unbroken side. It looked as though a grinding heel had crushed it under foot.

“I have? And how, may I ask?” Duke Harald spoke calmly, striving to keep mind and voice and features under such control that even the control itself would not be noticed.

“You do not recognize this, then?”

“Only as a Sonotec unit. Why?”

“I see,” said Master Elwyn, slowly. And inwardly, Duke Harald tensed. He knew that, by the Rule of Privacy, the adept could not read his mind without consent. But still—that Sonotec was his, despite his bland denial; and the Terran obviously guessed as much. Were there, he wondered, any limitations to the Rule? In short, were his thoughts being scanned?

Apparently not.

“Let us,” Master Elwyn was saying quietly, “consider this small device.” He touched the broken Sonotec negligently with one finger. “Its presence in this office was detected only yesterday. The implications of that fact are—serious.”

“Serious? In what way?” Duke Harald asked. Then, allowing a measure of indignation to warm his tones, “And what connection do you fancy that I have with this?”

“The Sonotec beam was traced. To a certain hotel in this city. Before investigators could arrive, however, two men left hurriedly and have not since been found.”

“Well?”

“One of those men, it turns out, may have come from Arkady.”

“I see.” Duke Harald let his voice go heavy with sarcasm. “You suspect me, then, of engineering this curious, this pointless business? But why? I am at a loss to know what mysteries are hidden here—here, in a center of learning—that the tenuous connection of a broken spy instrument and a vanished and half-mythical Arkadian should lead to such a fanciful conclusion!”

“Your grace,” said Master Elwyn with a reminiscent smile, “in my youth I studied the history of the semantic dark ages of Terra. Your little speech recalls those studies to my mind.”

“Very well,” said Duke Harald. “I have already denied knowledge of this Sonotec. But you, it seems, suspect me in some fashion. Will you, then, enlarge upon your suspicions? I,” pointedly, “am not a telepath.”

“Nor, in this connection,” Master Elwyn said with some asperity, “need I be. If, that is, you are implying that I might have broken the Prime Rule. Let me, then, remind you that there is, at least on Terra, such a thing as a rigorous psychologic science. My suspicion, as you call it, is not based on guesswork—nor on illegal use of esper skills—but on psychomathematical analysis.

“But,” as Duke Harald moved in his chair as though to protest, “let that pass. Without intending any derogation, I’ll not puzzle you with details—save that the P-matrix now includes such matters as the present situation in the galaxy, the interacting roles of Arkady and Terra, and the part that you can play. I note that you are cognizant of some of this. You would not otherwise be wearing uni-form.” And the old adept pointed to Duke Harald’s court tunic.

With an effort the Arkadian kept his face expressionless; he did not trust himself to speak. How, he wondered, could he have thus forgotten that the Terrans were the galaxy’s first masters of psychology? But he had forgotten—and black failure loomed before him like the fall of night. Unless… but Master Elwyn was speaking still.

“This Sonotec—and the vanishing man from Arkady—were but the latest factors to be added to the matrix. It is not complete as yet; more data are required; still, a partial solution could be found.”

“And that concerns me—how?” Duke Harald’s face was rigidly impassive. Knowing the old man’s passion for meticulous detail, he wondered tensely just how “partial” the solution would turn out to be. Probably a fully outlined plan of action, to any other eyes.

Master Elwyn’s bright old eyes seemed to film over briefly; for a moment his gaze focused on the empty air beyond Duke Harald’s shoulder. Then:

“How does it concern you? Why, in this way—at least for the immediate present. You are invited—urged—to enjoy the hospitality of the Institute. To that end, a suite of rooms has been prepared for you in Alpha Residence. Your personal belongings are on their way there now.”

“And if I don’t choose to accept your invitation?” Outwardly relaxed, Duke Harald was alert and poised for action. The adept pressed a button on his desk and pointed to the wall. Duke Harald turned and looked. A large vision screen was lighting up, to show a narrow stretch of corridor beyond the office door. A strip of gray-green wall was visible, and a part of the carved bronze doors of the elevator. And against that wall, and before those doors, stood a pair of husky Terrans fingering needle-guns. A little self-consciously, perhaps, as though unused to such an occupation. But, for all that, with an air of full efficiency.

“I see,” said Duke Harald flatly. And he did see. Perhaps not every detail; but the major elements of the adept’s plan were now becoming clear. A form of house arrest was part of it. That, to give time for further observation of his actions, for skillful, unobtrusive questioning. Despite the adept’s confident demeanor, this implied uncertainty. And a desire to temporize: to weigh the consequence of sterner acts against a duke of Arkady. They did not know that he had been recalled, and that his influence with the council was at its lowest ebb.

Once more he blessed the famous Rule of Privacy. He had wondered how to gain admission to the Institute this night, to witness Melton’s scheduled vigil. And Master Elwyn, all unwittingly, had furnished half the answer! Now, if they but brought his lock-box over. It was ray-proof; it looked innocuous enough; and he had left a blaster openly in his bedroom.

“I am sorry,” said Master Elwyn, and his voice did seem to suggest an honest regret, “that we have had to take this course. There are reasons for it that you do not yet suspect. Nor may I give you fuller explanation at the moment. In the meantime I must ask that you remain within the confines of the Institute. And messages outside are barred. Apart from this, your status has not altered. Your attendance at your usual classes may continue.”

Duke Harald only smiled a little thinly.

“The two gentlemen outside,” said Master Elwyn, “will show you to your quarters.”

A long twilight was deepening slowly into night when Duke Harald noticed first that his “arrest” was scheduled to become more stringent.

It had not been too irksome through the daylight hours. His escort had departed after taking him to his quarters. And he had full freedom of the grounds and buildings of the Institute. He had not tried to determine the full reaches of that freedom. He had kept to a self-imposed seclusion; and had largely occupied himself with writing various formal notes of protest—-copies of which, he thought, would only reach Count Godfrey when and if the Terrans chose.

Now, however!

Partly out of idle curiosity, partly because the half-noted fading away of the Institute’s busy daytime hum had made him restless, he decided to explore. He pressed his door switch. Nothing happened. He pressed the switch again, and yet a third time, holding it strongly closed for seconds. Still nothing; no movement of the door to open; not even the usual motor hum from overhead. A broken power circuit!

Still, that could be accidental. In the dimness—he had not yet switched on his room lights—he felt for the unobtrusive finger slots that made it possible to slide the panel if the power failed. His hand encountered only smooth and highly polished wood. Duke Harald turned the room lights on and let his eyes confirm the evidence of touch. His door had somehow seated too far home; the slots were now concealed within the jamb.

“Locked in,” Duke Harald said then, softly. “But it’s not official. I’ll wager if I called a porter now, I’d be let out, and with apologies for the accident!”

But it was clear he was not being urged to roam the Institute, on this initiation night.

No matter. According to all reports, the ceremony did not start till midnight. He had time; his lock-box had arrived intact; and, even lacking both, he deemed himself a good enough mechanic to restore emergency power to that door.

Thus, well in advance of the striking of the hour of vigil, Duke Harald slid the panel back and stepped boldly into the soft illumination of the corridor. A flat black cap wais on his head; a knee-length battle cloak swung loosely from his shoulders; and a brace of tiny pistolets was holstered at his sides.

Melton’s initiation would, according to old customs, take place within the private chambers of his adept-tutor, Master Elwyn. The never-varied usage was for each successful candidate, at a time when formal graduation was not too distant, to be “received” by his master in a secret midnight rite; and then to spend the remainder of that night in vigil. That, at least, was the publicly accepted story.

It was a clever touch, Duke Harald had thought when first he heard of it. It added prestige, a certain quasireligious sanctity to adepts who had kept the vigil. And it reminded him most strongly of the ceremonies on far Arkady, when a nobleman was first inducted into knighthood.

It was still a neat touch if—as he was now convinced—that ceremony hid the true creation of the telepath. And certainly, no other moment in an esper student’s life was so well fitted to the covert administration of an unknown drug.

The various, separate buildings of the Institute were linked below the surface at subbasement level by a dimly lighted maze of tunnels; which gave access also to computer vaults, library stacks, and miscellaneous storage spaces. Duke Harald knew them well. Even had he not had from the first some night’s adventure such as this in mind, his military instinct would have driven him to learn the details of the system. And learn them he did : by dint of personal exploration, and the long scrutiny of variously acquired maps and building plans. Thus he made his way with speed and secrecy to Master Elwyn’s building.

Calling an elevator from the upper floors, Duke Harald reviewed his knowledge of the building. Master Elwyn had his office on the topmost floor, well removed from the daytime hum and bustle of the lower levels. The suite comprised, he knew, an inner office, a small washroom and refresher, and an anteroom where during daylight hours a secretary-Cerberus held the portals. At night—particularly this initiation night—that guardian should be gone.

The entrance to the anteroom—the main entrance to the chambers—was almost directly across from the elevator shaft. There was a second door, rarely used, which gave direct access to the inner office. That was some twenty feet along the corridor, just before the passage turned to lead to an emergency staircase.

Up in the elevator, then, to the floor below the one which wash is goal. As the metal doors of the cage sighed shut behind him, Duke Harald was already racing cat-footed down the corridor, around the turn, and up the winding stairs to his first “check point.” A quick glance showed him the corridor stretching bare and empty to the far wall of the building.

And now came the first really ticklish spot. Taking a case of tiny, glittering energy tools from his belt pouch, Duke Harald went ghostlike down the corridor; and began to trace the power leads to Master Elwyn’s door. And as he worked, swiftly and precisely, he smiled in silent amusement. His door had been shorted out; he would now repay the compliment!

His circuit tracer flashed. Stopping the slow movement of his hand, holding it rock-still—a millimeter’s error could defeat him—he read the tiny dial and marked his point of entry. Exchanging the tracer for a power drill, he sank a microscopic shaft to the indicated depth, and down it drove a silver grounding pin. Then—a quick re-check with his tracer, and this phase of the operation was complete.

And none too soon! Indeed, a faint humming from the elevator shaft warned him that his time was running out. And still another door to doctor!

Sweating with nervous haste, Duke Harald paused before the door of the inner office and forced his hands to repeat the cautious tracing of the hidden wires. Just as a soft pinging announced the arrival of the cage, he found the junction he was looking for, marked it with a hasty blob of color—fortunately, precision was not so necessary here—and, battle cloak streaming from his shoulders, almost dove around the corner to the concealment of the stairhead.

Half crouching, hands on weapons, he waited then for any possible alarm. There was none. Only the sigh of the closing elevator and, a moment later, the distant muffled chiming of a bell. Silently, Duke Harald flattened himself to the floor and extended a tiny pocket mirror around the corner. The angle of sight was strange, and the view narrow. But it sufficed. He could see the length of the corridor, could recognize Melton standing before the door of the anteroom, could just discern the faint blue flash of the scanning light.

Cautiously Duke Harald stood erect. In his hands were two new instruments. From around the corner he could now hear voices.

“Well! Melton,” came Master Elwyn’s tones, “come in, come in!”

“But, master,” the young Terran sounded puzzled, “the door—you haven’t opened the door.”

“Eh? What’s that? Wait there, and I’ll—” the adept’s voice faded out. A brief pause—not more than ten seconds—and Duke Harald heard the sound of an opening door. He tensed; poised himself lightly on the balls of his feet.

Master Elwyn’s voice came again, clearer, louder, and without the faint but unmistakable distortion of a caller-circuit. The jugglery with the door had worked; had decoyed the adept from his inner sanctum.

“Come in,” said Master Elwyn, “at last. I can’t imagine what has happened to this door. But we mustn’t delay your initiation to—” And the click of a closing door cut off the sentence.

Now! Duke Harald plunged around the corner and came to a skidding halt-before the entrance to the inner office.

Over the paint-marked spot on the wall he pressed one of his instruments. It droned faintly, and the door began to slide ajar. And as it opened, Duke Harald’s other hand went reaching in, found the finger slot—and pressed into its shadowed depth a sticky-backed and tiny Sonotec. Then he removed his “opener” from the wall and let the door slide home. All this in the few brief seconds while the Terrans crossed from anteroom to inner office.

Duke Harald sighed gustily and wiped perspiration from his forehead. Then, unreeling a thin, almost invisible thin cable, he resumed his station at the stairhead. This time he Was using a wired job; after his last experience he dared not risk even the tightest of microbeams. And now, he was ready to learn what really went 011 at the initiation of an adept!

“Now, Melton,” Master Elwyn’s voice came clearly along the wire, “sit down, my friend. For two years you have persevered at what must have seemed a slow and thankless task. You have been forced to know yourself, to sound the earliest depths of memory, to lay bare the tangled roots of your most fleeting wish—and all for no more clearly stated reason than that your masters deemed it necessary.”

“Why,” said Melton slowly, “I formed my own opinion about that. Perhaps I should not have kept at it, otherwise.”

“Quite,” said the old adept, approvingly.

“I,” Melton went on, “decided rather early that this training—or something very like it—was necessary. First, as a question of ethics; and then as a matter of survival.”

“No need to hesitate. I know what you are going to say; and you are right, of course.”

“Well, then. Ethics—because it concerns the fundamental Rule of Privacy. That Rule is basically, I think, an ethical conception. And I doubt,” said Melton warmly, “that, without a thorough training in stability, in psychological self-knowledge, any human could be trusted to observe without exception the Prime Rule. The temptation to pry, to peek, to take a furtive mental glance—all, of course, for the best of reasons!—would otherwise be irresistible.”

“What harm?” quizzed Master Elwyn. “What danger, in a small infraction?”

“Only the danger that in small infractions lies the seed of great abuses of the esper skill. And could society trust such power in unscrupulous hands? A power-seeking adept would have to be destroyed!”

(“By Khrom!” Duke Harald muttered, listening at the end of his secret wire, “now I wonder if Duke Charles used arguments like that, when he talked the Council into voting my recall?”)

“And so,” came Melton’s voice again, “observance of the Rule of Privacy is a matter of survival for the Esper Guild.”

Master Elwyn spoke.

“But now,” he said, “you know there is another reason for the training. A reason which has little to do with ethics or society, but which concerns most nearly your ability to take the final step?”

“I studied the papers you gave me; I understand.”

“And you are ready to take that step? Prepared to accept the full responsibility of the esper skill?”

“I am.”

“I must, then, ask your consent to an invasion of your Privacy.”

“Knowing and agreeing with the reasons for this action, I so consent, fully and freely.”

Question and response had taken on, almost, the air of an antiphony. There followed a long silence, while the adept probed the new initiate’s mind.

“Excellent!” said Master Elwyn finally, in the voice of one who gives an accolade. “I shall stay in partial contact for the next half-hour, until the drug takes hold; and in full rapport after that, for as long as you need my guidance in your vigil.”

“And now—the drug?”

“Now, the drug. Bare your arm, please; here, under this sterilamp. I have the hypospray prepared. Five milliliters, intravenous—”

Now! thought Duke Harald, outside at the stairhead. He pressed a button, and a voltage surge passed swiftly down the wires of the Sonotec. Inside the adept’s sanctum, the plastic case fell open with a quiet puff; a reddish liquid boiled away, diffusing its vapors through the room. Duke Harald waited, counting seconds. One, for the gas to take effect; and ten more, for it to disappear again, drawn off through the air ducts.

Then he moved. First the cable of the Sonotec; reeling that in, that nothing might be left to stir suspicion in a passer-by. And next the glittering energy key came into play once more. The master’s door swung fully open now, and Duke Harald stepped within.

Two figures he saw there, and his hands released their grip on holstered pistolets. Master Elwyn and young Melton, slumped limply half across the surface of the adept’s desk, heads pillowed upon outflung arms—snoring gently in relaxed and dreamless slumber!

One long glance Duke Harald gave them, to be sure the gas had done its work. Then his gaze swung, single-minded, to the slender glassite rod that, dropping from the adept’s nerveless fingers, had rolled nearly all the way across the surface of the desk, trailing a thin line of moisture. The hypospray! And full-charged with the telepathic drug that was the goal of all this midnight burglary.

With cautious, trembling hands he took it. Carefully he sealed the open tip with sterile tape; carefully he wadded it about with handkerchiefs and stowed it in his pouch. He sighed then, inhaling gustily; half-conscious that he had been holding back his breathing for the past few seconds.

He looked about and something caught his eye: the sterilamp. Upset but still turned on, its flickering blue light shone full upon the white-haired adept’s sleeping face. He turned it off. Now that the game was—almost!—won, he bore the Terran no ill-will. No need to let the old man wake an hour later to a painful case of sunburn.

Almost finished now! By Master Elwyn’s silver-mounted desk clock, it was twenty minutes after midnight. Events were running well within his schedule. There was just one thing that needed doing. He had to get in touch with old Count Godfrey—what better way than by the adept’s private visiphone? Any other set he might have tried to use would have been monitored; but not, he thought, this one—not Master Elwyn’s.

Swiftly he set up the calling pattern. And, waiting, drummed a ragged little rhythm on the desk. Then the screen swirled into glowing life. An under-secretary’s face appeared—startled briefly out of well-trained stolidness by a flash of recognition.

“Get Count Godfrey!”

“Yes, your grace. At once!”

It seemed almost faster than that. Like a conjuring trick, the secretary vanished backward from the scanning field; and the ambassador’s alert old features came to view.

“Here! I’ll take it,” said the count; then, turning his head, “Get you gone, Borrow; but wait in the outer room. I may have need of you further.” Looking back again at Duke Harald, he said simply, “I’ve been waiting.”

“Thought you might be,” said Duke Harald. And a wave of affection kept him briefly silent. “You got my note?”

“Yes. I decided to give you a full day.”

“And you’ve been sleeping by the phone, no doubt?”

“I was sure you’d call,” said the old man, “before the deadline. Well?”

“Well—I’ve got it.”

“The drug?”

“ The drug,” Duke Harald said. “Now—can you get a car to me?”

“Where, and when?”

“Corner of University and Twelfth Street. At”—he glanced at the clock, calculated swiftly—“ten minutes past one. That’ll give me time for one thing more. And the rain will be falling.”

“You’ll get wet.”

“Sure. But I won’t get seen—I hope! Off, now.”

“Off—and, luck!” said Count Godfrey as his image faded from the screen.

Back, then, through the tunnels to his temporary quarters. A journey without incident, without encounter; which was, perhaps, as well for someone. For the Arkadian, having gone so far, was grimly set to use his deadly little pistolets without parley or delay.

His first thought was for the contrivance that had let him use the “locked” door of his rooms. Dismantling it, he thus removed the only concrete evidence that he had been free to roam the Institute; free to do what had been clone that night in Master Elwyn’s office. For, he was coldly certain, when those sleepers awakened he would be under automatic suspicion. Not that he intended to be here when that awakening took place. But he reasoned—and did not trust the reasoning too much—if the only clues were that he had broken out of, not into the Institute, pursuit might then be baffled for a time.

Thus, he tore down carefully his jury-rigged circuit; and in doing so restored to normal usefulness the bed lamp that had been its power source. The room was set in order; and the clock announced that it was time to go.

One last glance round before extinguishing the lights. Then back swept the heavy amber drapes before the window; out swung the casements, creaking slightly; and over the sill and down went Duke Harald, hand over hand down a thin tough grapnel line. The dark battle cloak swirled and flapped about his booted legs. The lock-box, slung from his shoulders by a twist of cord, jarred against his back with every downward foot. And ancient ivy clutched and rasped at him with leaf and branch and clinging tendril. But his feet touched ground at last. Duke Harald released his grasp upon the rope and wheeled about; stood motionless, breathing fast, peering with slitted eyes through the darkness and the thin warm rain.

No alarm—as yet! Shrugging the awkward box to a more easeful spot between his shoulder blades, he moved off. A few lighted windows stared at him with yellow eyes. The leaves of ancient trees rustled in the falling rain as he passed noiselessly underneath. And, from the distance, the thin whine of rubber on wet pavement reached his straining ears.

The rendezvous at last, and the appointed time. Shrouded in the dark length of the battle cloak, Duke Harald merged his shadowy outline with the black bulk of a lofty elm.

He had not long to wait. The tire whine drew nearer. A gayly painted three-wheeled vehicle appeared, slowing for the corner. Duke Harald hesitated, frowned. This was no embassy car; this was a public cab!

Then the cab braked smoothly to a halt. And its roof light flickered on and off—a coded signal which Duke Harald recognized. At a dead run he left the shelter of his tree and pounded across the sidewalk. As he wrenched open the door and vaulted in beside the driver, the car surged forward into speed.

Duke Harald caught his breath after a moment. Unfastening the lockbox, he tossed it lightly in the back. The driver spoke then, quietly, not taking his eyes from the road.

“Count Godfrey thought it better not to come himself, your grace. In case of any sudden inquiry, he felt he should be personally available.”

“Of course!” Duke Harald nodded in agreement. “And your instructions were—?”

“To meet your grace, and bring you to the embassy by the fastest and yet most roundabout route.”

“And this cab?”

“Rented, your grace—after a fashion.” The driver smiled briefly. “Count Godfrey arranged it. The owner will wake up after a while—a little richer and a lot more puzzled.”

“Your name’s Borrow, is it not?” Duke Harald asked, studying the other’s dimly seen profile. “One of Godfrey’s secretaries?”

“Yes, your grace.”

Borrow! Of course, thought Duke Harald; this would be the son of the old clan leader—and the father of the child—whose capture by the aliens had been so recently and vividly recalled to him. Well! By this night’s work, that family tragedy was nearer to being avenged.

The walls of the embassy were a warmly lighted sanctuary. Duke Harald shivered slightly as he removed his damp and heavy battle cloak.

“And now,” said Count Godfrey, closing the door of his private room and busying himself with the everpresent coffee maker, “don’t you think it’s time to break down and let me know what’s happened? And what you’re planning to do next?”

Duke Harald told him; succinctly but graphically.

“The next step,” he concluded, “is for me to get back to Arkady. Before Duke Charles knows I’m coming; and before the Terrans think to close the local spaceways. You keep a courier-boat fueled and ready to go, I believe?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” said Duke Harald quietly, “tonight I’m going to steal it.”

“Steal it?” For a moment the old ambassador looked baffled. Then understanding came, and he smiled.

“Yes,” said Duke Harald. “Arkady needs this embassy on Terra. So far my actions have been, legally, those of a private citizen. And as long as we keep it that way; as long as you are careful not to lend me your ambassadorial sanction, then the Terrans can be as suspicious as they please. But in law they can’t, and probably in practice won’t, take any action to close up your shop. So you see—officially you cannot sign my ticket!”

“But what about a crew?”

“For a courier-boat? You forget I qualified in cruisers,” said Duke Harald. “So long as the boat is stocked—”

“It is.”

“Well, then.” Duke Harald shrugged. Putting down his coffee cup, he rose to his feet, stretched, and gathered up his battle cloak again. “It’s been a rocky night,” he said, yawning, “but I’ll not sleep sound until I’m out in space, high-driving it for Arkady. Now—where do you keep this space-boat, and I’ll be on my way.”

The old ambassador began a protest, but was interrupted. Not, however, by Duke Harald. The door chimed softly, and its warning light winked on and off repeatedly.

“That’s Borrow!” said Count Godfrey, suddenly nervous. Swiftly he turned the scanner on, studied his secretary’s pictured face, and touched the door switch. Duke Harald, chill apprehension heavy in his stomach, shrugged back his battle cloak and rested his hand upon his pistolets.

The secretary entered; closed the door behind him.

“Sir! And your grace!” he said tensely. He held a little square of paper in his hand. “A Master Elwyn, of the Esper Institute, is here, and asks a private talk with the ambassador.”

“Master Elwyn!” said Duke Harald, grim-faced.

“Yes, your grace. And,” Borrow stuttered slightly, “the servants tell me that the grounds appear to be surrounded.”

“Surrounded?”

“Yes, sir. By armed police.”

Seconds ticked away while the two Arkadian nobles stared at one another. Then Duke Harald laughed once; a bitter mirthless sound.

“Well,” he said to Count Godfrey, “it looks as though you won’t lose that space-boat after all!”

“But—what to do?”

“Invite Master Elwyn in, by all means,” said Duke Harald. He relaxed a little from his tight concentration. His fertile brain began to see that this need not be checkmate; that one last move remained to him.

“Invite him in,” he said again. “And admit nothing, deny everything—stall for time. But you know how to do it—you’re the diplomat around here.”

“And you?”

“Me? Oh, I’ll be out of sight upstairs. You have a sterilamp around the place?”

“Yes. But—”

“Have Borrow fetch it to me, or show me where it is. I’ll go to earth—temporarily!—in one of your spare bedrooms.”

“Then, you’re not going to break out?”

“Through a cordon of guards? And start a brawl which could bring war with Terra—if, that is, Duke Charles and the Council backed us up, which I very strongly doubt? No,” said Duke Harald harshly, “unless my appreciation of the situation has gone completely sour, I’ve got one move and only one move left to play. I’m going to take the drug!”

And, without pause for further explanation, Düke Harald disappeared in the direction of the upper floors. He trusted his old friend to grasp the obvious, to see the need for this particular action. There were, he thought, three clear advantages to be gained.

Destruction of the evidence was a main consideration. With the embassy thus guarded, he could not hope to smuggle out the drug in any usual container; and diplomatic immunity extended only to this building, and to the person of Count Godfrey. But—could they search his blood stream or his nervous system? With concrete evidence gone, between them he and Godfrey could befog the issue thoroughly. Psychomathematical deductions might be well enough on Terra. He doubted if they would stand up in interstellar law.

Again, possession of the esper skill might be a potent weapon. He could not know; could only hope. And in the end, to face the Terrans with a fait accompli should lead at worst to stalemate. At least, some bargain might be struck—Master Elwyn was surely not inflexible.

The guest room was comfortable; luxuriously furnished, even. But Duke Harald paid more heed to the thickness and opacity of the heavy drapes than to their carefully chosen colors. The carving on the oaken door was of less moment to him than its sturdy weight and sound-absorptive qualities. Satisfied that he was safe from outside scrutiny, he set about his simple preparations.

Not, however, without some twinges of anxiety. This was, after all, an unfamiliar drug. He knew too little of its action and its properties. He had not planned to take it here, thus hastily self-administered; but only back on Arkady, after careful analysis and animal assay, and with his personal physician standing by.

But this way! He repressed a shiver, as a discreet signal from the door heralded Borrow’s entrance with the sterilamp.

“Well, Borrow,” Duke Harald smiled thinly, “do you know what this is all about?”

“No, your grace. That is, I—” the secretary paused in some confusion.

“You’re not supposed to know, but you can guess? Well, no harm in it, provided you can keep the secret.”

Borrow nodded silently.

“And now,” Duke Harald added, “if this drug works the way it’s said to—just flash that lamp on my left arm, here—you can look forward to the first real counterstroke against the aliens in fifty years. There, that should be enough, I think. Now, take this hypo and… you know how to locate a vein?”

“Yes, your grace. These instruments are nearly self-locating.”

Despite himself—despite the fact that the ultra-fine and ultra-fast jet spray went through the skin without an actual sensation—Duke Harald felt his muscles tighten. He grew a little dizzy. Just lack of sleep and overmuch imagination, he decided; and made himself relax and smile. Taking the empty hypospray, he wrapped it loosely in a handkerchief, placed the Untidy bundle on the floor, and crushed it underfoot with grinding heels. Bending and picking up the wadded mass of cloth and broken glass and twisted metal, he tossed it in the wall incinerator chute.

“And now,” Duke Harald said, and matched the words with action, “I’ll just stretch out on this bed and wait. Thirty minutes, more or less; then things are supposed to happen.”

The half hour dragged along. Borrow, apparently on orders from Count Godfrey, waited in an easy-chair, quiet and scarcely moving. Duke Harald felt vaguely glad of his presence.

At last the necessary time had passed. Confidently, Duke Harald reached out with his mind and groped for contact with the secretary. Nothing! Not a whisper yet; only blank mental silence.

He let five minutes more go by and tried again, this time more strongly. Still nothing.

Was there, he wondered, something he had failed to learn? Some trick of the mind, some knack like—he let his thoughts drift back to boyhood in search of an apt comparison—those hours he had spent without success, trying to—

“Can you wiggle your ears, Borrow?” he asked suddenly, completing the thought aloud. Then he noticed Borrow looking at him strangely, and the apprehensive, puzzled glance touched off a more erratic impulse. Shouting with laughter—while a corner of his mind looked on in helpless wonder—he tore a pillow from beneath his head, poised it carefully; and let it fly!

Borrow leaped to his feet and fled the scene of action.

Duke Harald bellowed jesting comments after him; and fell back on the bed, choking and gasping with mirth, wiping tears from his eyes.

Tears!

But they were more appropriate than laughter, now that he came to think of it; now that the esper drug had failed. For this was surely not telepathy. Far from it—this was more like sottish drunkenness. A swift depression seized Duke Harald, and he wept in truth, rolling on the bed, burying his face in the remaining pillow.

Exhausted, he lay still at last in a dull stupor. Vaguely he became aware that others had entered the room. He recognized the voice of Master Elwyn.

“…And I tell you that the drug does work. That it has worked! But in this matter, words are—”

Words, words, words! These are but wild and whirling words my lord. Laughter began again to bubble in Duke Harald’s throat.

“But—I do not understand—he said the drug was harmless!” That was Count Godfrey. The faint, protesting voice came thinly from the distance.

“Physically harmless. That is true. The drug produces total sensitivity to thought—to any thought. And what is closer to a man than his own mind? Even his own unconsciousness, with its long forgotten memories, its tangled and forbidden wishes? Expose an untrained consciousness to that, in its entirety, and—”

And then the drug took firmer hold. Within Duke Harald’s mind there grew a feeling of relentless pressure, of conflict, of barriers giving way before an almost overwhelming onslaught. He shouted loudly with exultant laughter—and, almost in that very instant, felt himself begin to weep with all the hopeless desperation of the damned.

A noiseless roaring filled his world. The most intolerable sound that he had ever heard or dreamed of, was here increased a thousandfold; raised to a tooth-grating pitch of shrill unbearable unpleasantness. And with it—adding to it, if addition could be possible—was the bleak assurance that the horrid thing would still go on; would never cease. Never, never, never—

Never, unless he stopped it.

That single thought became the final weapon of the entity that had been, and would be once again Duke Harald. And with that final weapon he began to fight. How, or in what fashion he could never after tell. For all of that most singularly awful episode was barred to him in later days.

But fight he did. His two months’ training, scanty though it was, may well have helped. And it is possible—nay, probable—that Master Elwyn violated his Prime Rule of Privacy and reached in a helping mind. But in the end it was perhaps a certain bedrock strength, bred in the bone and inmost core of generation after generation of a warlike race that had never known surrender; this it was what served and saved him.

And so Duke Harald fought. For long without real hope, with nothing to sustain him but that ultimate refusal to admit defeat. And gradually, and slowly he began to win. Began, in some vague manner to remake old barriers and to build new ones; began to stem the howling mental tumult.

Quiet at last! The final shield was fitted into place. His thoughts moved slowly now, but only with the slowness of exhaustion. He sank parsecs-deep in slumber.

Coffee aroma, drifting through the open door, awakened him at last. His first thought was that he was hungry. Eagerly he sat up; and discovered, first that someone had removed his clothing while he slept; and, more important, that a full twelve hours had elapsed.

Swiftly he dressed. And as he did so, Duke Harald let his mind scan over what had happened. He had taken the esper drug; that much was clear. But afterwards? His memory showed a curious blank—empty of content, yet filled with a shapeless sense of horror from which his thoughts drew back. To his surprise, he found that he was shaking. He had to sit upon the bed while he regained control; and perspiration started from his body.

Well! he thought. He had taken the esper drug. But—had it worked? Uncertainly, he tried to contact other thoughts. Just for a moment he seemed to catch a vagrant whisper from outside. But he was not sure. It could have been imagination.

Driven as much by puzzled apprehension as by hunger, he trailed the scent of coffee to the lower floor. And there he found Count Godfrey, Master Elwyn, and the answer to his riddle.

“Why is it,” Master Elwyn asked, sipping coffee while Duke Harald ate, “that humans are not ordinarily vested with the esper skill?”

Duke Harald only stared at him. The question seemed to be rhetorical.

“Because,” said Master Elwyn, “of the many aberrating processes which comprise the loosely-named unconscious mind. These processes are unconscious because they are dangerous; because they threaten the integrity of reason. We all acquire barriers against them, strong defenses.

“Unfortunately, our mental screens are not selective. They act most strongly against outside thoughts. In the natural state, telepathy is very near insanity. Indeed, it has been known for centuries that some psychotics—paranoid schizophrenics in particular—are weirdly sensitive to the mental states of others. And so the mind’s protection keeps it shut within the skull.”

“And the drug?”

“Inhibits the defenses. There you have the basic reason for the training. We try to draw the fangs of the unconscious; try to stabilize the conscious. Only the integrated mind can tolerate the esper skill.”

“If that’s the reason, why the secrecy?” Count Godfrey sounded skeptical.

“How many would believe they were not strong enough? Indeed, those who are least fitted would be most convinced of their superiority. Fools rush in where saner men might hesitate. Would you have us release an instrument of mass psychosis?”

“But the rumors?” asked Duke Harald. “The so-called myths? What of them?”

“To Terrans, they are only that—myths. We of the Institute originated most of them, in a calculated program of security. No one believes them in the slightest.”

“I believed them,” said Duke Harald.

“You are not a Terran. Such social-psychological factors are, of course, conditioned by the planetary culture. You men from outer space,” admitted Master Elwyn, “have always been our gravest danger.”

There was one more point that bothered the Arkadian. He brought it into the open.

“It seems to me,” he said slowly, “that this secret, being known to us, is now no longer secret. Or do you trust us not to speak?”

“No,” said the adept, firmly. “I will be frank, your grace. This embassy is under guard. It will remain so, until you agree—as Count Godfrey and his secretary have agreed—to submit to a permanent hypnotic block against revealing what has happened. That is why I am still here.”

“I see.” From the Terran’s point of view it made, of course, an obvious final safeguard. And there could be no question of refusing. Still—

“One thing more. This treatment: will it rob me of the esper skill?”

“Esper skill? Why, you have none.”

“But—the drug?”

“Your grace,” said Master Elwyn with slow patience, “have you noticed any sign of telepathic power?”

“No,” admitted the Arkadian. And added, stubbornly, “But I haven’t really tried as yet.”

“Try now,” invited Master Elwyn. “Try to read my mind. I give you full permission—nor will I set up barriers against you.”

Long seconds ticked away and added up to minutes while Duke Harald tried.

“Is there some special method?” he asked at last. “Some trick of the mind that I should know?”

“No, your grace. There is no trick. It is no harder than to open your eyes.”

“Then,” Count Godfrey asked the puzzled question, “did the drug work, or didn’t it?”

“It worked—last night. And brought psychosis in its train. However—and I’ll try to keep the explanation simple—in overcoming that delirium, in reestablishing his defenses against his own unconscious, Duke Harald thereby nullified the action of the drug. And canceled, I am certain, any future chance of using it.”

“Very well, then.” Confronted thus with total overthrow of all his plans, Duke Harald spoke with difficulty. “Very well, install your hypnotic block—and have done!”

“I must first,” there was sympathy in Master Elwyn’s tone, “ask your permission to explore your mind. Only thus can I obtain the data necessary for sure action.”

“Permission granted,” said Duke Harald. At least, with the block in force, he would not have to talk about this episode, even to Count Godfrey. There would be no unwanted sympathy. He closed his eyes and waited; and wondered if he would feel the contact when it came.

“Is something wrong?” That was Count Godfrey’s voice. Duke Harald raised his eyes, to see a look of sheer bewilderment on Master Elwyn’s face.

“This,” said the Terran adept slowly, talking rather to himself than to the others, “is incredible! Incredible,” he repeated, looking at Duke Harald oddly. “May I ask another favor of your grace?”

“Why,” said the Arkadian, as excitement suddenly possessed him, “yes, by all means. But what has happened?”

“I would like you to delay your journey home to Arkady,” said Master Elwyn in some agitation. “I would like you to come to the Institute for thorough scientific study!”

“But why? Have you detected traces of the esper skill?”

“On the contrary.” The old man stood erect, began to pace the floor. “Not that. But—I cannot read your mind!”

The two Arkadians only stared. Not being Terrans, for a moment the full meaning of that statement—from an adept!—did not register.

“I think,” said Master Elwyn finally, “that I can guess what happened. But it will take the full resources of the esper laboratory to elucidate the details. However, here is what I think: To overcome your psychosis of last night, you had to rebuild all your mental barriers. That, I explained before. But now, it seems, you have gone further and installed new ones. For the first time in the history of the Esper Institute, a mind has been encountered which is completely screened!”

Events had been happening too fast for Duke Harald. He was still a little fuzzy-minded from exhaustion. It remained, therefore, for old Count Godfrey to seize upon the other implications of the situation.

“Completely screened?” he asked. “No one can read his mind?”

“No one,” said Master Elwyn.

“Not even an alien life form?” Count Godfrey was insistent in his probing.

“Not the ones that trouble you on Arkady,” the adept said, and glanced at him with understanding. “That much I can assure you.”

“Then,” said the old Count Godfrey, looking at Duke Harald with an eye of shining triumph, “this is success, not failure, after all! If you can make a battle plan and keep it secret from the aliens—

“Sire,” he said, and stressed the ancient title, “you have found your royal road!”