When he let Chris off at her apartment, Ganch wanted to stay. It was a wrenching to say goodnight and turn back to his own hotel. He stamped out the wish with a bleak will and bent his mind elsewhere. There was work to do.

  Dromm was nothing if not thorough. Her agents had been on New Hermes for ten years now, mostly posing as natives of unsuspicious planets like Guise and Anubis. Enough had been learned to earmark this world for conquest after Thanit, and to layout the basic military campaign.

  The Hermesians were not really naive. They had their own spies and counterspies. Customs inspection was careful. But each Dromman visitor had brought a few plausible objects with him—a personal teleset, a depilator, a sample of small nuclear-powered tools for sale—nothing to cause remark; and those objects had stayed behind, in care of a supposed immigrant from Kwan-Yin who lived in Arkinshaw. This man had refashioned them into as efficient a set of machinery for breaking and entering as existed anywhere in the known Galaxy.

  Ganch was quite sure Wayland had a tail on him. It was an elementary precaution. But a Field Intelligence officer of Dromm had ways to shake a tail off without its appearing more than accidental. Ganch went out the following afternoon, having notified Wayland that he did not need a guide: he only wanted to stroll around and look at things for himself. After wandering a bit, he went into a pleasure house. It was a holiday, Discovery Day, and Arkinshaw swarmed with a merry crowd; in the jam-packed house, Ganch slipped quietly into a washroom cubicle.

  His shadows would most likely watch all exits; and they wouldn’t be surprised if he stayed inside for many hours. The hetaerae of New Hermes were famous.

  Alone, Ganch slipped out of his uniform and stuffed it down the rubbish disintegrator. Beneath it he wore the loose blue coat and trousers of a Kwan-Yin colonist. A life-mask over his head, a complete alteration of posture and gait…it was another man who stepped into the hall and sauntered out the main door as if his amusements were completed. He went quite openly to Fraybiner’s house; what was more natural than that some home-planet relative of Tao Chung should pay a call?

  When they were alone, Fraybiner let out a long breath. “By the Principle, it’s good to be with a man again!” he said. “If you knew how sick I am of these chattering decadents—”

  “Enough!” snapped Ganch. “I am here on business. Operation Lift.”

  Fraybiner’s surgically slanted and darkened eyes widened. “So it’s finally coming off?” he murmured. “I was beginning to wonder.”

  “If I get away with it,” said Ganch grimly. “Even if I don’t, it doesn’t matter. Exact knowledge of the enemy’s strength will be valuable, but we have enough information already to launch the war.”

  Fraybiner began operating concealed studs. A false wall slid aside to reveal a large safe, on which he got to work. “How will you take it home?” he asked. “When they find their files looted, they won’t let anyone leave the planet without a thorough search.”

  Ganch didn’t reply; Fraybiner had no business knowing. Actually, the files were going to be destroyed, once read, and their contents go home in Ganch’s eidetic memory. But that versatile ethnographer did not plan to leave for some weeks yet: no use causing unnecessary suspicion. When he finally did—a surprise attack on all the Hermesian bases would immobilize them at one swoop.

  He smiled to himself. Even knowing they were to be attacked, their whole planet fully alerted, the Hermesians were finished. It was well-established that their fleet had less than half the strength of Dromm’s, and not a single Supernova-class dreadnaught. Ganch’s information would be extremely helpful, but it was by no means vital.

  Except, of course, to Ganch Z-17837-JX-39. But death was a threat he treated with the contempt it deserved.

  Fraybiner had gotten the safe open, and a dull metal gleam of instruments and weapons lay before their gaze. Ganch inspected each item carefully while the other jittered with impatience. Finally he donned the flying combat armor and hung the implements at its belt. By that time, the sun was down and the stars out.

  Chris had said the Naval HQ building was deserted at night except for its guards. Previous spies had learned where these were posted. “Very well,” said Ganch. “I’m on my way. I won’t see you again, and advise you to move elsewhere soon. If the natives turn out to be stubborn, we’ll have to destroy this city.”

  Fraybiner nodded, and activated the ceiling door. Ganch went up on his gravity beams and out into the sky. The city was a jeweled spiderweb beneath him, and fireworks burst with great soft explosions of color. His outfit was a nonreflecting dull black, and there was only a whisper of air to betray his flight.

  The HQ building, broad and low, rested on a greensward several kilometers from Arkinshaw. Ganch approached its slumbering dark mass, carefully, taking his time. A bare meter’s advance, an instrument reading…yes, they had a radio-alarm field set up. He neutralized it with his heterodyning unit, flew another cautious meter, stopped to readjust the neutralization. The moon was down, but he wished the stars weren’t so bright.

  It was past midnight when he lay in the shrubbery surrounding a rear entrance. A pair of sentries, armed and helmeted, tramped almost by his nose, crossing paths in front of the door. He waited, learning the pattern of their march.

  When his tactics were fully planned, he rose as one marine came by and let the fellow have a sonic stun-beam. Too low-powered to trip an alarm, it was close-range and to the base of the neck. Ganch caught the body as it fell, let it down, and picked up the same measured tread.

  He felt no conscious tension as he neared the other man, though a sharp glance through darkness would end the ruse, but his muscles gathered themselves. He was almost abreast of the Hermesian when he saw the figure recoil in alarm. His stunner went off again. It was a bad shot; the sentry lurched but retained a wavering consciousness. Ganch sprang on him, one tigerish bound, a squeezed trigger, and he lowered the marine as gently as a woman might her lover.

  For a moment he stood looking down on the slack face. A youngster, hardly out of his teens, there was something strangely innocent about him as he slept. About this whole world. They were too kind here, they didn’t belong in a universe of wolves.

  He had no doubt they would fight bravely and skillfully. Dromm would have to pay for her conquest. But the age of heroes was past. War was not an art, it was a science, and a set of giant computers coldly chewing an involved symbolism told ships and men what to do. Given equal courage and equally intelligent leadership, it was merely a heartless arithmetic that the numerically superior fleet would win.

  No time to lose! He spun on his heel and crouched over the door. His instruments traced out its circuits, a diamond drill bit into plastic, a wire shorted a current…the door opened for him and he went into a hollow darkness of corridors.

  Lightly, even in the clumsy armor, he made his way toward the main file room. Once he stopped, his instruments sensed a black-light barrier and it took him a quarter of an hour to neutralize it. But then he was in among the cabinets.

  They were not locked, and his thin flash beam picked out the categories held in each drawer. Swiftly, then, he took the spools relating to ships, bases, armament, disposition…he ignored the codes, which would be changed anyway when the burglary was discovered. The entire set went into one small pouch such as the men of Kwan-Yin carried, and he had a microreader at the hotel.

  The lights went on.

  Before his eyes had adjusted to that sudden blaze, before he was consciously aware of action, Ganch’s drilled reflexes had gone to work. His faceplate clashed down, gauntlets snapped shut around his hands, and a Mark IV blaster was at his shoulder even as he whirled to meet the intruders.

  There were a score of them, and their gay holiday attire was somehow nightmarish behind the weapons they carried. Wayland was in the lead, harshness on his face, and Christabel at his back. The rest Ganch did not recognize, they must be naval officers but—He crouched, covering them, a robot figure cased in a centimeter of imperviousness.

  “So.” Wayland spoke it quietly, a flat tone across the enormous silence. “I wondered—Ganch, I suppose.”

  The Dromman did not answer.

  There was a thin fine singing as his helmet absorbed the stun beam Chris was aiming at it.

  “When my men reported you had been ten hours in the joyhouse, I thought it best to check up: first your quarters and then—” Wayland paused. “I didn’t think you’d penetrate this far. But it could only be you, Ganch, so you may as well surrender.”

  The spy shook his head, futile gesture inside that metal box he wore. “No. It is you who are trapped,” he answered steadily. “I can blast you all before your beams work through my armor…Don’t move!”

  “You wouldn’t escape,” said Wayland. “The fight would trip alarms bringing the whole Fort Canfield garrison down on you.” Sweat beaded his forehead. Perhaps he thought of his niece and the gun which could make her a blackened husk; but his own small-bore flamer held firm.

  “This means war,” said Chris. “We’ve wondered about Dromm for a long time. Now we know.” Tears glimmered in her eyes. “And it’s so senseless!”

  Ganch laughed without much humor. “Impasse,” he said. “I can kill all of you, but that would bring my own death. Be sure, though, that the failure of my mission will make little difference.”

  Wayland stood brooding for a while. “You’re congenitally unafraid to die,” he said at last. “The rest of us prefer to live, but will die if we must. So any decision must be made with a view to planetary advantage.”

  Ganch’s heart sprang within his ribs. He had lost, unless—

  He still had an even chance.

  “You’re a race of gamblers,” he said. “Will you gamble now?”

  “Not with our planet,” said Chris.

  “Let me finish! I propose we toss a coin, shake dice, whatever you like that distributes the probabilities evenly. If I win, I go free with what I’ve taken here—you furnish me safe-conduct and transportation home. You’ll still have the knowledge that Dromm is going to attack, and some time to prepare. If you win, I surrender and cooperate with you. I have valuable information, and you can drug me to make sure I don’t lie.”

  “No!” shouted one of the officers.

  “Wait. Let me think…I have to make an estimate.” Wayland lowered his gun and stood with half-shut eyes. He looked as he had down in the traders’ hall, and Ganch, remembered uneasily that Wayland was a gambling analyst.

  But there was little to lose. If he won, he went home with his booty; if he lost—he knew how to will his heart to stop beating.

  Wayland looked up. There was a fever-gleam in his eyes. “Yes,” he said.

  The others did not question him. They must be used to following a Tipster’s advice blindly. But one of them asked how Ganch could be trusted. “I’ll lay down my blaster when you produce the selection device,” said the Dromman. “All the worlds know you do not cheat.”

  Chris reached into her pouched belt and drew out a deck of cards. Wordlessly, she shuffled them and gave them to her uncle. The spy put his gun on the floor. He half expected the others to rush him, but they stood where they were.

  Wayland’s hands shook as he cut the deck. He smiled crookedly. “One-eyed jack,” he whispered. “Hard to beat.”

  He shuffled the cards again and held them out to Ganch. The armored fingers were clumsy, but they opened the deck.

  It was the king of spades.

  Stars blazed in a raw naked blackness. The engines which had eaten light-years were pulsing now on primary drive, gravities, accelerating toward the red sun which lay three astronomical units ahead.

  Ganch thought that the space distortions of the drive beams were lighting the fleet up like a nova for the Hermesian detectors. But you couldn’t fight a battle at trans-light speeds, and their present objective was to seek the enemy out and destroy him.

  Overcommandant wan Halsker peered into the viewscreens of the dreadnaught. There was something avid in his long gaunt face, but he spoke levelly: “I find it hard to believe. They actually gave you a speedster and let you go.”

  “I expected treachery myself, sir,” answered Ganch deferentially. Despite promotion, he was still only the chief intelligence officer attached to Task Force One. “Surely, with their whole civilization at stake, any rational people would have—But their mores are unique. They always pay their gambling debts.”

  It was very quiet, down here in the bowels of the Supernova ship. A ring of technicians sat before their instruments, watching the dials unblinkingly. Wan Halsker’s eyes never left the simulacrum of space in his screens, though all he saw was stars. There was too much emptiness around to show the 500 ships of his command, spread in careful formation through some billions of cubic kilometers.

  A light glowed, and a technician said dully: “Contact made. Turolin engaging estimated five Meteor-class enemy vessels.”

  Wan Halsker allowed himself a snort. “Insects! Don’t break formation; let the Turolin swat them as she proceeds.”

  Ganch sat waiting, rehearsing in his mind the principles of modern warfare. The gravity drive had radically changed them in the last few centuries. A forward vector could be killed almost instantaneously, a new direction taken as fast, while internal pseudograv fields compensated for accelerations which would otherwise have crumpled a man. A fight in space was not unlike one in air, with this difference: that the velocities used were too high, the distances too great, the units involved too many, for a human brain to grasp. It had to be done by machine.

  Subspace quivered with coded messages, the ships’ own electronic minds transmitting information back to the prime computers on Dromm—the computers which laid out not only the overall strategy, but the tactics of every major engagement. A man could not follow that esoteric mathematics, he could only obey the monster he had built.

  No change of orders came, a few torpedo ships were unimportant, and Task Force One continued.

  Astran was a clinker, an airless valueless planet of a waning red dwarf star, but it housed a key base of the Hermesian Navy. With Astran reduced, wan Halsker’s command could safely go on to rendezvous with six other fleets that had been taking care of their own assignments; the whole group would then continue to New Hermes herself, and just let the enemy dare try to stop them!

  Such, in broad outline, was the plan; but only a hundred computers, each filling a large building, could handle all the details of strategy, tactics, and logistics.

  Ganch had an uneasy feeling of being a very small cog in a very large machine. He didn’t matter; the commandant didn’t; the ship, the fleet, the gray mass of commoners didn’t; only the Cadre, and above them the almighty State, had a real existence.

  The Hermesians would need a lot of taming before they learned to think that way.

  Now fire was exploding out in space, great guns cutting loose as the outnumbered force sought the invaders. Ganch felt a shuddering when the Supernova’s own armament spoke. The ship’s computer, her brain, flashed and chattered, the enormous vessel leaped on her gravity beams, ducking, dodging, spouting flame and hot metal. Stars spun on the screen in a lunatic dance. Ten thousand men aboard the ship had suddenly become robots feeding her guns.

  “Compartment Seven hit…sealed off.”

  “Hit made on enemy Star-class, damage looks light.”

  “Number Forty-two gun out of action. Residual radioactivity…compartment sealed off.”

  Men died, scorched and burned, air sucked from their lungs as the armored walls peeled away, listening to the clack of radiation counters as leaden bulkheads locked them away like lepers. The Supernova trembled with each hit. Ganch heard steel shriek not far away and braced his body for death.

  Wan Halsker sat impassively, hands folded on his lap, watching the screens and the dials. There was nothing he could do; the ship fought herself, men were too slow. But he nodded after a while, a dark satisfaction in his eyes.

  “We’re sustaining damage,” he said, “but no more than expected.” He stared at a slim small crescent in the screen. “There’s the planet. We’re working in…we’ll be in bombardment range soon.”

  The ships’ individual computers made their decisions on the basis of information received; but they were constantly sending a digest of the facts back to their electronic masters on Dromm. So far no tactical change had been ordered, but—

  Ganch frowned at the visual tank which gave a crude approximation of the reality ramping around him. The little red specks were his own ships, the green ones such of the enemy as had been spotted. It seemed to him that too many red lights had stopped twinkling, and that the Hermesian fireflies were driving a wedge into the formation. But there was nothing he could do.

  A bell clanged. Change of orders! Turolin to withdraw three megakilometers toward Polaris, Colfin to swing around toward enemy Constellation Number Four, Hardes to—Watching the tank in a hypnotized way, Ganch decided vaguely it must be some attempt at a flanking movement. But there was a Hermesian squadron out there!

  Well…

  The battle snarled its way across vacuum. It was many hours before the Dromman computers gave up and flashed the command: Break contact, retreat in formation to Neering Base.

  They had been outmaneuvered. Incredibly, New Hermes’ machines had outthought Dromm’s and the battle was lost.

  Wayland entered the mapping room with a jaunty step that belied the haggardness in his face. Christabel Hesty looked up from her task of directing the integrators and cried aloud: “Will! I didn’t expect you back so soon!”

  “I thumbed a ride home with a courier ship,” said Wayland. “Three months’ leave. By that time the war will be over, so—” He sat down on her desk, swinging his short legs, and got out an old and incredibly foul pipe. “I’m just as glad, to tell the truth. Planetarism is all right in its place, but war’s an ugly business.”