“Possibly,” Locke said.

  “That is a slur directed at me, sir.” Maddox pointed to the fallen saber. “Perhaps I will now demand satisfaction from you.”

  Locke shook his head. “I’m not Earl Dunbar. Dueling is for fools.”

  “A second slur,” Maddox said with utmost calm, “as I am a duelist.”

  Locke laughed bleakly. “I have no intention of crossing swords with you. I believe you wanted to kill Dunbar.”

  “I have said as much.”

  “Whatever you suspect about us regarding your family is false,” Locke said. “Your suspicions—Dunbar acted alone in this.”

  “Alone in what fashion?” asked Maddox.

  “Making contact with Earth natives,” Locke said.

  “How can you know this?”

  Locked turned to Duke Frazier. “Did you have any truck with Earth elements while we were there? I mean other than with the Star Watch people.”

  “I did,” Frazier said.

  Maddox turned to him with his eyes a-glitter.

  “I ate at several restaurants in Geneva and Paris,” Frazier said. “There, I tipped a waiter, a busboy and several cocktail waitresses.”

  “And?” said Maddox.

  “That was the extent of my interactions with your filthy Earthlings,” Frazier said. “You killed a good man. I resent that.”

  “You’re mistaken,” Maddox said. “Dunbar was an evil man. He paid criminals to murder my family.”

  “As I noted before,” Frazier said, “you lack both grace and courtesy. You fought and won. A true gentleman would now demonstrate class.”

  A harsh smile stretched the captain’s lips. “I’ve only made my first move in the matter. A killer too cowardly to do his own dirty work is dead. I still want to know how you reps gained access to criminal elements on Earth.”

  “I had nothing to do with any of that,” Frazier said.

  “Perhaps, perhaps not,” Maddox said.

  “If you want me to accuse you of calling me a liar, you have a long wait in store. I shall not forget this, Captain.”

  “I expect not,” Maddox said.

  “When do we leave for the surface?” Frazier asked.

  “When I get the information I need,” Maddox said.

  “I have none to give you,” said Frazier.

  Maddox turned to Locke.

  “I know nothing about Dunbar’s dealings on Earth,” Locke said.

  Maddox turned away from both men as he dropped the bloodied saber, which clattered onto the deck. He didn’t look at Riker, Ludendorff or the Marine lieutenant. Instead, Maddox closed his eyes. His intuitive sense seemed silent about Frazier or Locke. The captain considered that. Would Dunbar have chosen his accomplices in crime as his second and third in the duel? A normal person would do so. Had Earl Dunbar been normal? Not in the accepted Earth sense. Dunbar had been a quintessential Crowder native. The man had been a climber, ambitious for greater rank. He would have been cunning.

  As Maddox opened his eyes, he turned back to Frazier and Locke. “I believe both of you. Thus, I shall no longer detain you aboard Victory. I’ll call the landing field at Bristol and tell them you’ll be arriving via shuttle.”

  “Thank you,” Locke said. “But I do not wish to set foot on the planet. I desire to head to the Seahorse, one of the orbital starships.”

  “That can be arranged,” Maddox said.

  “Bristol?” said Frazier. “I’m not headed there either. I believe…do you mind if I go to the Seahorse with you, old boy?”

  “I would consider it an honor,” Locke said.

  “I’d like to place a call to my people first,” Frazier said. “Is that possible, Captain?”

  “Of course,” Maddox said. “The other representatives will be headed to Bristol. I shall be joining them.”

  Frazier raised his eyebrows before nodding.

  Locke looked as if he wished to say something more, but perhaps decided against it and said nothing instead.

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” Maddox said. “Lieutenant, if you will escort them to their rooms, they can pick up their belongings. Then, escort them to Hangar Bay Two.”

  “Yes, sir,” the lieutenant said.

  The Marines and surviving Crowder reps left the gymnasium, with the corpse of Earl Dunbar yet on the deck.

  “Captain,” Ludendorff said. “Do you mind an observation?”

  Maddox shook his head.

  “Duke Frazier is plotting your death. Clearly, you told him you would be going down to Bristol for a reason. He’ll likely place a call or signal in some way that you’re coming down to the surface.”

  “I concur with the analysis,” Galyan said. “I have been running a personality profile on each of them. While I doubt either had a hand on what happened on Earth, you have badly frightened them by killing Earl Dunbar the way you did. They wish you dead, Frazier more than Locke.”

  “And I would bet they desire that the other reps die along with you,” Ludendorff added. “These are Crowder people after all. The representatives likely represent various and competing factions among them. The chance to kill other important personages they hate will not be missed.”

  “I agree with that as well,” Galyan said.

  “The obvious way to achieve their end is to have a missile take out the shuttle on its way down, killing their Crowder enemies and you with one stone,” Ludendorff said.

  Maddox was listening to them but looking at the corpse.

  “I see,” Ludendorff said. “You already know all that. And given your silence, I suspect you’re counting on these actions. Will you really allow the other reps to board the shuttle with you?”

  “Of course,” Maddox said.

  “Once they die, you’ll lose the means to discovering how they contacted the criminal Earth elements,” Ludendorff said.

  “I find that I no longer care,” Maddox said.

  “The Lord High Admiral might still care,” Ludendorff said.

  “True,” Maddox said.

  “But you don’t care even then?” asked Ludendorff. “Killing all of them—almost all—to ensure you kill the guilty party is everything to you in this?”

  Maddox looked up. Even after all this time, the professor didn’t fully understand him. Was that the new Balron training in him noticing? Maddox might have shrugged. Instead, he explained:

  “The saucer exploded prematurely, remember? Combined with Galyan’s holoimage interruption, it led us to conclude an outer, hidden party did it. I’ve begun to wonder if this hidden party isn’t the key to the criminal Earth linkage. There was a squinting, blinking man instructing the criminals. I recall the Merovingian telling me about the squinter.”

  “Commander Ran Doo?” said Ludendorff. “You think he was the link to the Earth criminals?”

  “Probably not him but his cousin,” Maddox said. “They’re the key, not the Crowder reps. I don’t think I’m going to learn anything more from reps—in fact, I’ve learned nothing from them. I’m starting to believe that’s unusual.”

  “You have concluded this since you slew Earl Dunbar?” asked Galyan.

  Maddox pointed an index finger at Galyan as he snapped his fingers.

  “This is preposterous, then,” Ludendorff said. “You’re still going to let the other reps die aboard the shuttle?”

  Maddox studied Ludendorff. “You have my thanks, Professor.”

  “For what?”

  “Helping me to clarify my thinking. Frazier and Locke are more dangerous than the other Crowder reps. In truth, the others are probably window dressing, and are thus superfluous, and—they will not accompany me in the shuttle. We’ll find a different way to return them to Balder. Frazier and Locke are the dangerous ones. I wonder if that was why Dunbar chose them as his second and third.”

  Ludendorff shook his head ruefully.

  “Now what is wrong, Professor?” Galyan asked.

  “Nothing at all, my boy. I’m simply amazed yet again at how devious, clever and fast-thinking our captain really is. There was a reason he fit so well into Crowder society.”

  “Never mind that,” Maddox said. “I think…I think it’s time to set the stage for phase two of our operation.”

  “What do you have in mind?” Galyan asked.

  Maddox nodded as he began to speak, giving each of them their next assignment.

  -16-

  From low orbit over Balder, Grutch delicately maneuvered his small, camouflaged teardrop-shaped vessel. He did this in order to align his spy beam onto the shuttle entering the higher planetary atmosphere.

  This was a monstrous planet: dry, inordinately windy and much hotter than Grutch would care to feel. Why would humans colonize such a world? Why would Captain Maddox bother to land down there?

  The captain struck him as an unusual human, much different from Star Watch norms. He wasn’t sure why his sponsors hated the man so much. Then again, he didn’t need to know. The bars of tellurium were the thing. With the hoard of bars waiting for him for the delivery of Captain Maddox—

  Grutch sighed.

  He’d contemplated a quick grab job against Maddox. The Adok starship and the questing holoimage gave him pause, however. The starship wasn’t what it appeared to be. Meaning, there was more to the vessel than met the eyeball.

  While a Morag burned with greed, he had a similar nature to the Earth jackal that prowled around the kills on the savannas of Africa. A Morag loved his own skin above anything in existence. He was cautious and absolutely did not understand courage in the sense of putting himself in danger for ideals. That was the grossest folly in a Morag’s view. Life was short. Dying was forever. Thus, a Morag guarded his life with utmost zeal and deliberation. What made the Morag dangerous was his guile and technological brilliance, and the greed for gain that drove him to devise and counter-devise the sneakiest of schemes.

  Thus, Grutch observed the shuttle as it began to buckle against the hurricane presently blowing in this part of the planet.

  A tentacle tapped. An eyestalk bent, and an orb studied a screen. Grutch viewed the empty cockpit and the nearly empty shuttle.

  What was the meaning of this? According to his eavesdropping earlier, the shuttle should be taking the majority of the Crowder representatives down toward Bristol, a subterranean settlement at the north pole. But there were no humans aboard the shuttle—correction, Grutch saw two humans: one tall and lean and the other stoop-shouldered and complaining bitterly about—

  A tentacle twisted a holographic control as Grutch’s gelatinous bulk moved closer to a speaker unit. His spy beam had penetrated the shuttle. If he could just gain audio—

  Ah-ha, there it was. Grutch listened attentively as Sergeant Riker complained about the riskiness of the operation. Did Captain Maddox not realize that missiles would likely spear directly at them from the surface?

  “I’m waiting for exactly that,” Maddox said.

  In the control chamber of his teardrop-shaped vessel, three of Grutch’s eyestalks shot straight up in astonishment. What was Maddox doing? The madman was risking his person?

  No, no, that was awful. Maddox was worth many bars of tellurium to him, but only alive, not dead.

  Tentacles shot out and eyestalks bent to new screens. Grutch watched for Crowder-launched missiles, ready to cause malfunctions so they wouldn’t kill his prospective captive.

  “Don’t you die on me, you fool,” Grutch said.

  “Why the charade, sir?” asked Riker from within the shuttle. “I don’t understand your thinking.”

  “Me neither,” Grutch said in his craft.

  “I want our adversaries to commit themselves,” Maddox said. “By their commitment, I’ll learn more about them. That should make them easier to understand. Duke Frazier in particular interests me.”

  Grutch thought about that. It wasn’t bad logic, except for the personal danger. These humans were courageous buffoons. How had they ever reached their present technological state? It would seem they would have killed themselves off by now.

  “Sir,” Riker said. “Are those missile blooms?”

  High above the shuttle in its low Balder orbit, in his teardrop-shaped vessel, Grutch zeroed in on three missile launches. All of them were from north pole launch sites.

  “Better get ready,” Maddox told Riker.

  Grutch used his four eyestalks to watch four separate screens. Three of the eyestalks watched three different missiles coming up from three different directions. The last eye watched the shuttle.

  “We’re too high still to deploy,” Riker complained. “The flitter isn’t made for this altitude.”

  “None of that, Sergeant,” Maddox said. “We make do with what we have. Now, buckle in and be ready for it.”

  Riker grumbled under his breath even as he clambered aboard a second vehicle, one hidden in the shuttle’s cargo bay.

  Grutch made three separate estimates for the three different missiles. Soon, he had probabilities for each: missile one had a ninety-seven percent chance of destroying the shuttle, missile two had a ninety-five percent chance and missile three ninety-two percent.

  “This is gross injustice,” Grutch complained.

  Tentacles tapped, sending secret beams from the teardrop-shaped ship to two of the missiles. Those beams delicately caused minute damage here and there. That changed the hit probabilities on each missile to seventy-four and sixty-nine percent respectively.

  “Work with that, you cretin,” Grutch said to an unhearing Maddox.

  Aboard the shuttle, Maddox asked Riker, “Are you ready?”

  “No,” Riker complained. “But you’re not going to let that stop you.”

  From his supremely hidden craft in low orbit, Grutch watched spellbound with his remaining eye. Generators inside the shuttle projected—holoimages. The shuttle projected holoimages and other sensor distortions.

  Grutch adjusted his instruments and saw what actually transpired.

  A flitter, a two-seater with a dome, ejected from the shuttle. The flitter dropped like a rock, gaining separation from the shuttle. It would appear a holographic disguise hid the flitter from any teleoptics and possibly from certain other kinds of sensors.

  Did Maddox think he could survive the shuttle’s detonation in that little craft?

  Grutch would have shaken a head if he’d possessed one. Instead, he made a whistling sound, which showed his disgust at such mad courage. Maddox might kill himself this way, and then he, Grutch, would be out all those beautiful bars of tellurium.

  Sometimes, the universe could be most unfair.

  Missile number three zoomed upward, gaining yet more speed.

  As Grutch watched, he came to an emergency decision. Maddox must survive no matter what. Until he had handed the living captain to his sponsors, he wanted Maddox alive and well.

  Tap tap, tap tap. Two tentacles tapped two different holographic panels.

  In the air, two missiles malfunctioned, detonating prematurely.

  The third missile continued on its course and slammed against the shuttle, exploding with ship-destroying violence.

  All the while, the little flitter with the dome protection continued to plunge down to the surface many kilometers away.

  Grutch realized he could do no more without jeopardizing his hidden location and his precious life. If he did too much, the most clever of his potential enemies would divine his existence and possibly his whereabouts. That would not do at all.

  Thus, Grutch maintained his low orbital position, watching as many angles as he could and hoping the captain and his complaining sergeant had the wit or skill to survive the Crowder missile attack.

  -17-

  Captain Maddox sat behind the controls of a two-man flitter—a small aerial machine with a clear bubble canopy. He battled the buffeting winds of this hurricane planet, trying to keep the flitter intact and them alive. A white-faced Sergeant Riker sat beside him, gripping his armrests with manic strength.

  They’d dropped for many kilometers, escaping before the shuttle bringing them down had vanished in the detonating explosion of a missile’s non-nuclear warhead.

  It was possible Sergeant Riker bit back a groan as the flitter careened toward a jagged mountain peak. Their small aerial vehicle pitched to one side, pitched the other way as wind howled around it and then the flitter jerked upward due to a blast of air. The worst was a moment when the wind attempted to flip the air-vehicle upside down.

  “We’re going to die!” Riker shouted. “This was insane. Let’s go back to the starship. Have Keith come down at get us.”

  “Steady on,” Maddox said, never taking his eyes off the controls. He adjusted with catlike reflexes and anticipated many of the crosscurrents, but it wasn’t proving good enough.

  “Look out,” Riker shouted, crouching low and turning his head from the sight.

  The mountain peak loomed before them, a thing of jagged ugly rocks and boulders.

  Once again, Maddox corrected, lifting the flitter’s nose, but too little and too late. There was a horrible screech from underneath, and the entire vehicle shuddered.

  Riker jerked around in his seat, looking back. “The rocks must have ripped open the bottom,” he shouted. “We’re doomed.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Sergeant. The flitter has a double-thick armored under-plate. It sustained a scratch, nothing more.”

  Riker whipped around to stare at Maddox. “Ridiculous? You think I’m being ridiculous? This is a crazy planet, never meant for air travel, never mind people.”

  “Nonsense,” Maddox said, as he nosed down. “I have the hang of it now.”

  Riker clutched the armrests again, gritting his teeth and watching in horror.

  More jagged boulders appeared before them. The flitter looked as if it would crash against them, as the air-vehicle sledded a bare few meters above a steep slope.

  Maddox swerved, and the flitter missed the boulders by centimeters.

  Above them, black storm clouds billowed and lightning had begun to flash. The wind increased immediately as it began shrieking around them.

  Maddox shook his head but otherwise seemed unconcerned.

  “What’s the point of all this?” Riker shouted.