He left the room, much to everyone's surprise, and went outside to roam around the garden. He spent two hours alone out there, wandering the paths and occasionally bending over to examine something under the dim light of Ansegria's only moon. He spent a lot of time around the site where the body had been discovered, turning up rocks and walking around in circles. Occasionally people inside the house would stare out at him through the windows, wondering what he expected to find, but they preferred not to know. They let him wander by himself.

  That suited Jules just perfectly, for what he was hoping to find would not be in the garden at all.

  Finally, when the hour was getting quite late, Jules decided to return to the castle. Most of the people, he discovered, had already retired for the evening; though they had done very little today compared to the other days, the psychological toll the murder had taken on all of them was enormous. Finding almost no one to talk to, Jules decided to head up to his own room as well.

  As Jules turned into the hallway that led to his own room, he noticed that the light was out, leaving the entire corridor in pitch blackness. The instant that fact registered in his mind, he leaped into action-literally. Pushing off with his powerful leg muscles, he dived forward and to his right, curling himself into a tight ball and rolling until he bumped into the wall on that side.

  His action was well taken. Even as he jumped, the low buzzing sound of a stun-gun carried through the air. Its beam passed just centimeters to the side of where he was, although he had no way of knowing just how close it came. All he had known was that, standing in the light in front of a darkened area, he made the perfect target silhouette for anyone wanting to shoot at him, and he had taken the appropriate action to neutralize that.

  Now that he was in motion he stood a much better chance of surviving. The odds against him would be determined by the skill and reflexes of his attacker-unknown factors, but Jules was not too worried. His DesPlainian reflexes were sure to be better than those of a normal human. The movement of his roll against the wall brought him to his feet in a low crouch. Without pausing as much as a split second, he leaped again-mostly forward this time and only slightly to his left. He was pretty certain he knew where his attacker would be positioned-at the very back of the darkened corridor, where he could see Jules's silhouette approaching all the time... and where Jules would not be able to see him. By constantly moving toward his enemy, Jules would be narrowing the distance between them as well as shortening the man's reaction time. All he had to do was avoid making his leaps in any consistent pattern and he should be all right.

  Again, the buzzing sound of the stunner beam was heard, at shorter and shorter intervals. A stun-gun could not be set on continuous fire as could a blaster, and needed a fraction of a second between bursts for it to recharge. That was what Jules was counting on most; if his opponent had been using a blaster, Jules would have had to retreat, since he couldn't have reached his quarry before the deadly beam sliced a hole through his DesPlainian body.

  Using a series of leap, roll, leap again motions, Jules made his way down the blacked out corridor toward his foe. The buzzing of the stunner took on an almost desperate whine as the traitor fired repeatedly to rid himself of this upstart who was unexpectedly fast. Jules, too, was a little surprised at how close together the shots were; his opponent must have lightning quick reflexes himself, and that was a sobering thought. He hadn't supposed any of the other members of the Progress were quite that good.

  But there was no time to ponder that; all he could do was file it in his memory for future use. At present, he was too busy with the problem of staying alive.

  He knew the length of the hallway and could estimate his leaps pretty well. In three more jumps he was near the end, and should be within range of his opponent. They were both theoretically at a disadvantage now, since both were in equal darkness and neither could see the other's silhouette. Jules flailed out in the most likely direction where his antagonist would be, expecting the other's blows to be just as uncertain.

  Instead, a powerful fist came flying through the air at him, catching him squarely under the jaw. Had he really been, as he claimed, from the mythical planet Julea with its standard one-gee gravity, the blow would undoubtedly have knocked him unconscious and possibly broken his jaw as well. But Jules was from DesPlaines, with a gravity three times Earth's normal, and his family had lived on that tough, rockbound world for over four centuries. They had adapted to life under such harsh conditions; their bones were heavier, their muscles tighter, their reflexes faster than those of people from more reasonable planets. Added to that heritage was Jules's circus training and superb physical conditioning. He and his sister were, to quote the Head of the Service, "the two most capable people alive."

  Consequently, the blow was not as disabling as it was intended to be. Jules was caught by surprise at its accuracy and knocked downward, but he possessed both the mental and physical agility to roll with the punch. As he fell backward, he brought one foot up and delivered a vicious blow to the spot where his enemy's ribcage would have to be.

  He could feel the blow connect solidly, could feel his foot driving into the other man's chest. That kick should have shattered the opponent's ribs, possibly puncturing the heart or a lung. At the very least, it should have doubled his antagonist over with pain and left him gasping for breath, helpless against any further action Jules cared to take.

  It did none of those things. Instead, all it did was push him backwards and keep him slightly off balance for a couple of seconds.

  They were a crucial couple of seconds, though, for Jules had to regain his own balance; had the blow not been delivered the SOTE agent would have been an open target for the other man's stun-gun. As it was, Jules's head was ringing from the force of the traitor's punch. He fell, rolled, and staggered to his feet slower than he optimally would have. The strength of the other's blow and the ineffectiveness of his own stunned him.

  His only hope lay in keeping himself in motion, keeping his superbody pounding out an attack against this mysterious assailant. Don't give him time to get off a shot was the rule of the moment; at such short range the man could hardly miss.

  Fortunately, the hallway was not too wide. Jules knew the man would have moved slightly out of his previous position, but he wouldn't have been able to move far if he wanted to keep Jules between himself and the light at the other end of the corridor. Jules lunged at a spot where he guessed the man would be, and felt his own hand connect solidly with the other's flesh. At the same time, though, he felt a strong chopping blow to his own side. The traitor seemed to know exactly where to aim, whereas Jules was literally stabbing in the dark.

  Suddenly the air was filled with the sound of a familiar voice calling, "Rube!" The abbreviated circus cry of danger had survived to this present day, and could be coming from only one other person on this entire planet-his sister, Yvette. Even as the pain in his side made him double over, Jules felt a slight cheering in his soul. Together, the two DesPlainians made a team that no one in the Universe could stop.

  Yvette, even though her eyes were not accustomed to the darkness, could tell where the fighting was by the sounds of the action. Like a fury on wheels, she waded into the battle with both hands whirling like the vanes of a windmill. She had charged straight into combat without having to dodge stunner beams, and so hers was a much more frontal assault. As fast as she moved, though, the traitor seemed to know, despite the darkness, where she was going to swing and was able to block each blow with the appropriate countermeasure.

  Although none of Yvette's punches landed solidly, they did keep the enemy busy fending them off. Meanwhile, Jules had recovered his breath from the blow to his ribs and was beginning to enter the fray again on his own. He had to be careful in the darkness not to hit his sister instead of their common enemy; but even so, they bad worked together as a team for so long that their reactions and their timing were almost instinctive. As Yvette's hand would be drawing back to deliver another blow, Jules's fist would be striking out at their opponent; and vice versa, of course. The two d'Alemberts had worked for years in a circus act where their very lives depended on the precise timing of their cooperation, and such training was hard to lose.

  No mortal man could ever have survived such an onslaught of power and fury-yet, the traitor was at least able to hold his own in this ferocious battle. While he was no longer able to assume the offensive, he could still manage to block every single one of their blows with speed of reflex that rivaled-or even surpassed-their own.

  Finally, though, the antagonist realized how futile this fighting was. His whole strategy had been to do this deed quickly and then get away, before anyone could discover him. The trio of fighters could now well be deadlocked for another five minutes, the way this battle was going-by which time, other people were bound to come along and discover him. He dared not let his anonymity be stripped from him, even at the cost of letting these two people live.

  Thus, with one gargantuan effort, he reached through the defenses of the two d'Alemberts and grabbed each of them by the front of their shirts. Before even their superfast reflexes could react, he had picked them both up bodily and flung them against the corridor's left-hand wall. Both agents bad the wind knocked out of them as they bounced against the wall and each other and rebounded onto the floor. They recovered their senses and looked around, but it was too late. They could hear the sound of the traitor's footsteps racing down the hallway, at a speed equal to at least anything they could do. They caught a quick glimpse of a male figure silhouetted against the light at the far end of the corridor, and then that vanished as their foe turned the corner and fled into other sections of the castle. By the time they had righted themselves on their feet, they knew there would be no chance of catching up with their elusive antagonist.

  Yvette reached out to steady her brother, who seemed a bit more wobbly on his feet than she was. "All smooth?" she asked.

  "I think so. I'm sure glad you happened along."

  "Well, you baited the trap so nicely, I just thought I'd drop by to see what you caught. As you suspected, whoever it was wanted to silence you before you could talk to the police."

  Jules shook his head ruefully. "Yeah. It almost worked too well."

  He was considerably worried. This fight in the hallway bad shown them a number of startling facts about their opponent. He had amazingly quick reflexes. He could move with a speed that made even them look like slowpokes. He could see in the dark. He could absorb blows that would kill or cripple any ordinary human being.

  And, as had already been shown, he could uproot a tree and drop it on someone-a tree that it took two DesPlainians just to lift.

  What sort of man was it they were fighting?

  Chapter 10

  The Dumbwaiter Express

  When the alarms went off all over Rimskor Castle, the four d'Alembert intruders, who had already been moving fast, became a blur of activity. To hesitate even the slightest now would mean certain capture and possible death.

  Luise was in charge, and she thought with lightning speed. They were in the blocked-off area, which had turned out to be a cul-de-sac. They could not allow themselves to be discovered here, or they'd be easily trapped. Leading the way, she raced out of the medical office, through the supply room, the teletype room, and the laboratory. With her three relatives behind her, she bounded up the stairs six at a time, and did not hesitate until she reached the top. Even then she paused only long enough to draw her stunner before bursting out the door into the hallway.

  They were in luck-the hall was still deserted. How long that luck would last was another matter, however, because there were certain to be servants, security guards, or robots checking up on this floor any second. And all the elevator tubes would now be guarded, so they could not be used to go between floors.

  To make matters worse, Luise knew they could not leave. The front gate-and only way out of the castle would now be so heavily guarded that even four top-notch agents like these d'Alemberts could not fight their way out. To even attempt to leave without having learned anything would be an admission of failure-a fate truly worse than death to these members of the Galaxy's most talented clan.

  Luise raced down the darkened corridor toward a place that Marcel had tentatively marked on his map as a stairway. It, too, would be guarded, of course-but less so, and her team would have more room for maneuvering on a stairway than in an elevator tube.

  Just as she reached the stairway, the door to it opened in her face and a robot guard started to come through. It was hard to say who was more startled, Luise or the robot, but it is a fact that Luise reacted first. She automatically fired the stunner point blank into the creature, even as her mind was telling her reflexes that a stun-gun would have no effect on a robot.

  The machine was an upright cylinder, only a meter and a half high, with a dozen metal tentacles ringed around its body to act as limbs. One of those tentacles currently held a stun-gun of its own, and was bringing it quickly into a firing position. While Luise's stunner would not affect the robot, its stunner would affect her-unless she took steps to avoid it immediately.

  Reaching out with her left hand, Luise grabbed the robot by the tentacle that held the gun and pulled it toward her. The machine massed close to a hundred kilograms, but even so the strength of her tug pulled it off its balance. With the power of a person born on a three-gee world, and the expertise that only a d'Alembert could achieve, she whipped the bulky contrivance around her and spun it further into the hallway.

  Rick took up where she left off. As the robot came past him, he grabbed it and lifted it bodily off the ground. The big wrestler hefted it as though it were a feather pillow, holding it high above his head for a second and then flinging it against the nearest wall. The robot hit with a crash that threatened to shatter their eardrums and fell to the floor, a pile of useless scrap metal. A few sparks hissed and fizzed inside its cylindrical body, but it was incapable of further action.

  The problem was that Luise couldn't be sure whether the robot was acting on its own or whether it was linked via some control circuit to a master console. If the latter were the case, they had just given their position completely away; even now an army of similar robots might be descending on them from all the other levels of the castle.

  She went into the stairwell from which the robot had come and looked up and down. The lower levels of the castle would be the more heavily guarded, since any intruders would have to go that way eventually to get out, and that was the direction in which any sensible person would head. Luise's first thought, then, was to go upward, to play for time and position, to make the game last as long as possible and hope to take advantage of some break in her favor. She and her team did start upward, but they only got up one flight before they heard the sounds of a whole legion of metal feet on the stairs above them. She did not want to face a squad of killer robots if she could possibly help it.

  Reluctantly, then, she turned her team around and started them back down the stairs. They moved at top speed, easily outdistancing the machines behind them. There was no opposition as they continued to descend, until finally the stairs came to an end at the ground level and they faced another door opening outward. With the army of robots behind them, they bad no choice but to go out that door and risk whatever might be facing them. Before they did that, though, they put away their stunguns and took out their blasters instead. From everything Etienne had told them about Duke Fyodor, the lord of Rimskor Castle had a much greater fondness for machines than for people, and the great majority of his security force was likely to be robots. Stunners would be worse than useless against such antagonists.

  The stairs entered out into a long hallway, one much fancier than the upstairs bedroom corridor. This one was decorated with metal sculptures both realistic and surrealistic. Platinum gargoyles up in the comers of the ceiling leered down at them, and the smooth floor could provide treacherous footing.

  The scene in the hallway was pandemonium. Humans and robots alike were scurrying back and forth in confusion at the mere thought of an unprecedented break-in to this stronghold. The sudden appearance of four silverclad furies only added to their confusion-and Luise was only too glad to take advantage of that fact.

  Four blaster beams rayed out at once, slicing down everyone-human or robot-in the corridor. Luise glanced both ways down the hall and saw no one else coming immediately. Her trouble was that she was as lost as anyone, now. The running around, the flights up and down stairs, had disoriented a mind even as sharp as hers was. She had no idea where this corridor was in relation to the map Marcel had shown her, and until she could find some familiar territory they would just have to take their chances and wander aimlessly.

  Which was not to say slowly. Although she didn't know herself where she was going, Luise didn't hesitate to run to her right, with the other three still following behind her. They came to what had to be the kitchen, and she could regain her bearings now-and curse her luck. She had chosen the wrong direction, and they were in the back of the house. They would now have to fight their way all the way to the front of the castle if they wanted to have any chance at all of escaping. Yet such a fight-through the entire line of Duke Fyodor's guards-would be tantamount to suicide.

  Luise looked wildly around for another alternative, and her eyes fell on the dumbwaiter system. According to what Etienne had told her, this series of mechanized tubeways ran all through the castle, with exits to virtually every room. The tunnels were small and cramped but, with the exception of Rick, all the d'Alemberts were relatively small themselves. If the invaders could squeeze themselves through this system, they would be like mice in the walls, going where they wanted at will.

 

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