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elegant, but it's fast, and we're out of time."
Pel nodded reluctantly, twitched her sleeves back, and readied the little
aerosol bulb. Nadina gripped the chair-back: Miles prepared to spring away
and take up a firing stance.
Pel dropped her bubble and squirted the aerosol toward Naru's startled face.
Naru held his breath and ducked away, barely grazed by the iridescent cloud
of drug. His breath puffed back out on a yell of warning.
Miles cursed, leapt, stumbled, and fired three times in rapid succession. He
dropped the two scrambling techs; Naru nearly succeeded in rolling away
again, but at least the beam nimbus brought the ghem-general to a twitching
halt. Temporarily. Naru lumbered around on the deck like a warthog mired in
a bog, his voice reduced to a garbled groan.
Nadina hurried to the table full of Keys, swept them into her outermost robe,
and brought them back to Pel. Pel began trying the ring-key on each one. "Not
that one . . . not that . . ."
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Miles glanced at the door, which remained closed, would remain closed until
an authorized hand pressed its palm-lock. Who would be so authorized? Kety
. . . Naru, who was already in here . . . any others? We're about to find out.
"Not . . ." Pel continued. "Oh, what if they're all false? No . . ."
"Of course they are," Miles realized. "The real one must be, must be-" He
began tracing cables from the cipher tech's comconsole. They led to a box,
stuffed in behind some other equipment, and in the box was-another Great
Key. But this one was braced in a comm light-beam, carrying the signals that
probed its codes. "-here." Miles yanked it from its place, and sprinted back to
Pel. "We've got the Key, we've got Nadina, we've got the goods on Naru, we've
got it all. Let's go."
The door hissed open. Miles whirled and fired.
A stunner-armed man in Kety's livery stumbled backward. Thumps and
shouts echoed from the corridor, as what seemed a dozen more men stood
quickly out of the line of fire. "Yes," cried Pel happily, as the cap of the real
Great Key came off in her hand, demonstrating its provenance.
"Not now!" screeched Miles. "Put it back, Pel, put your force-screen up, now!"
Miles ducked aboard the float-chair; its force-screen snapped into place. A
blast of massed stunner fire roiled through the doorway. The stunner fire
crackled harmlessly around the sparkling sphere, only making it glitter a bit
more. But the haut Nadina had been left outside. She cried out and stumbled
backward, painfully grazed by the stun-nimbus. Men charged through the
door.
"You have the Key, Pel!" cried the haut Nadina. "Flee!"
An impractical suggestion, alas; as his men secured the room and the haut
Nadina, Governor Kety strolled through the door and closed it behind him,
palm-locking it.
"Well," he drawled, eyes alight with curiosity at the carnage before him.
"Well." He might at least have had the courtesy to curse and stamp, Miles
thought sourly. Instead he looked . . . quite thoroughly in control. "What have
we here?"
A Kety-liveried trooper knelt by ghem-General Naru, and helped straighten
him and hold him up by his shoulders. Naru, struggling to sit, rubbed a
shaking hand over his doubtless numb and tingling face-Miles had
experienced the full unpleasantness of being stunned himself, more than
once in his past-and essayed a mumbling answer. On the second try he
managed slurred but intelligible speech. "'S the Consorts Pel and Nadina. An'
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the Barray'arn. Tol' you those damned bubbles were a secur'ty menace!" He
slumped back into the trooper's arms. "S' all right, though. We have 'em all
now."
"When that voyeur is tried for his treasons," said the haut Pel poisonously, "I
shall ask the Emperor to have his eyes put out, before he is executed."
Miles wondered anew at the sequence of events here last night; how had they
extracted Nadina from her bubble? "I think you're getting a little ahead of us,
milady," he sighed.
Kety walked around the haut Pel's bubble, studying it. Cracking this egg was a
pretty puzzle for him. Or was it? He'd done it once before.
Escape was impossible; the bubbles movements were physically blocked. Kety
might besiege them, starve them out, if he didn't mind waiting-no. Kety
couldn't wait. Miles grinned blackly, and said to Pel, "This float-chair has
communication link capacity, doesn't it? I'm afraid it's time to call for help."
They had, by God, almost brought it off, almost made the entire affair
disappear without a trace. But now that they'd identified and targeted Naru,
the threat of secret aid for Kety from inside Cetagandan Imperial Security
was neutralized. The Cetagandans should be able to unravel the rest of it for
themselves. If I can get the word out.
Governor Kety motioned the two men holding the haut Nadina to drag her
forward to what he apparently guessed was in front of the bubble, except that
he was actually about forty degrees offsides. He relieved one guardsman of
his vibra-knife, stepped behind Nadina, and lifted her thick silver hair. She
squeaked in terror, but relaxed again when he only laid the knife very lightly
against her throat.
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