Yvette and Yvonne were waiting out of sight in the next room. Both ladies had their weapons already drawn, and were prepared to use them the instant it became necessary. The Roumeniers had been briefed on the seriousness of the threat, and would do whatever was needed to stop the robot's schemes.

  Neither Symond nor Liu were in the room yet, so Jules took the opportunity to run a routine scan on the rest of the possibilities. As he and Yvette had suspected, they checked out to be clean and certifiably human-which left the two prime suspects unaccounted for.

  Liu came in through one door at almost the same instant that Symond came in from another. They went to opposite corners of the room; Liu to meditate as always and Symond to chat with Sean Mulvaney.

  Jules decided to try Liu first. Going over to the man, he said in a quiet voice that only the two of them could hear, "Something's been puzzling me about you."

  "Oh?" The Anarian looked up at him, an expressionless expression on his face.

  "Yes. When I first met you I mentioned that you had a very strong grip for such a frail-looking person as yourself, and you answered by saying that the Universe was full of illusion and that no one is ever quite what he seems. What did you mean by that?"

  As he spoke, Jules used his sensors to try to probe the Anarian's body. One sensor was in his ring, the other in his belt buckle. Both were reading normal. Liu was not a robot.

  "There are as many levels to reality as there are to illusion," the Anarian answered. "I have the humble ability to see past certain illusions, though sometimes the entire reality eludes me. I know, for instance, that you are not what you pretend to be."

  Jules was shaken. "How do you know that?"

  "Your physique, your bone structure when I shook your hand-they are not characteristic of one who comes from a normal gravity world, such as you purport to. Also, I am quite familiar with galactography and current politics, and I know there is no such planet named Julea."

  "If you knew that was so, why didn't you unmask me as a fraud?"

  "Illusion serves its part in reality. To destroy illusion without understanding its reason for being is to act unwisely."

  "Is there anyone else here who is also an illusion?" Jules asked. He wanted to test Liu's powers of observation to see whether the Anarian had come to the same conclusion as himself.

  "Yes," Liu answered calmly. "We all are, even me. In a situation of pressure like this, we all project an idealized version of ourselves, a composite of our dreams and our ideals, our aspirations and. our fears." He paused. "There is, however, one who is more illusion than the rest."

  "Who is it, and in what way?" Jules prodded.

  Choyen Liu looked at him with eyes whose depths Jules could not begin to plumb. "Must you ask me to tell you what you already know? You should not ask a teacher to be a parrot."

  Jules bowed his head in acknowledgement of the point. Despite the oddness of the man, he was beginning to like Choyen Liu. Somehow, the Anarian knew more than he could possibly see, and told even less than he saw. "You're right," he said. "Forgive me."

  But if Choyen Liu was not the robot, that meant it had to be Paul Symond. Symond, the handsome, friendly, outgoing young man whom everybody liked. Symond, the personable chap who made such pleasant conversation and such a trustworthy confidant. Symond, the traitor.

  Who better to snare a princess? Jules thought bitterly. Still, he had to make absolutely certain of his hypothesis before condemning Symond to death-or whatever the equivalent of death was for a machine. Walking with forced casualness over to the other side of the room, he stood for a moment beside Symond as the candidate was talking to Mulvaney. The sensors he was wearing showed no doubt at all, though--Symond was a machine in human form. Jules gave a slight nod of his head to indicate to Jacques that this was the one they wanted.

  The problem now was to get Symond away from the rest of the candidates; Jules didn't want anyone else hurt if it could be avoided. "Paul," he said quietly, "I wonder if I could talk to you privately for a moment."

  Maybe it was something in the tone of Jules's voice, or the particular posture in which he was standing. Maybe Jacques made his move a trifle too soon toward his blaster, or looked at Symond with a little too much anxiety. Maybe it was a combination of any or all of those factors. But whatever it was, something alerted the robot to the fact that his identity was now known. His brain assimilated that information in a flash and knew that he would never have a chance to accomplish his mission now-and with that realization, the second overwhelming drive of his being took over: survival. Survival at all costs.

  Without giving the slightest warning, he lashed out with both hands at both Jules and Mulvaney. The latter was knocked halfway across the room and lost consciousness as his head banged roughly against the wall; but Jules was a little harder to get rid of.

  The blow, coming as unexpectedly as it did, stunned him and pushed him backward a few awkward steps. But he did not lose his balance, nor did he bump into anything. All the blow really accomplished was to gain Symond a few vital seconds.

  At the same instant the robot lashed out at the two men around him, he started running. As quick as Jacques was at drawing his blaster, by the time he had it out of its holster and ready to fire the treacherous machine was halfway across the room and on the other side of a knot of other candidates. Those men, too confused by this sudden activity, just stood dumbstruck in the middle of the room, effectively blocking Jacques's aim. The SOTS agent's reverence for innocent human life made him hesitate one instant before pressing the trigger on his gun -and in that instant, Symond was out the door into the adjoining room.

  Yvette and Yvonne had been waiting in this room for something to happen, blasters drawn and at the ready. But so quickly did Symond come bursting through the door, with no warning whatsoever, that they barely had time to react. It would be hard to say who was the more surprised at this confrontation-Symond at finding two more armed people waiting for him or the SOTS agents at having him appear so unexpectedly. But Symond, with his computer fast reflexes, recovered first.

  He now knew that he was in the most crucial fight of his short existence, and was not about to pull any punches as he'd done in the corridor battle. Yvette was standing nearest him, on his left, and he lashed out with the flat of his left hand aimed directly at her throat. It was a blow of killing ferocity, and so quickly did it come that Yvette was not able to duck. Her DesPlainian reflexes were quick enough, however, to cause her to fall backwards even as the blow was being delivered. Symond's hand, therefore, caught her with slightly less than its intended impact; it did not break her neck, and the toughened muscles in her throat prevented the blow from shattering her windpipe. But she was knocked, senseless, to the floor and lay still for several minutes before regaining consciousness.

  That left Vonnie to deal with. The attack on Yvette had given her a precious second in which to bring her blaster into play. It was not just because she was his fianc6e that Jules had picked her for this assignment; on the 1,000point test by which all SOTE agents were measured-a test of both mental and physical agility-she had scored a highly respectable 989. There were perhaps only two dozen other people in the Galaxy with a higher rating than that.

  But no one could have predicted just how quickly Symond could act. No living being had a right to move so fast and so effectively, not even a DesPlainian-but, of course, Symond was not a living being. His computerized brain could assess a situation and react to it more quickly than could a human one. His body parts were purely mechanical, and were not subject to haphazard impulses, as were human tissue. When he moved, there was no hesitation, no infinitesimal delay between thought and deed. Even to Yvonne's well-trained eyes, Symond came at her as a mere blur of motion.

  She had time to fire just one shot, which passed through the space right behind the quick-moving robot. Then Symond had reached her. One of his powerful fists pounded brutally into her stomach and, as she doubled over involuntarily, his other came down with savage force on the back of her neck. Yvonne fell to the floor, unconscious.

  All the while-unhampered by emotions, adrenalin, or any of the other distractions that would overtake a living being in similar circumstances--Symond's computer brain was evaluating his chances for survival. Success lay in flight, but even that course was fraught with peril. There were no copters on the premises, and trying to escape on the back of a dorvat would be ludicrous. That left a car as the only logical alternative. But in a car he would be alone and unable to fight back; they could spot him from the air and simply drop a bomb on him, and that would be the end of everything. He could not allow that to happen.

  There was one other tack he could try. If he took a hostage with him, they might not bomb him. It might make them think twice before destroying him. A hostage would be his leverage to pry loose his continued safety. He could only take one, because two might be hard to manage if he had to fight, and he was limited to what was at hand-but women always did make exceptionally good hostages. Humans seemed to have a built-in bias to protect them at all costs.

  All these thoughts were flashing through his mind even as he was approaching Yvonne. Consequently, he held back a trifle and his blows merely knocked her out rather than kill her. Before her body could slump completely to the floor, he had swooped her up in one arm and hoisted her over his shoulder. Without the slightest slackening in his speed, he flashed through the room and carried his unconscious bundle into the hallway beyond and out the front door of Rockhold Castle.

  It was only a second or so later that Jules raced into the room where the two women had been waiting. His eyes surveyed the scene and instantly spotted the stricken body of his sister. Kneeling beside her, he checked quickly for a pulse, and emitted a grateful sigh of relief to find that it was still there. With that fear allayed, he looked around the room for some sign of his fiancee, just as Jacques rushed through the door.

  "Look after Evie," Jules snapped to his friend. There was no clue to Vonnie's whereabouts, which could only mean one thing-Symond had taken her with him. And that meant Jules's girl friend was either unconscious or dead, because Jules knew that, were she conscious, she would have been struggling too hard for even the robot to handle.

  Leaving his sister to Jacques's able care, Jules ran through the castle to the courtyard where the cars were parked just in time to see Symond driving off through the front gate with a body slumped in the seat beside him-a body that could only be Yvonne Roumenier.

  Chapter 13

  The Chase in Space

  Though his soul was in agony over Vonnie's possible fate, Jules was not the sort to stop and moan about the situation. He was a creature of action, and every cell in his body called out for him to take steps to remedy the situation. Without wasting a single tear, he bounded down the front steps to where his own car was parked. It was the work of but a second to hop in the front seat and start the engine, and then he was zooming down the road and out the front gate himself, in hot pursuit of the traitor's car.

  Jules's own vehicle was something special in the way of ground cars. While it looked to the casual observer like a late sports model Frascati, it was actually a Mark Forty-One Service Special. It was ever so slightly longer, wider, and rounder than a car of its class should be-and it was considerably heavier. For its size it was the most efficient and deadly vehicle ever built. At the touch of a button, those too-round sides would open and a transparent, airtight, beamproof canopy would slide into place around the car. It could fly through the air or even short distances into space and accelerate up, forward, back, or sideways at better than four gees. Its communication gear was complete in every respect, and it was fully armed with heavy-duty blasters and a variety of bombs.

  But all that expensive and elaborate equipment did Jules no good at all in the present circumstances; he still dared not use it against the car ahead of him. Not while Vonnie was in it.

  Symond drove his car at the limit on manual, relying on his own super-reflexes to keep him safely on the road. Jules's reflexes were certainly not much worse, and he was able to keep up the chase without mishap. He could have, if he chose, taken off and flown above the escaping vehicle, but that might have been tipping his hand a bit prematurely-plus, there would be complications on landing once the other vehicle stopped. For the moment, Jules preferred to stay on the road and take his chances in the traffic.

  But that is not to say he was idle during the drive. Even as he steered his ground car along the highway in pursuit of his quarry, he was on the radio to Service Headquarters for Ansegria. Using a top-level code, he identified himself as Agent Wombat-and did that name ever produce results! Agents Wombat and Periwinkle (Yvette) were almost legendary in Service annals, and a request from either was like a direct order from the Head himself. So when Jules asked for a tracer placed on Symond's fleeing ground car plus an escort of copiers to make sure it didn't get away, he got exactly that-and fast.

  No attempt was made to disguise the surveillance forces being used against the renegade robot, but if Symond noticed the copiers at all he paid them no attention. He was positive they would take no direct action against him while he still had his hostage; his problem was still the same as it had been all along-to escape from the planet. Once he was in space, he would have a much better chance of eluding pursuit and finding a safe haven.

  It soon became evident to all the pursuers that Symond's ground car was headed via back-country roads to Canyonville, where the local spaceport was located. The idea of placing roadblocks in his path was suggested, but Jules vetoed it out of hand. As long as Symond was no direct threat to the Princess, he felt they should let the traitor have some leeway in the hope that he would slip and give them a chance to rescue Yvonne unhurt. Once his fiancee was out of danger, Jules didn't care what happened to the traitor.

  As predicted, Symond's car drove up to the spaceport and did a quick circle of the field while the robot scouted the possibilities. Finally, spotting a small mail ship sitting on its fins in one corner of the field, the robot drove his ground car in a beeline straight for it. He stopped alongside the untended ship and got out of his car. Carrying the still unconscious Yvonne over his shoulder, he began climbing the ladder to the ship's crew section.

  Jules felt a moment of frustration as his own car raced over to the mail ship. For just an instant, Symond was visible and vulnerable; yet the blasters in Jules's car were heavy-duty ones that would destroy everything in the area they hit. He would not be able to shoot the robot without hitting Vonnie as well. He cautioned the pilots of the copters not to try any sniping with their hand weapons, either; the copiers made an unreliable shooting base, and there was the chance they might hit the wrong target. Besides, hitting Symond once he had started up the ladder meant he would have dropped Vonnie to the ground in his fall and that could be fatal.

  The SOTE forces could only watch, helpless, as Symond reached the top of the ladder with his captive and disappeared inside the airlock, closing it behind him. Jules wasn't sure whether there were any crewmembers or not inside that ship, but it wouldn't make too much difference. A vessel that small could be handled easily enough by one person who knew what he was doing, which Symond probably did.

  Jules checked with the Service officers about the possibility of getting Navy or police ships to head Symond off. But Ansegria was a small and quiet planet that had never had much trouble it couldn't handle itself; its police didn't have anything more advanced than atmospheric jets. The Navy occasionally sent a fleet ship over on holidays or special occasions, but in general the nearest base was over a parsec away. If Symond ever did get off the ground, both the Service and the local police would have an impossible time trying to catch him.

  Which meant that everything lay on Jules's shoulders. Gunning his car at maximum acceleration, he zoomed across the spaceport field to his and Yvette's own vessel, La Comete Cuivre. The burnished metal of the sleek two person ship glowed almost red in the late afternoon sunlight. At the touch of one special button on his car's control panel, a section of the Comet's hull opened downward, forming a ramp that the car could drive straight up. The Mark Forty-One Service Special snugged perfectly into the hold of the ship and the ramp closed up behind it, sealing it airtight.

  Even before the hull had completely closed, though, Jules had leaped out of the driver's seat of his car and begun climbing the ladder up to the forward section of the ship. Within seconds he was in the familiar control cabin of his own ship, seated before the console. The Comet was in a powered-down configuration, as he had not been expecting to use it during the course of this mission; consequently, he had to work furiously, flipping switches and turning dials in an effort to get the vessel ready for a leap into space.

  Slowly, the atomic reactors that powered the Comet began to glow as life returned to the ship. The drive circuits heated up nicely to the point where they could be called upon when needed. Jules gave all the indicators a check with an experienced eye, and everything read perfect. The Comet was ready to fly whenever he gave the order.

  Jules radioed SOTE and had them inform the tower that his wishes were to supersede all other normal business. He then issued the order that regular departures and arrivals were to be held until this matter concerning the hijacked mail ship was settled. If Symond and he had to take off on short notice, he didn't want either of them colliding with another ship in midair.

  The robot obviously had not found too much opposition inside the mail ship, for it suddenly lifted off the launch field with a blaze of acceleration that made most onlookers gasp. No normal human would have taken off so hard; he wouldn't have been able to work the delicate controls for very long under such heavy gee forces, and might have passed out, which would have been fatal. Jules set his lower jaw and tracked the stolen ship on his radar screen. It was leaving the surface of Ansegria at a rate of about six gravities; well, that would not be too bad. To someone from a three-gee world, six gees would be little more than an inconvenience.

 

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