Both men spun around, unslinging their rifles with the easy grace of long practice.

Then they froze, as if someone had doused them with a few gallons of liquid air. Their eyes glazed, and their mouths hung agape.

It was not Dorothy Lamour, they decided, because she was not wearing a sarong. She was not even wearing a gra.s.s skirt.

Sergeant McClusky recovered his voice. "You ain"t supposed to be here, dressed like that, ma"am," he said to the vision of loveliness.

"Undressed like that," Corporal Quinn corrected automatically.

"Even if you was dressed," said McClusky, "you hadn"t ought to be here. Women aren"t allowed on this island." He was still trying to figure out what to do when a voice bellowed out from the next post down the sh.o.r.e.

"Corporal of the guard! Post Number Five! I got a woman on my post-a nekkid woman!

Whadda I do now?"

Before Corporal Quinn could answer, two more posts called out that they had the same trouble.

"Why all the fuss?" asked the girl, wide-eyed. "We just want to go swimming in your pretty lagoon."

"No, you don"t," said McClusky, recovering his wits at last. "You"re under arrest, lady." He reached out to grab her with one brawny fist, but his hand closed on empty air. The girl was deceptively fast. She backed away, still smiling, and McClusky made another lunge for her.

He missed and lost his balance as she danced back out of the way. As he fell forward, he heard Quinn yell: "Halt! Halt or I fire!"

He broke his fall with the b.u.t.t of his rifle, and twisted to an upright sitting position. The girl, he noticed, was running ~way from the lagoon, toward the sea, with Quinn after her in hot pursuit, still calling for her to halt.

All around, there were similar cries. Sergeant McClusky wondered how many unclad females there were running around on Lukiuni Atoll-where there couldn"t possibly be any women.

Not a man there noticed what was going on out in the lagoon itself. The figure of a man suddenly materialized from nowhere a few inches above the surface of the water. Then he dropped in with scarcely a splash.

Since Fesswick did not breathe, there was no necessity for him to wear any of the usual diving equipment. All he had to do was swim to the steel net, cut through it, and head for the little Thregonnese s.p.a.ce capsule. He wasn"t the least bit worried about the Navy"s probing sonar beams; the nullifiers operated by Lord Curvert would take care of them. As far as the sonar operators could tell, there was nothing at all unusual in the lagoon.

Fesswick got busy opening the airlock of the little capsule.

Up on sh.o.r.e, Sergeant McClusky yelled at Corporal Quinn, who was several yards away, at the sea"s edge, staring into the waves. Lights were coming on allover the tiny atoll. Pounding footsteps could be heard from every quarter as confused men ran every which way.

"She just dived into the sea and never came up," Corporal Quinn was saying wonderingly.

"Why didn"t you shoot?" bellowed McClusky.

"Who the h.e.l.l do you think I am?" Quinn bellowed back. "Mike Hammer?"

So far, n.o.body else had fired a shot, either, and by that time, all four of the Thregonnese had dived into the sea, changed into porpoises, and were swimming rapidly away from the atoll.

The final surprise came when, with a great geyser of erupting water, the Thregonnese s.p.a.ce capsule shot up out of the lagoon and vanished rapidly into the moonlit sky.

There would be a lot of explaining to do that night and for many nights to come, in Navy circles. But there would never be any explanation.

"And now," said Lord Curvert gently, "the question arises as to what to do with you gentlemen."

They were sitting in the Venus Club again. The s.p.a.ce capsule, indetectable to any Earth science, was sitting on the roof of the building.

"Why, just make your report and let us go," Forbin said politely. "It was only a misdemeanor. We haven"t done anything felonious. We didn"t expose anything to the natives or interfere in any way. Just let us go, and we"ll pay the fine according to the law."

Lord Curvert was nodding slowly, and there was an oddly sleepy look in his eyes. "Yes," he said.

"Certainly. Just let you go."

The Thregonnese looked at each other with delight, and then looked back at the Observer.

"Or, better yet," said Forbin insidiously, "just let us stay for a while. How about that?"

"Yes. Yes," his lordship said rather gla.s.sily. "I could just let you stay for a while."

"As a matter of fact," Forbin went on in the same tone, "we have a few favors we"d like you to do for us."

"Favors," said Lord Curvert. "Certainly. What favors?"

"Well, for instance, why don"t you stand on your head?"

"Certainly."

"And click your heels together ," added Omboser, ignoring the scowls that Forbin and the others shot him.

"Certainly," agreed his lordship. Placing hands and head on the floor, Lord Curvert solemnly upended himself, balanced carefully, and clapped his heels together.

"We"ve done it!" Forbin said gleefully. "We"re in!"

"You sure that a.s.sistant of his-that Mr. Jones can"t reach us here?" Alsnokine asked, a trifle apprehensively. "Or see us?"

"Not a chance," Forbin said. "I turned on the nullifiers in our ship myself."

"We"ve done it," Lubix gloated. "In spite of all the setbacks, we have our ship, and we have the Observer. Now we can start having a little fun."

"Are you gentlemen just going to leave me like this?" Lord Curvert asked politely.

They all turned to look at him.

He did a neat handspring-and-flip, and landed on his feet. "A confession of intent," he said mildly, "is bad enough. When combined with an actual attempt, it becomes very bad indeed."

None of them said anything.

"Oh, no," his lordship went on, "I"m not hypnotized. In the first place, the substance you have been thinking is Varesh powder is nothing but powdered sugar. I saw you put it in the activator in your capsule, and I saw you put a pinch of it into the air. But I"m afraid sugar just doesn"t have the proper effect.

"In the second place, even if it had been Varesh powder, nothing would have happened, because I am wearing filter plugs in my nostrils, just as you are. The one difference is that my plugs function, while yours don"t..

"I"m afraid that while my a.s.sistant, Mr. Jones, was in your capsule, he put a few rather clever little gimmicks into your controls. In addition, he sprayed a little genuine Varesh powder through the teleporter just a few seconds ago. And it"s having its effect, isn"t it?"

It was. Robbed of their conscious volition, the human body shapes which the Thregonnese had a.s.sumed were beginning to look oddly lumpy as they tended to return to their normal shapes.

"I am sending you back to Thregonn for punishment," he said. "I"ll tell you what the conspiracy was, and you correct me if I"m wrong, so that everything will be nice and legal.

"You intended to use this Venus Club set-up to trap me first. Then, after I had been hypnotized, you intended to take over the various governments of Earth. Now, there, I"m a little hazy-just what was your reason for wanting to take over? Were you going to set yourselves up as supreme dictators, so that you could push everybody around?" He looked at Forbin as he spoke. "For a while," admitted the thoroughly hypnotized Forbin. "Then, if we got bored, we thought it might be fun to start an atomic war among these primitive people."

"Worse than I thought," said Lord Curvert distastefully. ""I hope they straighten you out thoroughly on Thregonn."

By this time, the four Thregonnese had returned to their "normal" shape. They looked like four fat, pink kewpie dolls.

"All right," said Lord Curvert, "let"s go. You"ll get in your ship and go straight to Thregonn, understand?"

"Yes, sir," they chorused. "Straight to Thregonn."

"And just to make sure you do, you"ll give yourselves another dose of Varesh powder every twenty-four hours. Understand?"

"Yes, sir," they chorused.

"Fine. Let"s go."

They went up to the roof, and the four fat kewpies climbed into the vessel. The airlock closed, and a few seconds later the little s.p.a.ceship fired skywards.

"Take me home, Fesswick," said Lord Curvert.

"That"s very odd," said Lady Curvert.

Lord Curvert looked up apprehensively from his Times. "Not another one, I hope."

"Oh, no, Charles. Not another case. I was just thinking that it was very odd that the paper should come out with an editorial on the Teddy boys today. The editor says that juvenile delinquency is getting worse and something must be done to stop it."

"I"ll write a letter to the Times, my dear," said Lord Curvert.

Fesswick shimmered in through the doorway. "I beg to report, my lord, that Thregonn acknowledges the landing of the capsule. The four have been placed in arrest by the authorities. Their parents have been notified."

"Good," said Lord Curvert. "People here on Earth complain about juvenile delinquency, Fesswick.

Just wait until they find out what it"s like on a Galactic scale."

DESPOILERS OF THE GOLDEN EMPIRE.

This is an odd one. It needs an Afterword instead of a Foreword.

By Randall Garrett

I.

In the seven centuries that had elapsed since the Second Empire had been founded on the shattered remnants of the First, the n.o.bles of the Imperium had come slowly to realize that the empire was not to be judged by the examples of its predecessor. The First Empire had conquered most of the known universe by political intrigue and sheer military strength; it had fallen because that same propensity for political intrigue had gained over every other strength of the Empire, and the various branches and sectors of the First Empire had begun to use it against one another.

The Second Empire was politically unlike the First; it tried to balance a centralized government against the autonomic governments of the various sectors, and had almost succeeded in doing so.

But, no matter how governed, there are certain essentials which are needed by any governmental organization.

Without power, neither Civilization nor the Empire could hold itself together, and His Universal Majesty, the Emperor Carl, well knew it. And power was linked solidly to one element, one metal, without which Civilization would collapse as surely as if it had been blasted out of existence. Without the power metal, no ship could move or even be built; without it, industry would come to a standstill.

In ancient times, even as far back as the early Greek and Roman civilizations, the metal had been known, but it had been used, for the most part, as decoration and in the manufacture of jewelry. Later, it had been coined as money.

It had always been relatively rare, but now, weight for weight, atom for atom, it was the most valuable element on Earth. Indeed, the most valuable in the known universe.

The metal was Element Number Seventy-nine-gold.

To the collective mind of the Empire, gold was the prime object in any kind of mining exploration.

The idea of drilling for petroleum, even if it had been readily available, or of mining coal or uranium would have been dismissed as impracticable and even worse than useless.

Throughout the Empire, research laboratories worked tirelessly at the problem of trans.m.u.ting commoner elements into Gold-197, but thus far none of the processes was commercially feasible. There was still, after thousands of years, only one way to get the power metal: extract it from the ground.

So it was that, across the great gulf between the worlds, ship after ship moved in search of the metal that would hold the far-flung colonies of the Empire together. Every adventurer who could manage to get aboard was glad to be cooped up on a ship during the long months it took to cross the empty expanses, was glad to endure the hardships on alien terrain, on the chance that his efforts might payoff a thousand or ten thousand fold.

Of these men, a mere handful were successful, and of these one or two stand well above the rest.

And for sheer determination, drive, and courage, for the will to push on toward his goal, no matter what the odds, a certain Commander Frank had them all beat.

II.

Before you can get a picture of the commander-that is, as far as his personality goes-you have to get a picture of the man physically.

He was enough taller than the average man to make him stand out in a crowd, and he had broadshoulders and a narrow waist to match. He wasn"t heavy; his was the hard, tough, wire-like strength of a steel cable. The planes of his tanned face showed that he feared neither exposure to the elements nor exposure to violence; it was seamed with fine wrinkles and the thin white lines that betray scar tissue. His mouth was heavy-lipped, but firm, and the lines around it showed that it was unused to smiling. The commander could laugh, and often did-a sort of roaring explosion that burst forth suddenly whenever something struck him as particularly uproarious. But he seldom just smiled; Commander Frank rarely went halfway in anything.

His eyes, like his hair, were a deep brown-almost black, and they were set well back beneath heavy brows that tended to frown most of the time.

Primarily, he was a military man. He had no particular flair for science, and, although he had a firm and deep-seated grasp of the essential philosophy of the Universal a.s.sembly, he had no inclination towards the kind of life necessarily led by those who would become higher officers of the a.s.sembly. It was enough that the a.s.sembly was behind him; it was enough to know that he was a member of the only race in the known universe which had a working knowledge of the essential, basic Truth of the Cosmos.

With a weapon like that, even an ordinary soldier had little to fear, and Commander Frank was far from being an ordinary soldier.