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“General Dorflay? But why, Your Majesty?”

“Great galaxy, do you have to ask? Why, because the man’s a raving lunatic. He oughtn’t even to be trusted with a sidearm, let alone five companies of armed soldiers. Do you know what he told me this morning?”

“That somebody is training a Nidhog swamp-crawler to crawl up the Octagon Tower and bite you at breakfast, I suppose. But hasn’t that been going on for quite a while, sir?”

“It was a gimmick in one of the cooking robots, but that’s aside from the question. He’s finally named the master mind behind all these nightmares of his, and who do you think it is? Yorn Travann!”

* * * * *

The Prime Minister’s face grew graver than usual. Well, it was something to look grave about; some of these days—-

“Your Majesty, I couldn’t possibly agree more about the general’s mental condition, but I really should say that, crazy or not, he is not alone in his suspicions of Prince Travann. If sharing them makes me a lunatic, too, so be it, but share them I do.”

Paul felt his eyebrows lift in surprise. “That’s quite too much and too little, Prince Ganzay,” he said.

“With your permission, I’ll elaborate. Don’t think that I suspect Prince Travann of any childish pranks with elevators or viewscreens or cooking-robots,” the Prime Minister hastened to disclaim, “but I definitely do suspect him of treasonous ambitions. I suppose Your Majesty knows that he is the first Minister of Security in centuries who has assumed personal control of both the planetary and municipal police, instead of delegating his ex officio powers.

“Your Majesty may not know, however, of some of the peculiar uses he has been making of those authorities. Does Your Majesty know that he has recruited the Security Guard up to at least ten times the strength needed to meet any conceivable peace-maintenance problem on this planet, and that he has been piling up huge quantities of heavy combat equipment–guns up to 200-millimeter, heavy contragravity, even gun-cutters and bomb-and-rocket boats? And does Your Majesty know that most of this armament is massed within fifteen minutes’ flight-time of this Palace? Or that Prince Travann has at his disposal from two and a half to three times, in men and firepower, the combined strength of the Planetary Militia and the Imperial Army on this planet?”

“I know. It has my approval. He’s trying to salvage some of the young nonworkers through exposing them to military discipline. A good many of them, I believe, have gone off-planet on their discharge from the SG and hired as mercenaries, which is a far better profession than vote selling.”

“Quite a plausible explanation: Prince Travann is nothing if not plausible,” the Prime Minister agreed. “And does Your Majesty know that, because of repeated demands for support from the Ministry of Security, the Imperial Navy has been scattered all over the Empire, and that there is not a naval craft bigger than a scout-boat within fifteen hundred light-years of Odin?”

That was absolutely true. Paul could only nod agreement. Prince Ganzay continued:

“He has been doing some peculiar things as Police Chief of Asgard, too. For instance, there are two powerful nonworkers’ voting-bloc bosses, Big Moogie Blisko and Zikko the Nose–I assure Your Majesty that I am not inventing these names; that’s what the persons are actually called–who have been enjoying the favor and support of Prince Travann. On a number of occasions, their smaller rivals, leaders of less important gangs, have been arrested, often on trumped-up charges, and held incommunicado until either Moogie or Zikko could move into their territories and annex their nonworker followers. These two bloc-bosses are subsidized, respectively, by the Steel and Shipbuilding Cartels and by the Reaction Products and Chemical Cartels, but actually, they are controlled by Prince Travann. They, in turn, control between them about seventy per cent of the nonworkers in Asgard.”