As the mail ship blasted its way through Ansegria's sky, Jules's ship followed right after it, matching speed for speed. Jules wondered whether Symond speculated on what sort of pilot could be withstanding that great an acceleration for so long, but then realized that the robot must al ready have some measure of his worth-that fight in the corridor had taught the robot as much about Jules as it had taught Jules about the robot. Each knew fairly well the capabilities of his adversary.

  The acceleration didn't slacken at all as the two ships left Ansegria's atmosphere behind them. Symond apparently didn't want to waste an instant reaching a distance far enough from Ansegria's gravitational field to turn on his subether drive and escape to some other system. Jules was just as determined not to give him that opportunity.

  Upping his own acceleration to eight gees, Jules closed the gap between the two ships. When they were but half a kilometer apart, the SOTE agent brought his weapons to bear on the other's vessel. Jules had been waiting for Symond to make his mistake, and now the robot bad made two of them-he had trapped himself in a vehicle that could be effectively disabled without being destroyed, and he had hijacked one that was unarmed. That combination would-Jules prayed fervently-prove the traitor's undoing.

  Taking careful aim, Jules fired the Comet's blasters full strength at the tail of the fugitive's ship. These were not hand blasters, whose beams could be stopped by a tough enough metal alloy; these were high-powers, and there was little that could withstand their full fury. The rear end of Symond's ship began heating up; it glowed first a cherry red, then graduated to white hot. With a suddenness that only seemed to happen in space, the back part of the fleeing vessel burst apart in a silent explosion, scattering bits of debris into orbit around Ansegria. At the same time, the ship's acceleration stopped abruptly and the rocket began coasting through space at the steady speed it had had at the moment just before its engines blew.

  Jules noted quickly that he had acted in time; the ship would not reach subether distance from Ansegria for another two hours. That allowed him plenty of time; the matter would be settled between Symond and himself, one way or another, long before that point was reached.

  For the next few minutes, though, he was very busy decelerating, making sure that his own ship didn't overshoot his quarry. Matching velocities was considered a routine procedure, and was something that every pilot-in-training was required to master before obtaining his license; nevertheless, it was detailed and it took a good deal of time before Jules could adjust his speed and direction to exactly parallel that of the disabled ship.

  With that accomplished, Jules set grimly about his task of putting on a suit of space armor. Matching velocities with the mail ship may have been a laborious and tedious procedure, but it was a much preferable pastime to boarding a disabled ship with a berserk robot loose on it.

  Jules left the airlock of the Comet and floated across the void to the stricken ship. The airlock would not open at his command, but he had expected that; Symond was not about to open the door for him, as it were. Nevertheless, there were ways to get around that difficulty.

  Jules looked around for a second until he found the emergency manual controls, which could override instructions from the bridge. Symond had intentionally left the airlock's inner door open, so Jules's first order of business was to close that before he could open the outer door. The manual crank did not want to turn at first Jules surmised that the robot had propped the inner door open with something-but, using all his strength, Jules forced it to start its work. In a matter of seconds he had closed it and begun the pumping procedure for emptying the air out of the chamber. The mail ship's failsafe system would not let the inner door open again until Jules was ready to let it.

  When all the air was out of the lock, Jules opened the outer door and stepped inside the ship. Closing the hatch behind him, he began the tedious procedure for letting the air back into the lock. Even when there was an atmosphere around him, though, he did not remove his space armor. Although Symond's chest expanded and contracted at regular intervals, Jules doubted very much whether the robot really needed to breathe. As a last resort, the creature could always knock a hole in the airlock door to let the air out of the ship, and if Jules were not encased in his own suit it would be a quick way to end the opposition. Jules would not give Symond such an easy way out.

  As the inner door opened, Jules noted that all the lights inside the ship had been turned off. That, too, was as he had anticipated. The robot had already demonstrated his ability to see in the dark; it would be to his advantage to keep Jules as far off balance as he could. The SOTS agent calmly reached up to the top of his helmet and switched on its high-intensity searchlight beam. If Symond insisted on playing games like this, Jules would top him; anyone now coming face to face with him would be staring directly into that dazzling"light, and Jules doubted whether even the robot could see through that much glare.

  Jules found himself in a corridor that ran fore to aft along the axis of the ship. The most likely place for the robot to be was in the front of the vessel, in the control room were he could monitor and control what happened inside the hijacked rocket. With grim determination he began swimming through the hallway toward the bridge.

  The beam of his searchlight gave a harsh effect to the interior of the darkened vessel. Objects directly in front of him reflected strongly, while deep shadows and blackness ringed the periphery of his vision. Jules knew he was an exposed target as he swam down the center of the corridor in free-fall, but the thought didn't bother him too much. Symond had used a stun-gun against him in the corridor of Rockhold Castle the other night, but such a weapon would be useless against him when he was encased in space armor. There was no indication that the robot had any armament more powerful than that; and, even if he had, Jules's armor could withstand the full fury of most hand-held weapons except for the highest powered blasters. And Jules's own blaster was in his hand and at the ready for instant use should he catch sight of his quarry.

  The door to the front compartment was closed, meaning that some surprise was obviously awaiting him in there. The door could be opened by sliding it upward into the top of the doorsill. Floating up to the very top, Jules reached over to press the button that would open the door, fully expecting Symond to have it locked. To his surprise, it slid open easily, and he gazed in to see what was inside.

  He had only a brief glimpse. Vonnie was floating toward the front of the cabin, still unconscious. Several lights on the control panel were quietly shining, and one red light was flickering on and off most urgently-obviously the automatic monitor from the aft compartment telling the captain that the engines were blown and that the drive chamber was open to the vacuum of space. Symond was not in the room.

  Before Jules had more than the merest flash of that sight, however, a massive object hit him hard along the side of his helmet. The battle armor was sturdy and was little more than dented by the blow-but even so, the impact was so great that it drove him forward against the bulkhead. His helmet banged hard against the metal wall, setting up a ringing in his ears. Even though stunned, Jules's rapid DesPlainian reflexes enabled him to twist his body around to see where the attack had come from.

  Symond had been waiting in the back of the corridor all along, figuring that Jules would head straight for the control room. He had sneaked up soundlessly behind the SOTE operative, waiting for the perfect moment to attack. When Jules's attention had been focused on the interior of the bridge, Symond had picked up some massive metallic object and hurled it, with all his superhuman strength, at his adversary. Then, not bothering to wait to see how much damage that would do, he launched himself directly after it.

  Jules struggled valiantly to fight off the stunning effects of the blow on the head as he saw Symond's body come hurtling through the air at him. He brought up his right arm to fire his blaster but, fast as he was, he was still a fraction of a second too late. The robot's body banged solidly into his, bumping him once more against the bulkhead. Symond's hand gripped that of Jules and squeezed with unbelievable power. The blaster, a sturdy amalgam of plastic and steel, crumbled as though it had been made of cardboard. The situation, then, seemed to resolve itself down to basics-a DesPlainian human of supernormal capabilities and a humanoid robot of mechanical perfection.

  Symond had the initial advantage and intended to press it for all it was worth. With his right hand he pounded Jules again and again in the stomach; the blows reached the agent's midsection as though delivered by a pile driver. His body armor was well constructed to withstand a large variety of abuses, but it could not outlast such punishing treatment for long without breaking apart. Jules would have to do something to keep Symond's hands too busy to continue that work.

  Fighting in free-fall is almost entirely a matter of leverage; sheer physical strength is of secondary consequence when every action produces an equal and opposite reaction and there is no firm place to stand. As long as Jules remained pressed up against the bulkhead, Symond's punches would have a telling effect; if he were free in midair, the blows would not be nearly so bad.

  With his right leg, he lashed out sideways and kicked against the wall. His kick was strong enough to break him free of the robot's grasp and send him sailing down the corridor. He would probably have sailed all the way to the back of the ship if he'd let himself, but that would not have done any good. Instead, he reached out to grab a doorsill as he passed it, and stopped his motion. As his head cleared from the initial attack, he began to feel some of his energy being renewed.

  Pushing himself off from this door, he headed back toward his foe. Symond saw him coming and braced himself against the frame of the doorway, but there was little he could do against the inertia of Jules's hundred-kilo body hitting him squarely in the midsection. The two antagonists tumbled over and over through the air into the center of the control room.

  Jules looked beyond his opponent for a second. Yvonne appeared to be coming to from the blow Symond had given her. The thought of having her as his ally against the treacherous humanoid machine sent a little spark of hope through his body. He and Vonnie made almost as unbeatable a team as he and Yvette.

  But Yvonne was not fully conscious yet, and Jules would have to keep Symond from realizing that she was snapping out of her coma. The robot had already proved that he could fight effectively against two opponents at once; only if he was unaware of Yvonne's presence would she be a true asset.

  Jules began raining random blows down upon the robot's head, forcing him to go on the defensive and making sure his eyes stayed focused on Jules. The SOTE agent tried not to look over to his fianc6e too often, for his eyes would give her away. He concentrated instead on being a nuisance to Symond.

  Yvonne, meanwhile, came around slowly. Being in free fall tended to confuse her, adding the sinking stomach sensation to the confusion normally attendant on returning to consciousness from a blow on the head. Everything around her was dark except for one light bobbing around in front of her. Her brain was swimming in dizziness, and she tried to focus on the light to clear it. After a moment, she succeeded.

  The light was on the top of a suit of space armor, and she recognized it instantly as Jules's. No one else had a body shape like that, or moved in quite that way. Yvonne had made herself an expert on the subject of Jules d'Alembert, and could recognize him instantly in any disguise he chose.

  He was fighting-very poorly, for him-a dark, shadowy figure whom she could only see from the back. It took just an instant for the recognition to click in her mind, and then she knew it was Symond. But where were they? Why were they in the control room of a spaceship? How had they gotten out into space at all? Where were Yvette and Jacques?

  She shoved those and a host of other questions to the back of her mind. This was a time for action, not for riddles. Jules was fighting a very dangerous traitor, and he needed her help.

  As she watched, she could see that Jules was doing a very bad job of attacking. Although he was engaged in many furious motions, the waste of effort was incredible. Then she realized what his intention was-he was keeping Symond's back to her, not letting the robot know she was now an active force. She would have the advantage of surprise-but how best to use it?

  Hitting Symond would do little good; the creature was close to indestructible. What would stop it? Her brain raced in feverish circles for fifteen seconds before the obvious answer occurred to her, and it took another couple of instants to figure out how to carry out her plan quickly and quietly. The instant she reasoned it out, however, she carried through.

  She knew something about the way control panels were constructed. There were always plenty of backup systems in case something should go wrong. And, although most of the electronic circuits were printed on circuit board, there would be auxiliary power lines fed into the board by cables. Floating slowly, so that Symond's peripheral vision wouldn't spot her motion, she made her way down to the panel. The pair of cables were there, as she expected, soldered tightly into place. There was no gentle means of disconnecting them, and she didn't have time for such methods anyhow.

  Using brute, DesPlainian strength, she pulled the cables free of their moorings and held them by the insulation. Then, judging her direction very carefully, she leaped at Symond.

  The robot saw her coming out of the comer of his eye, but there was little he could do-Jules had coordinated his attack to what he saw Yvonne doing, and Symond was already in midmotion to block one of Jules's punches. As he twisted away, he ran right into the two outstretched tips of cable that Yvonne was poking at him.

  There was a loud crackling sound and sparks filled the room. Just as Yvonne had thought, electrocution was the perfect method for dealing with this robot. The power flowing through the ship's cables had overwhelmed the creature's own circuitry, burning it out. The robot's carcass twitched spasmodically until Yvonne removed the cables and pushed them to one side; then it lay still, floating lifeless in midair.

  Through Jules's helmet she could just make out an enormous smile of relief on his face. He swam over to her, put his arms around her not-so-frail body, and began to hug her passionately.

  "Darling," she cried out, "I enjoy hugging you, too-but please remove your armor first! It's no fun at all this way!"

  Chapter 14

  The Iceberg's Tip

  Ideally, all the d'Alemberts would have preferred to have their funerals on their native planet, DesPlaines; but that was impossible. The Circus of the Galaxy was too big and too complex to be able to shut down whenever one of its members was killed in the line of duty. Besides, it had a cover identity to protect. It could not even officially admit that anyone had died, lest too many questions be asked about how and why the death had occurred.

  Consequently, the funerals for the four family members who had died on Kolokov-three in the raid on Evekian and Claude d'Alembert in Rimskor Castle-were almost furtive affairs. The bodies were cremated, and the ashes were sent back to DesPlaines; the services themselves were held under the big top after all the customers had departed from the last show of the evening.

  Jules and Yvette, Jacques and Yvonne-their mission on Ansegria now over-had joined the Circus on Kolokov so that they could take part in the sad ceremony. They knew that, had the circumstances been a little different, the funeral could have been for them, and they felt a deep sense of personal loss over their dead kinsmen. But even so, they knew it was occasions like this that bonded the family ever stronger and closer together; the d'Alemberts would go on as long as the Empire lasted, and this renewed faith helped them face future missions ever more eagerly.

  Etienne, as was his duty as head of the family, delivered the funeral oration. As often as he had performed this sad chore, it was a new weight on his shoulders each time. He spoke quietly and with dignity, always bearing in mind the faces of the four he would-be seeing no more; and when he finished, there was nothing else to be said.

  He spoke to more than just the family members who were present in the room, too, for the Head himself grand Duke Zander von Wilmenhorst--had decided to "attend" via interstellar trivid patch-in. Although he couldn't spare the time to leave Earth, his image was projected, at great expense, all the way across the countless parsecs to a booth on Kolokov that was set out of the way so that most of the family couldn't detect his identity; and he listened most intently and reverently to the Duke's words about the departed relatives.

  Afterward the trivid booth was moved into the Duke's private office, where Etienne, Jules, Yvette, and the Head could discuss the case among themselves. The Head first congratulated the three d'Alemberts on another successful mission, but Jules and Yvette demurred. It was their relatives, they pointed out, who actually broke the secret behind the plot, and it was Yvonne who actually destroyed the robot.

  The Head nodded slowly. "I'm not belittling their roles in the slightest, and they'll all get a verbal pat on the head That's all I can do; because of the ultrasecret nature of the Circus's real mission, I can't put their commendations in writing. But the three of you were in charge of the operation--and a succesful mission is a reflection on its planners. There was a threat to the Empire; I put you in charge and now that threat is gone. Ergo, you handled it well and deserve my thanks... and the Princess's."

  "The logic still seems a bit strained," Jules said, "but on behalf of all those who worked with us, I thank you for your kind words."

  "Unfortunately, though," Yvette intoned, "the threat is not gone. If what Luise learned is truce--and Doctor Rustin was under nitrobarb, so it must be--then there are more robots like Symond wandering around. I figure a minimum of three, because Rustin said 'none of the others' rather than 'neither of the others.' There could be many more than that. This one was only the latest-and since there haven't been any signs of any of the others, they must be infiltrating well enough to pass inspection. Who knows where they could be by now?"

 

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