THE DEAD HAND

Bel Riose interrupted his annoyed stridings to look up hopefully when his aide entered. “Any word of the Starlet?”

“None. The scouting party has quartered space, but the instruments have detected nothing. Commander Yume has reported that the Fleet is ready for an immediate attack in retaliation.”

The general shook his head. “No, not for a patrol ship. Not yet. Tell him to double—Wait! I’ll write out the message. Have it coded and transmitted by tight beam.”

He wrote as he talked and thrust the paper at the waiting officer. “Has the Siwennian arrived yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Well, see to it that he is brought in here as soon as he does arrive.”

The aide saluted crisply and left. Riose resumed his caged stride.

When the door opened a second time, it was Ducem Barr that stood on the threshold. Slowly, in the footsteps of the ushering aide, he stepped into the garish room whose ceiling was an ornamented holographic model of the Galaxy, and in the center of which Bel Riose stood in field uniform.

“Patrician, good day!” The general pushed forward a chair with his foot and gestured the aide away with a “That door is to stay closed till I open it.”

He stood before the Siwennian, legs apart, hand grasping wrist behind his back, balancing himself slowly, thoughtfully, on the balls of his feet.

Then, harshly, “Patrician, are you a loyal subject of the Emperor?”

Barr, who had maintained an indifferent silence till then, wrinkled a noncommittal brow. “I have no cause to love Imperial rule.”

“Which is a long way from saying that you would be a traitor.”

“True. But the mere act of not being a traitor is also a long way from agreeing to be an active helper.”

“Ordinarily also true. But to refuse your help at this point,” said Riose, deliberately, “will be considered treason and treated as such.”

Barr’s eyebrows drew together. “Save your verbal cudgels for your subordinates. A simple statement of your needs and wants will suffice me here.”

Riose sat down and crossed his legs. “Barr, we had an earlier discussion half a year ago.”

“About your magicians?”

“Yes. You remember what I said I would do.”

Barr nodded. His arms rested limply in his lap. “You were going to visit them in their haunts, and you’ve been away these four months. Did you find them?”

“Find them? That I did,” cried Riose. His lips were stiff as he spoke. It seemed to require effort to refrain from grinding molars. “Patrician, they are not magicians; they are devils. It is as far from belief as the outer galaxies from here. Conceive it! It is a world the size of a handkerchief, of a fingernail; with resources so petty, power so minute, a population so microscopic as would never suffice the most backward worlds of the dusty prefects of the Dark Stars. Yet with that, a people so proud and ambitious as to dream quietly and