ave when I
see one. A slave is a slave, with or without a gorget; if he doesn't
wear it around his neck, he has it tattooed on his soul. It takes at
least three generations to rub it off."

"I could wish that Count Erskyll...." he began. "What else is our
Proconsul doing?"

"Well, I'm afraid he's trying to set up some kind of a scheme for the
complete nationalization of all farms, factories, transport facilities,
and other means of production and distribution," Degbrend said.

"He's not going to try to do that himself, is he?" He was, he
discovered, speaking sharply, and modified his tone. "He won't do it
with Imperial authority, or with Imperial troops. Not as long as I'm
here. And when we go back to Odin, I'll see to it that Vann Shatrak
understands that."

"Oh, no. The Commonwealth of Aditya will do that," Degbrend said.
"Chmidd and Hozhet and Yakoop Zhannar and Zhorzh Khouzhik and the rest
of them, that is. He wants it done legitimately and legally. That means,
he'll have to wait till the Midyear Feasts, when the Convocation
assembles, and he can get his constitution enacted. If he can get it
written by then."

Vann Shatrak sent two of the destroyers off to explore the moons of
Aditya, of which there were two. The outer moon, Aditya-_Ba'_, was an
irregular chunk of rock fifty miles in diameter, barely visible to the
naked eye. The inner, Aditya-_Alif_, however, was an eight-hundred-mile
sphere; it had once been the planetary ship-station and shipyard-base.
It seemed to have been abandoned when the Adityan technology and economy
had begun sagging under the weight of the slave system. Most of the
installations remained, badly run down but repairable. Shatrak
transferred as many of his technicians as he could spare to the _Mizar_
and sent her to recondition the shipyard and render the underground city
inhabitable again so that the satellite could be used as a base for his
ships. He decided, then, to send the _Irma_ back to Odin with reports of
the annexation of Aditya, a proposal that Aditya-_Alif_ be made a
permanent Imperial naval-base, and a request for more troops.

Prince Trevannion taped up his own reports, describing the general
situation on the newly annexed planet, and doing nothing to minimize the
problems facing its Proconsul.

"Count Erskyll" he finished, "is doing the best possible under
circumstances from which I myself would feel inclined to shrink. If not
carried to excess, perhaps youthful ide