what you had done, and why. That revived my doubts. Are you willing to
be tested under a truth drug?"

Hanlon almost gasped in dismay, but stifled it. He knew only too well
the efficacy of modern truth drugs. They would reveal every thought and
bit of knowledge he had ever had--all about the Corps, the Secret
Service and everything.

That hurt look came back into his face. "You sure are asking a lot,
sir," he said. "I haven't anything to conceal from you, but no man likes
to have his whole mind invaded that way--all his private thoughts and
feelings. I don't see why you need suggest such a thing. I've told you
the truth on matters you want to know about."

"You appear to have done so, and I honestly want to believe you. For you
see, Hanlon, I want you with me. You're my kind of a man. I like you
because you have tremendous drive and imagination and ability--yes,
and perhaps a bit because you're the only man I've ever met who
wasn't ... uh ... afraid of me. I have tremendous plans for the
future--and I would like to have you as my chief aide in them. I would
train you as you've never guessed it possible for a man to be trained.
And then, _together, Hanlon, we could rule the Universe_!"

But George Hanlon was only half-listening, even to that last, that
shocking, that totally unexpected proposition, his real goal. Here was
the plot he had been seeking, the plot the Corps needed so desperately
to know. Yet his personal crisis was, for the moment, more important if
he was ever to be of any further benefit to the Secret Service or the
Corps. To use his just-discovered knowledge, something else must come
first.

His mind, therefore, was seeking a way out. He well knew that once the
truth drug was administered--and this Highness would not now be
satisfied with anything less--he was as good as dead. They would find
out the truth in minutes, and then would have no other recourse but to
kill him.

His spirits sank to nadir with the knowledge that he had
failed ... failed the Secret Service and the Corps, failed his father,
failed the Guddus, failed himself. Curiously, perhaps, at that moment
the thought of failure was far more important to him than the imminence
of death, as such.

He had half-consciously noticed when he first glanced about this room,
that there was a small ventilator near the ceiling in one corner.
Desperately he pushed his mind through it, and could sense that it
opened onto a park-like place, probably