noon. If I leave earlier, I'll flash
you a signal."

* * * * *

He entered the big oval room, lighted from overhead by the great
star-map in the ceiling, and crossed to his desk, with the viewscreens
and reading screens and communications screens around it, and as he sat
down, he cursed angrily, first at Harv Dorflay and then, after a
moment's reflection, at himself. He was the one to blame; he'd known
Dorflay's paranoid condition for years. Have to do something about it.
Any psycho-medic would certify him; be no problem at all to have him put
away. But be blasted if he'd do that. That was no way to repay loyalty,
even insane loyalty. Well, he'd find a way.

He lit a cigarette and leaned back, looking up at the glowing swirl of
billions of billions of tiny lights in the ceiling. At least, there were
supposed to be billions of billions of them; he'd never counted them,
and neither had any of the seventeen Rodriks and sixteen Pauls before
him who had sat under them. His hand moved to a control button on his
chair arm, and a red patch, roughly the shape of a pork chop, appeared
on the western side.

That was the Empire. Every one of the thousand three hundred and
sixty-five inhabited worlds, a trillion and a half intelligent beings,
fourteen races--fifteen if you counted the Zarathustran Fuzzies, who
were almost able to qualify under the talk-and-build-a-fire rule. And
that had been the Empire when Rodrik VI had seen the map completed, and
when Paul II had built the Palace, and when Stevan IV, the grandfather
of Paul I, had proclaimed Odin the Imperial planet and Asgard the
capital city. There had been some excuse for staying inside that patch
of stars then; a newly won Empire must be consolidated within before it
can safely be expanded. But that had been over eight centuries ago.

He looked at the Daily Schedule, beautifully embossed and neatly slipped
under his desk glass. Luncheon on the South Upper Terrace, with the
Prime Minister and the Bench of Imperial Counselors. Yes, it was time
for that again; that happened as inevitably and regularly as Harv
Dorflay's murder plots. And in the afternoon, a Plenary Session, Cabinet
and Counselors. Was he going to have to endure the Bench of Counselors
twice in the same day? Then the vexation was washed out of his face by a
spreading grin. Bench of Counselors; that was the answer! Elevate Harv
Dorflay to the Bench. That was what the Bench was fo