say."

And that, of course, was gospel. He nodded.

"Why don't they turn their surplus into whisky? Age it five or six years
and it'd be on the luxury goods schedule and they could sell it
anywhere."

Count Duklass' eyes widened. "I never thought of that, Your Majesty.
Just a microsec; I want to make a note of that. Pass it down to somebody
who could deal with it. That's a wonderful idea, Your Majesty!"

* * * * *

He finally got the conversation to an end, and went back to the reports.
Security, as usual, had a few items above the dead level of bureaucratic
procedure. The planetary king of Excalibur had been assassinated by his
brother and two nephews, all three of whom were now fighting among
themselves. As nobody had anything to fight with except small arms and a
few light cannon, there would be no intervention. There had been
intervention on Behemoth, however, where a whole continent had tried to
secede from the planetary republic and the Imperial Navy had been
requested to send a task force. That was all right, in both cases. No
interference with anything that passed for a planetary government, but
only one sovereignty on any planet with nuclear weapons, and only one
supreme sovereignty in a galaxy with hyperdrive ships.

And there was rioting on Amaterasu, because of public indignation over a
fraudulent election. He looked at that in incredulous delight. Why, here
on Odin there hadn't been an election in the past six centuries that
hadn't been utterly fraudulent. Nobody voted except the nonworkers,
whose votes were bought and sold wholesale, by gangster bosses to
pressure groups, and no decent person would be caught within a hundred
yards of a polling place on an election day. He called the Minister of
Security.

Prince Travann was a man of his own age--they had been classmates at the
University--but he looked older. His thin face was lined, and his hair
was almost completely white. He was at his desk, with the Sun and
Cogwheel of the Empire on the wall behind him, but on the breast of his
black tunic he wore the badge of his family, a silver planet with three
silver moons. Unlike Count Duklass, he didn't wait to be spoken to.

"Good morning, Your Majesty."

"Good morning, Your Highness; sorry to bother you. I just caught an
interesting item in your report. This business on Amaterasu. What sort
of a planet is it, politically? I don't seem to recall."

"Why, they have a re