ion and contempt for
authority."

"I always thought that when authority began inspiring contempt, it had
stopped being authority. Did you say science? This isn't going to help
Duklass and Tammsan any."

"I'm afraid not, Your Majesty." Ganzay didn't look particularly
regretful. "The News Cartel's gotten hold of it and are using it; it'll
be all over the Empire."

He said that as though it meant something. Well, maybe it did; a lot of
Ministers and almost all the Counselors spent most of their time
worrying about what people on planets like Chermosh and Zarathustra and
Deirdre and Quetzalcoatl might think, in ignorance of the fact that
interest in Empire politics varied inversely as the square of the
distance to Odin and the level of corruption and inefficiency of the
local government.

"I notice you'll be at the Bench luncheon. Do you think you could invite
our guests, too? We could have an informal presentation before it
starts. Can do? Good. I'll be seeing you there."

When the screen was blanked, he returned to the reports, ran them off
hastily to make sure that nothing had been red-starred, and called a
robot to clear the projector. After a while, Prince Travann called
again.

"Sorry to bother Your Majesty, but I have most of the facts on the riot,
now. What happened was that Chancellor Khane sacked a professor, physics
department, under circumstances which aroused resentment among the
science students. Some of them walked out of class and went to the
stadium to hold a protest meeting, and the thing snowballed until half
the students were in it. Khane lost his head and ordered the campus
police to clear the stadium; the students rushed them and swamped them.
I hope, for their sakes, that none of my men ever let anything like that
happen. The man I sent, a Colonel Handrosan, managed to talk the
students into going back to the stadium and continuing the meeting under
Gendarme protection."

"Sounds like a good man."

"Very good, Your Majesty. Especially in handling disturbances. I have
complete confidence in him. He's also investigating the background of
the affair. I'll give Your Majesty what he's learned, to date. It seems
that the head of the physics department, a Professor Nelse Dandrik, had
been conducting an experiment, assisted by a Professor Klenn Faress, to
establish more accurately the velocity of subnucleonic particles, beta
micropositos, I believe. Dandrik's story, as relayed to Handrosan by
Khan