ent, Your Majesty. I have learned that unauthorized
alterations have been made on one of the cooking-robots in your private
kitchen, and I am positive that the object is to poison Your Majesty."

They were turning into the main hallway, between the rows of portraits
of past emperors, Paul and Rodrik, Paul and Rodrik, alternating over and
over on both walls. He felt a smile growing on his face, and banished
it.

"The robot for the meat sauces, wasn't it?" he asked.

"Why--! Yes, Your Majesty."

"I'm sorry, general. I should have warned you. Those alterations were
made by roboticists from the Ministry of Security; they were installing
an adaptation of a device used in the criminalistics-labs, to insure
more uniform measurements. They'd done that already for Prince Travann,
the Minister, and he'd recommended it to me."

That was a shame, spoiling poor Harv Dorflay's murder plot. It had been
such a nice little plot, too; he must have had a lot of fun inventing
it. But a line had to be drawn somewhere. Let him turn the Palace upside
down hunting for bombs; harass ladies-in-waiting whose lovers he
suspected of being hired assassins; hound musicians into whose
instruments he imagined firearms had been built; the emperor's private
kitchen would have to be off limits.

Dorflay, who should have been looking crestfallen but relieved, stopped
short--shocking breach of Court etiquette--and was staring in horror.

"Your Majesty! Prince Travann did that openly and with your consent?
But, Your Majesty, I am convinced that it is Prince Travann himself who
is the instigator of every one of these diabolical schemes. In the case
of the elevator, I became suspicious of a man named Samml Ganner, one of
Prince Travann's secret police agents. In the case of the gun in the
viewscreen, it was a technician whose sister is a member of the
household of Countess Yirzy, Prince Travann's mistress. In the case of
the fission bomb----"

The two Thorans and their captain had kept on for some distance before
they had discovered that they were no longer being followed, and were
returning. He put his hand on General Dorflay's shoulder and urged him
forward.

"Have you mentioned this to anybody?"

"Not a word, Your Majesty. This Court is so full of treachery that I can
trust no one, and we must never warn the villain that he is suspected--"

"Good. Say nothing to anybody." They had reached the door of the study,
now. "I think I'll be here until