groups just ahead of Perat's probe. On some of the groups she knew she had made blunders, but apparently she preserved the general impression by strengthened verification in subsequent nets. She wove a brief tale of a young officer in charge of metals salvage who had sent an order to a field group to recover some sort of metal, and since Gorph had been out, and H.Q. needed the metal urgently, the officer did not wait for official authorization. His probe then searched her visual lobe thoroughly, but with growing skepticism. She offered him only indistinct memories of the dead officer's identity.

"Who was the man?" asked Perat as a matter of form, sipping his terif absently.

"Sub-leader Galen, I think." That would give him pause. He knew she had offered no visual memory of Galen. He would wonder why she was lying.

"Are you sure?"

She wanted to look at the time-dial on the wall, but dared not. From the corner of her eye she saw Perat's left arm tense, then relax warily. His mental probe had fastened grimly to her mind again, though he must know it would be effort wasted. She conjured up an image of Sub-leader Galen in the act of telling her he was handling a very urgent matter and that he'd tell the Viscount later what he'd done. Then the face of the young officer changed to another of the staff, then another, then still another. Then back to Galen.

"No, I'm not sure."

Perat smiled thinly. "You wished to gain time, and I wished to idle it away. I suppose we have both been fairly successful."

The communications box beside the bed jangled.

"Yes?" cried Perat, all alert.

As his mouth was forming the word, his probe was collapsing within her mind, and her own flashed briefly into his mind. The hand under the pillow held a Faeg, aimed at her chest. But the safety catch was still on.

"Excellency?" came Gorph's tinny voice.

"Yes, Gorph? Have you replaced the columns?"

"Replaced"...? That seemed to indicate that the field crew had followed her forged order, then returned the columns by Perat's countercommand, relayed telepathically through Gorph. But once all the great rods were drawn, replacing them did not halt the 

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