"Exactly, Your Excellency. But I would like to learn those details. I am sure that my father was no traitor."
Hinrik broke in hurriedly. "As his son, of course, it is understandable that you should defend your father, but, really, it is difficult to discuss such matters of state now. Highly irregular, in fact. Why don't you see Aratap?"
"I do not know him, Excellency."
"Aratap! The Commissioner! The Tyrannian Commissioner"'
"I have seen him and he sent me here. Surely, you understand that I dare not let the Tyranni-"
But Hinrik had grown stiff. His hand had wandered to his lips, as though to keep them from trembling, and his words were consequently muffled. "Aratap sent you here, you say?"
"I found it necessary to tell him-"
"Don't repeat what you told him. I know," said Hinrik. "I can do nothing for you, Rancher-uh-Mr. Farrill. It is not in my jurisdiction alone. The Executive Council-stop pulling at me, Arta. How can I pay attention to matters when you distract me?-must be consulted. Gillbret! Will you see that Mr. Farrill is taken care of? I will see what can be done. Yes, I will consult the Executive Council. The forms of law, you know. Very important. Very important."
He turned on his heel, mumbling.
Artemisia lingered for a moment and touched Biron's sleeve. "A moment. Was it true, your statement that you could pilot a spaceship?"
"Quite true," said Biron. He smiled at her, and after a moment's hesitation, she dimpled briefly in return.
"Gillbret," she said, "I want to speak to you later."
She hurried off. Biron looked after her till Gillbret tweaked at his sleeve.
"I presume you are hungry, perhaps thirsty, would like a wash?" asked Gillbret. "The ordinary amenities of life continue, I take it?"
"Thank you, yes," said Biron. The tension had almost entirely washed out of him. For a moment he was relaxed and felt wonderful. She was pretty. Very pretty.
But Hinrik was not relaxed; In his own chambers his thoughts whirled at a feverish pace. Try as he might, he could not wriggle out of the inevitable conclusion. It was a trap! Aratap had sent him and it was a trap!
He buried his head in his hands to quiet and deaden the pounding, and then he knew what he had to do.
7. Musician of the Mind
Night settles in time on all habitable planets. Not always, perhaps, at respectable intervals, since recorded periods of rotation vary from fifteen to fifty-two hours. That fact requires the most strenuous psychological adjustment from those traveling from planet to planet.
On many planets such adjustments are made, and the waking-sleeping periods are tailored to fit. On many more the almost universal use of conditioned atmospheres and artificial lighting make the day-night question secondary except in so far as it modifies agriculture. On a few planets (those of the extremes) arbitrary divisions are made which ignore the trivial facts of light and dark.
But always, whatever the social conventions, the coming of night has a deep and abiding psychological significance, dating back to man's pre-human arboreal existence. Night will always be a time of fear and insecurity, and the heart will sink with the sun.
Inside Palace Central there was no sensory mechanism by which one could tell the coming of night, yet Biron felt that coming through some indefinite instinct hidden in the unknown corridors of the human brain. He knew that outdoors the night's blackness was scarcely relieved by the futile sparks of the stars. He knew that, if it were the right time of year, the jagged "hole in space" known as the Horsehead Nebula (so familiar to all the Trans-Nebular Kingdoms) inked out half the stars that might otherwise have been visible.
And he was depressed again. He had not seen Artemisia since the little talk with the Director, and he found himself resenting that. He had looked forward to dinner; he might have spoken to her. Instead, he had eaten alone, with two guards lounging discontentedly just outside the door. Even Gillbret had left him, presumably to eat a less lonely meal in the company one would expect in a palace of the Hinriads.
So that when Gillbret returned and said, "Artemisia and I have been discussing you," he obtained a prompt and interested reaction.
It merely amused him and he said so. "First I want to show you my laboratory," he had said then. He gestured and the two guards moved off.
"What kind of a laboratory?" asked Biron with a definite loss of interest.
"I build gadgets," was the vague response.
It was not a laboratory to the eye. It was more nearly a library, with an ornate desk in the corner.
Biron looked it over slowly. "And you build gadgets here? What kind of gadgets?"
"Well, special sounding devices to spy out the Tyrannian spy beams in a brand-new way. Nothing they can detect. That's how I found out about you, when the first word came through from Aratap. And I have other amusing trinkets. My visisonor, for instance. Do you like music?"
"Some kinds."
"Good. I invented an instrument, only I don't know if you can properly call it music." A shelf of book films slid out and aside at a touch. "This is not really much of a hiding place, but nobody takes me seriously, so they don't look. Amusing, don't you think? But I forget, you're the unamused one."
It was a clumsy, boxlike affair, with that singular lack of gloss and polish that marks the homemade object. One side of it was studded with little gleaming knobs. He put it down with that side upward.
"It isn't pretty," Gillbret said, "but who in Time cares? Put the lights out. No, no! No switches or contacts. Just wish the lights were out. Wish hard! Decide you want them out."