He stepped farther into the room, motioned others in. Evil-looking thugs came through the door, peering about, glancing at Bale for orders.
"Put him in a cell," Bale said. "And I'm warning you, Cassu, keep your bloody hands off him. I want him strong for the surgeon."
Cassu grunted, twisted my arm until the joint creaked, and pushed me past the dead body of the man I had come in one night to think of as a brother.
They marched me off down the corridor, pushed me into an elevator, led me out again through a mob of noisy toughs armed to the teeth, down stone stairs, along a damp tunnel in the rock, and at the end of the line, sent me spinning with a kick into the pitch black of a cell.
My stunned mind worked, trying to assimilate what had happened. Bale! And not a double; he had known who I was. It was Bale of the Imperium, a traitor. That answered a lot of questions. It explained the perfect timing and placement of the attack at the palace, and why Bale had been too busy to attend the gala affair that night. I realized now why he had sought me out afterward; he was hoping that I'd been killed, of course. That would have simplified matters for him. And the duel—I had never quite been able to understand why the Intelligence chief had been willing to risk killing me, when I was essential to the scheme for controlling the dictator. And all the lies about the viciousness of the Bayard of B-I Two were Bale's fabrications designed to prevent establishment of friendly relations between the Imperium and this unhappy world.
Why? I asked myself. Did Bale plan to rule this hell-world himself, making it his private domain? It seemed so.
And I saw that Bale did not intend to content himself with this world alone; this would be merely a base of operations, a source of fighting men and weapons—including atomic bombs. Bale himself was the author of the raids on the Imperium. He had stolen shuttles, or components thereof, and had manned them here in B-I Two, and set out on a career of piracy. The next step would be the assault on the Imperium itself, a full-scale attack, strewing atomic death. The men of the Imperium would wear gay uniforms and dress sabres into battle against atomic cannon.
I wondered why I hadn't realized it sooner. The fantastic unlikeliness of the development of the MC drive independently by the war-ruined world of B-I Two seemed obvious now.
While we had sat in solemn conference, planning moves against the raiders, their prime mover had sat with us. No wonder an enemy scout had lain in wait for me as I came in on my mission.
When he found me at the hideout, Bale must have immediately set to work planning how best to make use of the unexpected stroke of luck. And when I had escaped, he had had to move fast.