ith a touch of post-hypnotic suggestion, they were both quite
convinced that the Third Officer had won the duel and that you were
dead. We had no trouble getting your 'corpse' back through customs and
to Onzar."

"Probably," Thane said, "you had a purpose for all this. Before we go
any further, let's have it."

"If you were an agent of Candar we would have eliminated you," Pyuf
said. "You had already learned too much, and you had shown that you
were a dangerous man. If you were a Liaison agent, it was still
necessary for you to 'die.' At the moment, it's imperative that no
word of our activity gets to the Allied Systems. And, if we can
convince you, we badly need your help."

"It'll take some convincing from what's happened up to now. But go
ahead."

"Ever wonder," Pyuf went on, "why the Darzent Empire hasn't attacked?
What are they waiting for? They're aggressive. They have the edge in
power, with two inhabited systems to one in the A.S. Their technology
matches ours and their heavily centralized dictatorship allows them to
move faster, at least at the beginning of a war."

"Well?"

"Two reasons. One, they never could be sure that we didn't have the
second-stage drive. Two, they couldn't be sure of the allegiance of
Onzar."

"Onzar--the whole five systems--is probably more of an armed camp than
any other political entity in the Galaxy. But that isn't the real
reason for their overwhelming importance." Pyuf jumped down off the
desk and flipped a switch on the far wall. The galactic map appeared,
with the warp-lines superimposed in red.

Pyuf pointed with his cigarette. "Take a look at those warps. All nine
of the principal ones, crossing the Galaxy between the Allied Systems
and the Darzent Empire, pass within a parsec of Onzar. A
faster-than-light fleet going either way _has_ to surface at the Onzar
Confluence. And Candar, no matter how he sounds to you or me, is no
fool. He, you can bet, has taken some long quiet looks at a map like
this and he knows his position. So does Darzent. So do the people who
are presumably running things in the Allied Systems."

Thane stood up. He had been off at the perimeter of the struggle,
working in obscure but possibly important systems for the past three
years. He hadn't been in a position to see all the factors in the
struggle that was shaping up. But now at a glance he saw that Pyuf was
probably right. "It makes sense," he admitted, "but what about the
second-stage driv