n's getting in touch
with Ridgerd Schferts; the Elegry heirs will be paid in Adityan
stellies, and the Imperial crowns will be held in the Commonwealth Bank,
or, better, banked in Asgard, to give Aditya some off-planet credit. And
we'll do the same with our other expenditures, and with the
slave-compensation. This is going to be wonderful; this planet needs
everything in the way of industrial equipment; this is how they're going
to get it."

"But, Obray; the compensations are owing to the individual Masters. They
should be paid in crowns. You know as well as I do that this
hundred-for-one rate is purely a local fiction. On the interstellar
exchange, these stellies have a crown value of precisely
zero-point-zero."

"You know what would happen if these ci-devant Masters got hold of
Imperial crowns," Erskyll said. "They'd only squander them back again
for useless imported luxuries. This planet needs a complete
modernization, and this is the only way the money to pay for it can be
gotten." He was gesturing excitedly with the almost-full glass in his
hand; Prince Trevannion stepped back out of the way of the splash he
anticipated. "I have no sympathy for these ci-devant Masters. They own
every stick and stone and pinch of dust on this planet, as it is. Is
that fair?"

"Possibly not. But neither is what you're proposing to do."

Obray, Count Erskyll, couldn't see that. He was proposing to secure the
Greatest Good for the Greatest Number, and to Nifflheim with any
minorities who happened to be in the way.

* * * * *

The Navy took over the Elegry Palace the next morning, ran up the
Imperial Sun and Cogwheel flag, and began transmitting views of its
interior up to the _Empress Eulalie_. It was considerably smaller than
the Imperial Palace at Asgard on Odin, but room for room the furnishings
were rather more ornate and expensive. By the next afternoon, the
counter-espionage team that had gone down reported the Masterly living
quarters clear of pickups, microphones, and other apparatus of servile
snooping, of which they had found many. The _Canopus_ was recalled from
her station over the northern end of the continent and began sending
down the proconsulate furnishings stowed aboard, including several
hundred domestic robots.

The skeleton caretaking staff Chmidd had mentioned proved to number five
hundred.

"What are we going to do about them?" Erskyll wanted to know. "There's a
limit to