ee, they are perfectly true."

Jon Senesin looked at his father as though the older man had suddenly
sprouted an extra set of ears. "Y ... You've been brainwashed?"

The Prime Portfolio shook his head. "No, son, not that. Did you see
anything like that on the tapes?"

"N-no. But the others. Fileman Brenner, Portfolio for Defense Vane,
General Finster--all of them. I thought--"

"You thought wrong, son," said Lord Senesin. "I am and always have been
working loyally with His Majesty. He gives the orders, and I carry them
out."

Jon's voice became taut. "You mean you're helping him? You're trying to
get the Empire into a war with the Gehan Federation so that _he_ can
become another dictator, like Jerris the First?" He kept his eyes
carefully averted from the Emperor as he spoke.

Thus he didn't notice that His Majesty looked at Colonel Sorban with an
expression that said, "You're right. He does have guts."

Lord Senesin said: "No, son; I'm not working toward that at all. Neither
is His Majesty. There would be no point in it."

Then, for the first time, the Emperor spoke. His voice was soft, but
commanding. "Mr. Senesin, let me explain something to you."

Jon Senesin's head jerked around. There was a confused mixture of fear
and determination on his face.

"Mr. Senesin, I no more want war than you do. I am trying to avoid it
with every power at my command. I have that duty to my people. But I
have another duty, too. A duty, not just to the Empire, but to the human
race as a whole. And that duty is to establish, not a Terran Empire, but
a Galactic Empire--a single, consolidated government for every planet in
the galaxy. Man can't go on this way, divided, split up, warring with
himself. Man can't live in isolation, cut off from other worlds, other
types of societies.

"We can't have a part of the human race living in constant fear of
another part. We can't allow the conditions that exist at this moment in
the Gehan Federation. To paraphrase Lincoln, 'The galaxy cannot exist
half slave and half free.'

"Right now, there is evidence that the Gehan Federation will collapse
internally within less than five years. The only way for the President
of the Federation to avert that collapse will be to declare war on the
Empire. We have had to take certain risks in order to insure that when
and if war does come, we will win it.

"Bairnvell was one of those risks. Not too great a one, as it turns out;
evidently the Federat