“To keep the Patrol from using them against us.” Hurulta checked his temper. “All right, I admit we’ve had our troubles. But we’re making progress. The over-all timetable for the establishment of our hegemony has been accelerated enormously. In the long run, that will mean a saving.”

“Will it now? Even your successes are dubious. Take that forsaken little pill of sand, Yarnaz IV. There’s been no trouble in occupying it. But the expense of maintaining bases under such alien conditions is fantastic. The commoners are being taxed to the limit, and your new tax on the leading groups of society is outrageous.”

“It has to be done. Or would you rather have the Patrol come in and run things?”

“Of course,” said Elgash coldly, “your most inexcusable blunder was the occupation of Umung.”

“What?” For a moment Hurulta could find no words. Slowly, then, he gulped down his rage, and when he spoke it was with thin precision. “That was the one operation which went off like clockwork. At a negligible cost in men and money, we have already doubled our war production. Inside another year, we can expect to quadruple it.”

“I thought you were a realist, your excellency,” said Elgash. “I thought you understood the economic foundation on which the empire rests. Or are you deliberately ruining my class?”

“Are you mad? First you complain about taxes, then when I find a way to increase production, a way that costs us hardly one crown, you—”

“Your excellency, we have only so many soldiers and there is a limit to the amount of war matériel they can use. When Umung is producing all of it, what will become of Ulugan’s factories?”

* * *

Fear.

Shamuvaz, soldier of the empire, looked around him. He moved his head very slowly, lest he see something behind his back. There was only the landscape-distorted trees, murmuring reddish grass, a remote waterfall that echoed the furious clamor of his heart.

He felt ill. He wanted to vomit. Looking at the faces of his companions, he thought that they were impossibly alien. They were evil. They were made evil by the same horror that rode on him, and in their panic they might turn and tear him.

Shamuvaz whimpered, deep in his throat, and thought of his wife and children. They were so far away, so many centuries away, he would never see them again. He would rot on Gyreion, the wind would blow through his ribs and the small beasts of the field would nest in his empty, empty skull.

They said it was harmless. They said it was only that the natives—so thoroughly indoctrinated by the Patrol that there was no dealing with them…or was it that, being telepaths, they knew Ulugan meant them for pawns?—the natives were afraid, and you yourself heard their fear. Nothing to it. Ignore it. You are a soldier of the empire, and fear of nothingness is unworthy of you.

Only the generals didn’t have to live with fear. They didn’t have to torment themselves, night after night, to stay awake, for fear of the dreams; and when they finally did sleep, in spite of everything, they weren’t brought up within minutes, screaming. They didn’t see their comrades break, one by one, and be sent home muttering idiot words, and wonder when their turn would come.